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Summary: A great book about Australia!
Review: I would highly recommend this book. I found it very interesting.
I'd give it more stars if I could.
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Summary: Alone in the Outback
Review: In this book Bill Bryson has managed to take humor and mix it with a sense of seriousness in a way that leaves the reader amazed. Sharing his adventures in the oft forgot land down under he combines a travelogue and a humor column with an unique look at life (and death) in Australia. Whether he is taking you along as he crosses the great outback, daring death at every turn, or just kicking back for a beer or two (or three, or four.....) in homey Australian pubs he manages to portray a sense of what it is really like, just to make sure you are absolutely crazy if you want to go there. He takes you to some of Australia's most ignored wonders, like a tree walk, a 100ft high board walk, among some of the tallest, most magnificent trees in Australia. He brings you to a colony of Stromatolites, the first living organism on earth, the largest of three known surviving colonies. Whether Bryson's floundering in the water off the Great Barrier Reef or boogie boarding in a swarm of poisonous jellyfish he brings together the most exciting and the most mundane parts of life down under for all to see and share.
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Summary: I haven't stopped laughing!
Review: This may well be the funniest and most interesting book I've ever read! I truly cannot remember enjoing a book more than I enjoyed this one. Bryson's style, insight and humor are truly incomparable. A great book to take on a long flight. Highly recommended!
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Summary: Crikey!
Review: I much preferred Bryson's US title; I have never liked _Down Under_. It's semantically negative. Oz describes the wonder of the continent... I agree this book is tooo whirlwind; methinks I feel a sequel coming on. Bryson did this (he said) at the editor's behest; s/he that an overview was the best way to go for the book. I missed Bryson's acerbic wit and penetrating insights into culture; he loves us too much. He admitted (in an interview) that he didn't find much to gripe about. While I have been amused at American's reactions to Bryson's "mean spiritedness" in some of his US travel books (which I love because I live on both continents), I hoped he would rip into Australia. We wouldn't mind: we love the flagellation (a hang over from our penal heritage). We are a politically uncorrect (my American husband is constantly amazed at our insensitivity)and naughty (my American students are stunned by the nudity and crudity of our
advertising campaigns!). As one famous Oz observer put it "they're a weird mob". If you found Bryson's book intriguing, you can be in Sydney in 13 hours from LA!!! The only difference between a 13 hour flight and 5 hour one is the number of films. On the way, you might like to read a book by Barry Humphreys (Dame Edna) or Nino Cullota's _They're a Weird Mob_. Even better, read Nick Earls' _Zig Zag Street_. Go on open your mind to cultcha Oz style. See _Moulin Rouge_ or _Lantana_. Our architecture is categorised by its ugliness, our language coarse, our manners appalling;but our country is fabulous. Don't forget the insect repellent tho'.
Her beauty and her terror
The wide brown land for me !
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Summary: What a Great Book!
Review: Bryson's book In a Sunburned Country is great. Bryson travels on his four Australian journeys, where he travels from Sydney through Perth and up around the boomerang coast, Sydney up through Cairns, Darwin to Alice Springs and Sydney through Adelaide, to Melbourne. He shows how different, same, and all around interesting Australia is compared to other countries. Like how Sydney isn't special it's just like any other major metropolitan city, but Canberra is like a huge park with buildings, and Adelaide is like Portland, Oregon, U.S.A. full of parks. He talks all about perils, dangers, and events in Australia and it's history and how they react (or more often don't react) like the fact that Australia's prime minister was at the beach and just disappeared and no one saw him ever again. The fact that Australia has the five most dangerous animals in the world and it doesn't really matter much to people. Those included his great ponderings about why the box jellyfish uses a tentacle with poison powerful enough to kill three humans when it eats shrimp, and that isn't the half of it. Bryson's evenings are spent drinking and chatting in the hotel's bar, (or just drinking). In his cynical ways he makes use of boredom to comment and tell about plain things that are very amusing and delightful to people from other countries. Bryson looks up strange names in the phone book (like tittybong), reads the newspaper and comments about it, scares his friend and he also walks 6-7 miles and is still happy even with a sunburn that makes his face tomato red because he saw an example of one of the two echinoderm species in the world. I give this book five stars.
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Summary: A Travel Writer for Smart People
Review: Born and raised in Iowa, Bill Bryson spent 20 years in England before moving back to the United States to live in the perfect college town, Hanover, New Hampshire. A syndicated columnist, many of his columns about life in Hanover have been collected and published in "I'm a Stranger Here Myself," an enjoyable book, but because of the nature of its source material (syndicated columns) also a simple and highly sanitized one. At no point is the reader confronted by complex intellectual concepts or any obscenities. "In a Sunburned Country" is a different matter. Written as an integrated book, it is a wonderful introduction to the more intellectually complex aspects of Australia, as well as the funnier ones, providing fascinating anthropological, botanical, geological, historical, political and sociological insights about our friends Down Under. Prior to reading it, I had dismissed Australia as being little more than a very dull version of America in the Fifties; Like Bryson, I now view it as the most fascinating place on earth. Similarly, I had viewed Mr. Bryson as being a male Erma Bombeck; I now view him as one of the more intelligent writers I have encountered. The Australian Tourism Authority should consider licensing this book and either giving it away to prospective visitors or otherwise using it to promote the country. It is that good.
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Summary: Hilarious
Review: I have seriously never laughed so much by myself!
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Summary: Very enjoyable
Review: I just finished reading "In a Sunburned Country" a couple of days ago, and I am mailing right it off to a friend of mine to read. My first encounter with Bill Bryson was through "Made In America" (also highly recommended) his everyman's guide to the history of the English language in America. I found Bryson to be intelligent, funny, and down-right readable. I followed up with "Mother Tongue" which wasn't as funny as "Made in America" but equally as informative and a pleasure to read. I then picked up "A Walk in the Woods." I just couldn't get "into" this book. Bryson's style was different from the other books I'd read, and I found it not quite as compelling. A couple of months ago I picked up this book and started reading it. It is similar in tone and style to "A Walk in the Woods," but this time, I found myself intrigued. Maybe it's the subject matter, or maybe I just wasn't in the mood for this type of book when I tried to read "A Walk in the Woods." Regardless, I highly recommend "In a Sunburned Country." If you like to travel, or just armchair travel, if you find new cultures and countries fascinating, if you like to learn little-known and quirky facts about people and places, I'm sure you will enjoy this book, no worries.
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Summary: The unexplored continent..
Review: Nothing makes me want to travel more than a book by Bill Bryson. His adventures in Australia make me want to see/find the unknown plants, to look for gold in the desert, to see the ancient microbiology of the west coast(of course, at all times keepng an eye out for deadly things that could kill me instantaneously). Maybe I will hitch a ride to Australia and see the Great Barrier Reef(watching out for sharks the whole time of course)
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Summary: Just when I thought Bryson was running out of steam...
Review: ...he penned this book to prove otherwise! I bought this book reluctantly, because I thought it would be another set of, frankly, quite predictable Bryson's jokes and his annoying moralizing. It is anything but - Bryson looks at the country (too often perceived as home of thick semi-literate rednecks) with genuine interest, admiration and goodwill, and these qualities result in a very, very entertaining and informative read. The chilling account of gruesome fate of Australian aborigenes is relayed with compasion and sensitivity. Horrid details do not spare the reader; at the same time, the book avoids self-righteous preaching tone which was beginning to plague Bryson's previous books. On a lighter note, some people may think that Bryson's self-confessed fascination with all that is deadly and poisonous on the Australian soil is a touch excessive - but I find these factoids about murderous jellyfish et al very interesting. The book reads with ease and (unlike, for example, in "Neither Here Nor There"), you actually learn something new after you have finished it, on top of having really good time reading it.
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