Rating: 
Summary: You'll enjoy this book.
Review: I had to read A Walk In The Woods for a grad school class. I liked Bryson's sense of humor and decided to give another book a try. In a Sunburned Country continued Bryson's wacky adventures but in a new land. It was entertaining and educational. I almost feel like I'm watching the travel channel while I read his books. I recommend it for a quick read.
Rating: 
Summary: Down Under with the Master
Review: Another excellent read...informative, humorous, entertaining!
Rating:
Summary: Good Book Mate
Review: This is terrific travel literature. I had never read Bryson before, but I cannot wait to read his other books. In this book, Bryson travels to Australia multiple time to see everything he can of the "Sunburned Country," which proves to be an enormous, though empty, home to fascinating people, places and things. Using his terrific sense of humor, Bryson chronicles his tours through the cities and countryside, all the while stopping at every roadside attraction he can find. He also gives excellent historical background with adds rich texture to his stories. Bryson writes very well, tells engaging tales and really makes Australia look beautiful, welcoming and completely unique. This is not an on-the-beaten-path tourist guide, rather it is a terrific journal of the real Australia that only ambitious tourists usually find, but he makes it seem like a wonderful place. I would recommend this as the first book for would be Australia visitors (it will make you very excited for your trip) or people looking for an introduction to Bryson. It is, however, a great book for anyone looking for an enjoyable book to read, regardless of their interest in the land down under and I would recommend its purchase to anyone.
Rating:
Summary: The Best Travel Book Ever
Review: To start this book, Bill Bryson is landing in Sydney, Australia. He remembers how much he loves Australia, and can't wait to start his journey. For most of the first third of the book he visits the major populated areas. Throughout this portion and the rest of the book, he peppers the text with little facts here and there to keep you attentive. He elaborates on some of these facts and tells stories in some parts.
While in the populated areas of Australia, he mentions a lot of great things to do that aren't always common knowledge among tourists. For example, he visits the most filmed and photographed bar in Australia. It is in Cook. A town named after Australia's equivalent to Christopher Columbus. Also he visits a large casino to discover Australia is the world's largest gambler. "Australia has less than 1 percent of the world's population, but more than 20 percent of its slot machines."
After he is through with the populated areas, he moves on to the less populated and lesser known areas. These are actually where the most interesting things are. He drives everywhere except for a short spat on The India Pacific train. The places he visits are few and far between so to fill the boring time while he is driving, he tells many stories about Australia and its rich and entertaining history. A quick example is how one of the Prime ministers of Australia just disappeared one day after he was caught by the undertow while walking the beach and dragged out to sea. The two most interesting parts of the trip occur in the unpopulated "bush" as the outback is known. They are when he visits Ayers Rock, a historic megalith worshipped by the Aborigines, and a living culture of Stromatolites. Stromatolites are the most primitive living things on earth.
What I love about this book is how Bill Bryson is just so average. He seems like a regular guy. I can relate to him. He is just hilarious. He isn't afraid to make fun of anything, not even the National Anthem of Australia. Plus he gives a great insight into what Australia has to offer. Think of what I've already mentioned and that isn't even including what he had to say about the Great Barrier Reef.
The only thing I didn't like, was that despite his wit and humor, it got slow at some spots. It was just slightly boring when he elaborated too much on something I didn't care much about. But that only happened rarely, and didn't take away from the book.
Overall, I love this book. I'm going to Australia this summer and hope to see some of the things that I read about. I would recommend this book to anyone. To be honest though it probably isn't for younger kids, due to some adult language. I must say this is the best travel book I have ever read. It is also a great book to read even if you aren't planning on going to Australia.
Rating: 
Summary: Funny but sloppy with the facts
Review: Bryson is as funny and as lively as ever. Laugh-out-loud funny. But this is one of the few books I've ever quit before finishing. Bryson makes too many factual mistakes and mis-shadings of his subjects. He clearly tried to assimilate too much material too fast as a writer when he was travelling; the result is bad history and bad journalism, though good comedy. Nothing I spotted was consequential by itself, but by the third little error in 30 pages -- and who knows what else I didn't spot - I figured I might end up mistaken about Australia when I get there myself if I kept reading. Read this book if you want to smile, not if you want to learn and get things right. Think of reading this book like watching a sitcom about Australia; you'll laugh and pick up a few things, but never forget it's just entertainment.
Rating:
Summary: Terrific
Review: This book is *not* a thorough examination of Australian history, geography, sports, contributions to science, Aboriginal relations, social peculiarities, or tourist destinations. It is, however, loaded with fascinating facts and anecdotes about all of these things, and is utterly engaging and well written. It's hilarious, too, and all in all, the best book I've read in months.
Rating:
Summary: A Superb CD Book Listening Experience
Review: I love to hear Bill Bryson read his books aloud. His 10 disc monologue on Australia was, by turns, fascinating, LOL amusing, astonishing, informative, good natured and good company. I won't describe the book's content here - others have done a fine job in their reviews. My focus is, instead, on the experience of LISTENING to Bill Bryson. I regularly listen to books on CD as I drive around Upstate New York for work. After spending many hundreds of hours hearing recordings of books, I fancy myself an experienced and discriminating listener. IMHO, Bryson is an engaging and sociable reader as well as a superb (virtual) travelling companion. I believe he genuinely enjoys the act of reading aloud for others. After hearing this generous yet informal treatment, I am reluctant to read the print verion. I fear that the inevitable change in my experience of Bryson's Voice, caused by experiencing him visually instead of with my ears, would strike me as a loss. Listening to the CD version of In a Sunburned Country, it was my happy experience to feel that Bryson was sharing his stories of Australia directly with me.
Rating: 
Summary: Adventures of an antisocial wimp
Review: Bill Bryson spends most of his nights in Australia in a back of a country pub, alone, reading a paperback about the dangers of crocodiles, jelly fish or some other creatures; moaning about the probability of meeting them and, consequently, never stepping a foot outside his motel room. In the day, he drives the highways, which is his idea of an adventure. Never taking a backroad for fear of being stuck and dying of dehydration, rarely stepping outside for fear of being bit by a snake, he wanders through Australia like a ghost, never making a connection with anybody or anything. However, his overview of an Australian history, based on the books he read, is quite good. So probably the writer should do what he does best - sit in the reading room of the library, far from dangers of the outside world, read and write. And my recommedation for the title of his next book - "Adventures in a paperback country".
Rating:
Summary: Keep them coming!
Review: Bill Bryson's account of his trip to Australia is fantastic! He travels the country, sharing fascinating tidbits of history in every location he stops in. This book was about 98 percent as entertaining as "A Walk in the Woods", although that book is still my favorite travel book of all time. Still, after reading this book, if I had the money and the time, I'd go to Australia tomorrow with this book as my guide!
Rating:
Summary: very fun travel book on Australia
Review: This was a delightful book, one that I read within two days and left me just salivating for not only for more from Bill Bryson, truly one of the best travel writers and one of the finest humorists writing these days, but for more on Australia! Just as Bryson says at the end of his travels in Australia he wanted to push one to just one more destination, I too wanted him to do that, and will be sure to find more interesting books to read on that wonderful country (and continent).
Bryson says it best when he writes that not only the many interesting bits of human and natural history but the entire country itself are often "unaccountably overlooked." His travels throughout the tropics, deserts, and cities of Australia show that it is a "preposterously outsized" country completely filled with "unappreciated wonders." Bryson clearly loves Australia (and says so numerous times) and goes to great pains to show us the real Australia, the Australia off the beaten path as it were, many times an Australia that many Australians themselves never see, doing so with respect, humor, and a sense of wonder. What are some of these "unappreciated wonders" you may ask? Did you know that in 1967 prime minister Harold Holt was strolling along the beach in Victoria and vanished without a trace, his body never found? I've never read about that anywhere! Or that a large-scale disturbance was recorded by seismographs on May 28, 1993 in the Great Victoria Desert of Western Australia, one that may have been the results of an atomic explosion detonated by the Japanese cult Aum Shinrinkyo? The country is so vast and the deserts so remote and exceedingly hard to survive in that the it was four years before the explosion was ever investigated. News about Australia he notes so rarely reaches the outside world; it is almost as if it were on its own planet.
Australia as you probably know is home to a great deal of interesting wildlife. Thought not really a natural history writer Bryson does cover some of these interesting animals, some in some detail, such as the box jellyfish (most deadly jellyfish in the world, so awful that victims have been known to scream even when rendered unconscious), the cassowary (flightless, man-sized bird of the rain forests armed with a razor-sharp claw on each foot), the blue-ringed octopus ("whose caress is instant death"), salt water crocodiles (which do occasionally he notes attack boats and even eat people), twelve-foot long earth worms, wombats, the platypus, the dromedary camel (gone feral in the Outback, only place in the world where it can be found in the wild), and the taipan (Australia's deadliest snake). Interesting organisms are not limited to the animal kingdom, as Bryson visits the stromatolites of Shark Bay in Western Australia (essentially living rocks colonized by cyanobacteria, an example of life that was dominant on Earth 3.5 billion years ago) and the karri (the sequoia of Australia, with can be up to 250 feet high and 50 feet around, found in the forests with the jarrah tree, nearly as large).
Bryson though is at his best when he tours the cities, towns, and hole-in-the wall places of Australia, from Perth to Sydney to Melbourne to Alice Springs and beyond. In Australia's capital, Canberra, he finds a very unusual city, one with such a huge amount of space devoted to landscaping that it was essentially one "extremely large park with city hidden in it," though he did note that it was quite an achievement to virtually hide a city of 330,000 among so many trees, meadows, and lakes. While there he tries to make sense of Australia's national politics, a subject he finds nearly hopelessly confusing (not aided by the fact that little news get out about Australia to aid one in tracking it), though does appreciate the more colorful language used by some in Parliament House (such as the phrases hopeless nong and mangy maggot). He visits both Sydney (home to its famous harbor, Harbour Bridge, and the Opera House) and Melbourne, two cities that forever are to be rivals within Australia, cities that have competed for hosting the Olympic games and are the butts of each other's jokes. He marvels at Alice Springs, a city that is literally nearly thousands of miles down desert highway in the barren interior yet is a major city complete with K-Marts and thriving on tourism from Ayers Rock. He visits Perth, the most remote large city on Earth, built on the fabulous mineral wealth of Western Australia, a city somewhat closer to Singapore than it is to Sydney. Bryson revels at the glorious late 1950s feel of some areas of rural Australia (a feeling extending even to the music seemingly favored on the radio) and the punishing heat and bewildering solitude of the desert. Bryson covers a lot of territory not only in terms of geography but also culture and history, discussing Australia's views of their country, its fascination with outlaw "heroes" from its past such as Ned Kelly, their views on government, the sport of cricket, Australian immigration and multiculturalism, the history of the exploration of its desert interior as well as its early settlement, and the story of the Aborigines, both their origins and the history of how they were treated (and are being treated) by White Australia. A great book, I really recommend it.
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