In a Sunburned Country

Rating:
Summary: I live here and now know more
Review: Bill Bryson has written a thoroughly entertaining book on the country that I have been born in and adore very much.

I have learn't some facts about my own country which I did not know of such as the downing of the "kookaburra" airplane and the death of its occupants whilst looking for Kingsford Smith in the 1930's. As a nation, we tend to look toward overseas for news worthy items.

Bryson adds a touch of comedy to his adventures with a tongue in cheek attitude. The perils of this country are taken for granted as they will not harm you as long as you keep out of there way!

Bryson's speedy jaunt around the country captured a number of things that I would like to do (and plan to do in the future) and I have found his book would be a worthwhile travelling companion on these future ventures.

My wife and I, (who raced me to the finish so that I could not discuss Bill's latest troubles) recommend it highly. However, future travellers to Australia should get away from the captial cities ad go bush to discover the real country and not be put off by Bill'fear of a few snakes and spiders (and jellyfish, sunburn, etc).

Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Novel
Review: Bill Bryson did an amazing job in writing this book. He made me want to go to Australia even more than I did previously. This book tells about all sides of Australia from the good to the bad and everything in between. Bill Bryson has traveled everywhere and wrote about the cities, oceans and the outback of Australia. I always knew that it was a country with vast amounts of desert, and that the Aborigines were the native people to the land, but I never knew how small a portion of Australia really is inhabited. I also didn't know how hostile an environment most of Australia- including both the sea and the desert really is, or how genuinely friendly so many of the people that live there are. Bryson also did a remarkable job of inserting facts in history into his novel, and how much. By reading In a Sunburned Country I learned numerous little known facts. It is to this day a mystery to everyone how the Aborigines originally got to Australia. There are deadly animals covering Australia. It seems that every couple of months someone gets eaten by a shark or stung by the most deadly of all animals, the box jellyfish. An insect that was thought to be extinct appeared in the Australian outback, only to be again and not seen again until fifty years later. Also incorporated into Bryson's book are funny anecdotes from his five trips to Australia. In Melbourne Bill Bryson saw a person who had recently held the second highest office in Australia selling books near a grocery store. This book is absolutely wonderful and no one should miss it.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting but superficial
Review: Bill Bryson has done it again, producing an unputdownable book. It has some funny and some poignant thoughts. However, don't let this book be your only guide to Australia. He has seen so little. For example, his description of Australian politics as difficult for an outsider to understand escapes me completely. Compared to the Byzantine nature of politics in Britain or the USA, Australia is a model of simplicity. We only have six states and 18 million people so how complex can it be? He also spends so little time in each location that he only is able to capture a few wisps of their flavour.

Rating:
Summary: Bryson Does It Again
Review: Another excellent Bryson offering.

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining but...
Review: As a Canadian who's been in Australia for a couple of years now I really enjoyed this book. Bryson captures the eccentricities of Australia and Australians very well. The book is a very easy, light hearted read with some good laughs. The main drawback of the book is that (with a couple of exceptions) he doesn't actually make me want to see any of the places he praises -- even though I've seen a few of them myself! He does spend far too much time in cafes and hotel rooms and not enough time talking to local people. He also doesn't even visit many of Australia's greatest sights. Do not read this book expecting some sort of tourism brochure. The book's success is that it manages to capture so many of the intangible aspects of Australia, and for that reason I recommend it. If you want to get a "big picture" overview seen through the lens of one particularly entertaining writer, you could do a lot worse than this. Just don't expect it to "sell" you on Oz. Come down for a visit and check it out yourself.

Rating:
Summary: A pleasure to read
Review: I picked this book up intending only to glance through a few pages. I ended up putting other books I was reading on hold, finishing it a few days later.

Australia is a big country to attempt to travel over, especially in a short time. Geographically, it is nearly the size of the USA. You are never going to fit everything in in a book with the scope of this one. Bryson does extremely well to cover as much as he does. He does so with erudition, grace and wit. There were a few times when I laughed out loud.

I have lived in Australia for most of my life and been to a fair amount of the places mentioned in the text. However, I must admit to not knowing a large proportion of the facts Bryson gives us (and that's after I've studied 4 years of Australian history at university as well.) I found the information on plants and animals fascinating.

I appreciated the graciousness with which this book is written. Difficult issues such as reconciliation are handled with tact. Bryson seems like the sort of person who would be a good man to have a beer with. Perhaps another of the reasons he found the country so congenial!

Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Bryson at his Best!
Review: My husband and I both read In A Sunburned Country before a recent trip to Australia. The book could never be considered a travel guide, but it did give us a tongue-in-cheek preview of what we would be experiencing. We were surprised at how accurate Bryson's descriptions were, at least to an outsider visiting Australia for the first time. I would recommend this book to anyone considering a trip to Australia, or just interested in the country.

Rating:
Summary: Best Bryson book that I have read so far
Review: I love his mix of facts about Australia and details of his journey. I always laugh out loud when I read any of Bryson's books because he gets in the funniest predicaments!! :)

Rating:
Summary: Best Bryson Yet!
Review: As both a Bryson fan and an expatriate Australian, I couldn't wait to get my hands on this book - and I wasn't disappointed. This is by far Mr Bryson's best work yet, leaving me laughing out loud in public whilst reading his description of cricket on the radio. He has captured an essence of Australia that I have never seen from a non-Australian before. His good-humoured fun-poking is spot-on but never cruel. Bravo Bill!!

Rating:
Summary: Excellent. Highly recommended, with only a minor quibble.
Review: I read alot of books and I have to say that, of all the authors I have read, Bill Bryson has to qualify as just about the most fluid, easygoing, natural writer I know. While I have to write for my profession, I don't consider myself within 1,000 miles of the abilities of those who can write a good novel or work of nonfiction. However, by that yardstick, I don't even consider myself on the same planet as Bryson. It is almost impossible for him to write a dull paragraph. Plus, he's not predictable. For example, whenever he is on the verge of deeming everything he comes across in Australia as just wonderful, he'll surprise you by saying that such-and-such a place is actually kind of dull. Whenever he is on the verge of opining that every Australian he met was a wonderful person, he'll then tell us that he met a few jerky people along the way as well.

I have sometimes heard the word "incurious" as a disparagement of George W. Bush. I mention this because Bryson strikes me as about as curious as they come. And because his writing and storytelling are so excellent, he makes the reader curious as well, even about things that they might not otherwise have cared about.

My only quibble with the book is that it focuses almost exclusively on a tourist's perspective of Australia as opposed to a resident's perspective. Of course, given that Bryson WAS in fact merely a tourist, this is understandable. However, I would have been interested to learn a little bit more about the culture of the country. For example, what are their marriage and divorce rates? What do Australians say about satisfaction with their lives? What are the average income levels for various professions and what is the purchasing power of those income levels? How much poverty is there? What do people complain about in Australia? Where do they go for vacation? What are their attitudes towards tourists? How much vacation do they take? How does their doctor and hospital system work? How does their legal system work? What is the crime situation (I assume low from everything Bryson says, but there must be some criminals). And so on. As I say, this was not the aim of his book, but I still would have been curious to know about some of these things. All of this occurred to me as I was finishing the book. I realized from the book that I would absolutely love to visit Australia, but as to the question of whether I would like to actually LIVE there, I realized that the book did not help me so much in that direction. Nevertheless, for me this was clearly a 5-star effort.