Rating: 
Summary: You will laugh out loud
Review: Every time I picked this book up and read on it would make me laugh out loud. Since it is a compilation of articles that Bill Bryson wrote for an English magazine or newpaper it is split into very nicely written 2-3 page chapters. It is a great book to read if you ride the train or bus to work and can only get in 15-20 minutes of reading at a time since none of the writing is related. Bill Bryson is what we would call 'Mr. Bitterman' because he is quite bitter at times but it is all in good fun. Since it is written for a foreign audience it is very intersting to see how we are seen by the outside world. He covers almost every daily topic from going to the post office to dealing with setting up a new computer and always makes as fun of as much as possible including his own ineptitudes. If you have read his books before you will love this one and if you have not you should give it a try. Once you read one of his books you will want to read them all because they will all make you laugh. If you do not laugh within the first few pages then this might not be your kind of humor.
Rating: 
Summary: painfully funny
Review: So I was reading this book late at night and wound up doubled over with my face in a pillow so I wouldn't wake up the person across the hall with my laughing. This book is insightful (I'm sure I learned things about being American, despite being American), funny, and well-written. The one minus, for me, is that the way he talks about his wife eventually got on my nerves. She comes off as a bit of a 50s-tv-show mom, by turns irrational in her femininity and annoyingly wise. That he refers to her as "Mrs. Bryson" doesn't help matters. But that's minor, and maybe if you didn't read it all in one night as I did, it would be less evident. Mostly, this is just a wicked funny book.
Rating: 
Summary: Errors of fact, errors of judgment?
Review: Bill Bryson, I'm a Stranger Here Myself (Broadway Books, 1999) At funtrivia.com, one of the (many) ways a quiz can go from a relatively high ranking to "very poor" between the time I start and the time I finish is a factual error that causes me to get a question wrong. Research is a beautiful thing. Half of me is willing to give Bill Bryson the benefit of the doubt; the other half is ready to excoriate him on what may be a false impression. I'll attempt to keep it reserved. Bryson's column "The Waste Generation," about two-thirds of the way through I'm a Stranger Here Myself, starts off with a statistic that's quite simply wrong ("One of the most arresting statistics I have seen in a good while is that 5 percent of all the energy used in the United States is consumed by computers that have been left on all night." Wrong; a computer and a monitor, left on twenty-four hours a day, together consume approximately a dollar's worth of electricity per month. The computer is one of the most energy-efficient machines on the planet today). The American home computer revolution happened while Bryson was out of the country, so I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. It would have been nice, however, had he mentioned his source. A forgivable error, perhaps, though basing a whole column on it is rather disturbing. But the part of the column that bugs me is farther down: "I have glanced out hotel room windows late at night, in a variety of cities, and been struck by the fact that lots of lights in lots of office buildings are still burning... why don't we turn these things off?... Why, after all, go through the irksome annoyance of waiting twenty seconds for your computer to warm up each morning when you can have it at your immediate beck by leaving it on all night?" Two different questions with two entirely different answers, but Bryson goes on to turn it into a discussion of American wastefulness with its natural resources. He may be reaching the right conclusion, but if so, he's doing a 180 from where he started. To answer the latter question first, in modern computers with the Energy Saver features (which do nothing of the sort) turned off, it takes less power to leave a computer on all night than it does to shut it down and start it up. (To address another point he makes in the same passage, it's also more efficient to leave cars running for short periods rather than turning them off and back on. Any electrical appliance requires something of an electrical security deposit to get started, just like an apartment renter has to put down "amount of monthly rent times three" or somesuch in order to move in.) The former answer takes longer, but the short answer is that the Federal government, during the 1974 oil crisis, was taking out full-page ads in various magazines (I used to see them on a regular basis in Time) telling us that leaving lights on all night in buildings is what we SHOULD do, because electric lights give off heat, and at the time it was cheaper to heat a building by leaving its lights on and cranking the gas heat down six degrees or so. That situation went away with the end of the fuel crisis, of course, but the government never took those ads out in time. Here's where I get a little wonky with Bryson. The subtitle of the book is "Notes on returning to America aftetr twenty years away." If the number is, in fact, twenty, then Bryson was in the country when the Government was running those full-page ads. And thus, given that he's all too well aware of the average Joe's lack of common sense, he could have come to the same conclusion by poking fun at the fact that the average Joe never stopped leaving the lights on all night after the fuel crisis was over. But he doesn't. Humor is a wonderful thing (and let me hasten to say that there is a good deal of it here), but one of the prerequisites for humor of any sort should be that's it's based on fact. The humorist is, in many cases (and certainly in this one) using humor to get a point across, and doing so with factual errors leaves a very bad taste in my mouth. Factual errors by ignorance leave less of a bad taste in my mouth than factual errors by design. That's what I see in this essay, and it makes me wonder how many others, with circumstances with which I'm less acquainted in this book, are founded on the same sleight of hand. Perhaps one error shouldn't taint my view of a whole book, but I can't help it. After all, when an expert witness admits he falsified one fact in one trial that changed the outcome, how often do you think he'll be getting called to testify after that? I try to give Bryson the benefit of the doubt for most of it, because his heart's mostly in the right place, and his brand of humor is the understated, easy kind that resides at the top of the humor heap. But I'll never be able to read another word of Bryson's without the 1974 energy crisis in the back of my head. ** 1/2
Rating:
Summary: A little uneven, but still drop-dead funny...
Review: Bryson at his worst is still better than most of us at our lampshade-headed best. This book, like his others, was definitely laugh-out-loud-on-the-subway funny. But I did find here that this book suffered from a few inconsistencies I haven't noticed elsewhere, particularly when he tackles serious subjects. Dave Barry has proven his mastery time and again by approaching these difficult issues with dignity, somehow managing not to alienate the readers who look to him for humour. Bryson, on the other hand, sometimes seems a little too desperate for our laugh, like an adult who persistently tickles glum children under the chin to get them to smile. Nevertheless, Bryson's true character shines through. All these pieces reflect admirably his love of family and values (and his committment to walk instead of drive whenever possible!). I would have loved to have read these pieces in their original British form, but I still enjoyed them immensely as they're presented here. His anthropological approach to American culture may jar those who feel that the U.S. is the centre of the universe, but his goal is never just to educate. I'm convinced he simply wants us to wet ourselves laughing, and believe me, he just about accomplishes this every single time.
Rating:
Summary: Fabulous As Usual
Review: Just when I think Bryson can't be any funnier, he manages to wow me again. For anyone who has spent extended periods of times (i.e. years) out of the States, this is compulsory reading. His observations of daily American life versus life in other parts of the world are spot-on. For me, his most fascinating and true observation was that when you are an expatriate living away from your own country you feel an amazing sense of your own nationality and tend to wear it openly on your sleeve, but once you return to your own country after years away, you realise that you have lost so much of your original identity. Its probably been replaced by something much more worldly and possibly meaningful, but inevitably you are forced to admit that you have changed even more than the changes that have occured in your own culture during your absence. I look forward to reading your next one, Bill.
Rating:
Summary: Delicious bites of humour
Review: This is Bryson at his best - short essays designed for a newspaper column and witty as anything. Some of them made me laugh aloud, and they're great for reading snippets to you partner in bed (especially the part about the number of people in the US who have been injured by their bedding). Some of the essays have contents that are a little obscure, but there is enough humour here to amuse almost anyone. If you like short stories and appreciate dry, sometimes sarcastic humour, you'll love this.
Rating:
Summary: Very Entertaining, An Easy Read for Frequent Interruptions
Review: Bill Bryson's sense of humor makes you laugh out loud, so if you'll be embarassed when other airline passengers wonder what you're laughing at, you probably shouldn't read this book. Since it's a compilation of newspaper columns, the chapters are very short. I liked this since I read a lot in airports and other places where I only have short stints to read. Long involved novels are too difficult to get "back into". I highly recommend this book!
Rating:
Summary: Familiar Territory
Review: I read A Walk in the Woods last year and laughed from cover to cover, so when I picked up this book I expected nothing less, and I was not disapointed. It's observations about the US and England may not have been quite so funny if they didn't hit so close to home (I am an American, from New England no less, living in England), but they did and I could personally identify with just about everything he said. It wasn't as funny as A Walk in the Woods but I don't suppose I would expect a collection of essays to be.
Rating:
Summary: Some laughs, but gets old
Review: Having a job that requires me to live overseas, yet always being an American at heart, I was intrigued by the title of this book, and the possibility that it would offer some unique reflection of an American returned home after 20 years away in a humorous, yet reflective manner. Well, let's be frank, the book is not reflective. That is apparently not its purpose. If you're looking for thought, skip the book. Next, to the humor. I did find myself laughing out loud at a few of the essays, extremely well-written, and containing some hilarious passages about the peculiarities of my compatriots! Unfortunately, though, Bryson's humor for the most part is of the "old grouch on a park bench complaining" variety, and his writing starts to become wearying as you go deeper and deeper into the book. I am almost finished, and well, I can't wait for it to end, because each essay seems the same as the previous one. I believe there are at least two if not more essays in the book of how difficult computers are to operate, for example. Well, I believe that "humor" went out of style in the early eighties. There are several essays mimicking instruction manuals for technical gadgets, as well, which to be honest, I just skimmed because they were boring and full of ridiculous hyperbole. The book works best when Bryson compares some new relevations he's witnessed, and compares those to his childhood, and/or his time in England. I particularly remember his essay about taking the family to a drive-in movie!! Makes you wonder how those things ever became popular! I enjoyed reading an essay or two each morning, which kept things relatively fresh, but like I mentioned earlier, I'm at the end of the book, and the end can't come soon enough. Overall, a cute enough book, but with flaws.
Rating:
Summary: Fram a Des Moines perspective
Review: A Walk in the Woods had me in stitches and has been a favorite pass along book with many happy readers. Bryson's characteristic wit shines again and warmed my heart and soul on a cold December weekend. One minor point of correction to the phone number for time and temperature. It is not 244-5646 as reported on page 30. The right number is 244-5611. After so many years since Bill was in Des Moines, 5 out of 7 isn't bad. Katz should have been consulted to provide accuracy.
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