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Summary: Great Travel Book
Review: I have lived in Australia for a cumlitive total of two years of my life, and this book is a great overview of the entire country. A must read for anyone going down under.
Rating: 
Summary: great, but skip the appendix
Review: I can scarcely remember a book that has made me laugh out loud so many times, and I've read several passages aloud to my spouse. Overall, I highly recommend it for the same reasons other reviewers do. The main reason I am writing this review, though, is to warn readers away from the appendix of articles written about the Sydney Olympics. The articles are overtly anti-American, written with the arrogance of a Yankee liberal who still thinks Boss Hogg is representative of the American south. I just loved the book, but the appendix nearly ruined it for me. Their snide tone is quite at odds with the book itself, and they make me reluctant to read Bryson's accounts of travels within the U.S. And notably, although Bryson brings up the "Aboriginal question" several times in the book, all he can do with it in the articles is mention how Cathy Freeman could be elected pope. He missed an obvious opportunity to provide a postscript to the book relating how the celebrity of an aboriginal athelete may have impacted the fundamental race problem in Australia. Do yourself a favor -- read the book, but tear out the appendix!
Rating:
Summary: Pleasing!!...
Review: If you like Bryson and enjoy reading about travel, you should love this book. Once again Bryson brings to us hilarious anecdotes intertwined with some of the best travel literature around. While not as funny as A Walk in the Woods, it is equally just as an enjoyable read. Some of the more memorable moments are the descriptions of Harold Holt and the various venomous and other lethal buggers you might encounter in the vast country that is Australia. If you are a Bryson fan, I would recommend this book in an instant."The loathsome sluggish stone fish, so called because it is indistinguishable from a rock, but with the difference that it has twelve spikes on its back that are sharp enough to pierce the sole of a sneaker, injecting the hapless sufferer with a myotoxin bearing a molecular weight of 150,000." "And what does that mean exactly?" "Pain beyond description followed shortly by muscular paralysis, respiratory depression, cardiac palpitations, and severe disinclination to boogie. You might similarly be discommoded by fire-fish, which are easier to spot but no less harmful. There's even a jellyfish called the snottie."
Rating:
Summary: Humorous and endearing
Review: It's easy to think of Australia as one big desert. Bryson dispells this treatment with detailed and endearing descriptions of this expanisve land. He makes you want to go there, while laughing all the way. From the humor standpoint, this book is better than "A Walk in the Woods." Bryson is also more insightful than many travel writers.
Rating:
Summary: Good, Good
Review: I have to say that I have been a fan of Brysons for some time and hava always thought that he is an excellent author. This time he has done us proudagain with a interesting and in places thoughtful account of his journeyin Australia. interpersed in his travels are interesting titbits of history and geography of what sounds like a very interesting country what is really great about this book and in fact all his books is that he provides for all. he goes to very touristy places, but also to places in the outback that never really mentoned in other travel books about Australia. the only real critism i have of the book is the lack of infomation about the aborginies. he seems to skirt over the subject with small bits of infomation here and there but never anything solid. all in all this is a book that i would recommend to anyone interested in Australia at all.
Rating:
Summary: Hilarious
Review: This is one hilarious book! I was rolling on the floor while reading this! If you have ever been to Australia you will quickly recognize what Mr. Bryson is talking about, if you haven't been you'll probably learn a little bit about the country as you go along. Only one of Bryson's books oustshines this one - "A Walk In the Woods".
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Summary: Bryson Does Australia Proud, Mate
Review: Reading Bill Bryson is like sitting in a pub with an old friend who has just returned from a trip and listening to him tell the stories of his adventures. As much as you hope your friend had a good trip, you also hope he had some problems because that is when his story-telling really shines. Whereas travel writer Paul Theroux can be nasty about things he doesn't like or difficulties he encounters, Bryson tends to look at things with more of a wry smile and he has the true traveller's ability to be amazed at not only grandeur, but simplicity. With In a Sunburned Country Bryson takes us to Australia and it is a great trip through the cities and the outback. Filled with anecdotes and comic asides this book is well-researched and well-told. It will leave you wanting to see Australia and to take a trip with Bill Bryson. Wherever he goes he finds adventure and I would gladly accompany Bill Bryson on a bus to the office because I am sure we would have a great time!
Rating:
Summary: Ignore Bryson at your peril
Review: If you have not yet tried Bryson, you probably should seek psychiatric help. He's funny and informative; travel-writing (if you can call it that) at its best. His Walk in the Woods is a classic, and while this book about his visit to Australia is not as uproariously funny - the country is, after all, home to the ten most poisonous animals in the world - his descriptions of Australian institutions will delight you. His description of cricket, a game that has nothing wrong with it that "the introduction of golf carts wouldn't fix in a hurry," is a good example. "It is not true that the English invented cricket as a way of making all other human endeavors look interesting and lively; that was merely an unintended side effect." It is a very popular sport (?) that's "enjoyed by millions, some of them awake and facing the right way, but it is an odd game. It is the only sport that incorporates meal breaks. It is the only sport that shares its name with an insect. It is the only sport in which the spectators burn as many calories as players - more if they are moderately restless. It is the only competitive activity of any type, other than perhaps baking, in which you can dress in white from head to toe and be as clean at the end of the day as you were at the beginning." The pitcher runs at the batter (decked out with a riding hat and "heavy gloves of the sort used to handle radioisotopes, and a mattress strapped to each leg,") and throws the ball at his ankles. This can go on indefinitely until he is "coaxed into a mis-stroke that leads to his being put out [at which time] all the fielders throw up their arms in triumph and have a hug. Then tea is called. . . ." This usually goes on until your library books are all overdue and autumn has become winter. Of course, listening to cricket on the radio is truly something else: "That's right, Clive. I haven't known anyone start his delivery that far back since Stopcock caught his sleeve on the reversing mirror of a number 11 bus during the third test at Brisbane in 1957 and ended up in Goondiwindi four days later owing to some frightful confusion over a changed timetable at Toowoomba Junction." There are long silences during which the announcers have time to run some errands. "So we break for second luncheon, and with 11,200 balls remaining, Australia are 962 for two not half and England are four for a duck and hoping for rain." Australia remade itself as a country following the Second World War. It realized that with such a small population, it could not afford to rely forever on Britain for its defense and it began to encourage immigration, "that if it didn't use all that empty land and fill those empty spaces someone from the outside might do it for them." They threw open their doors and the population more than doubled in the years following 1945. They welcomed people from all over Europe and "suddenly Australia was full of people who liked wine and good coffee and olives and eggplants, and realized that spaghetti didn't have to be a vivid orange and come from cans." By 1970, they also realized they had become an Asian nation and were no longer predominantly European and they simply eliminated the color bar they previously had used to ban "undesirables." "In a single generation, Australia remade itself. It went from being a half-forgotten outpost of Britain, provincial, dull, and culturally dependent, to being a nation infinitely more sophisticated, confident, interesting and outward-looking. And it did all this, by and large, without discord or disturbance, or serious mistakes - indeed often with a kind of grace." Of course, if you are an Aborigine, the outlook is somewhat different and Bryson, to his credit, does not overlook the truly horrible discrimination and crimes committed against this venerable and ancient people - their history is truly astonishing. Whites in Australia had a tendency to treat them the way whites in this country treated the buffalo. The vastness of Australia cannot be underestimated, and it's a naturalist's paradise with new species being discovered - and probably made extinct - almost daily. The mineral wealth is enormous and barely tapped, not to mention a biodiversity that includes living fossils. There is a species of living rock that dates back to the early eons of the earth and is worth a visit halfway around the world just to see it - if you can avoid the most venomous animals in the world, the sharks, the crocodiles and all the other poisonous stuff. A marvelous book.
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Summary: awesome book!
Review: Bryson is an excellent writer, and has a great sense of humor. I'm currently studying at Curtin Uni in Perth, WA and I keep rembering things from the book and how they apply to life in Australia.
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Summary: Delightfully presented and truly informative - quite funny!
Review: First and foremost, this is a fun book to read. It is funny, informative, insightful, and yet sincere enough that you can forgive him longing for a sunset over the Pacific which is, of course, impossible in New South Wales; ah well ... I knew nothing about Bill Bryson until a friend of mine loaned me this book. My friend assures me that all of Bryson's writing is of this caliber and just as much fun. It seems likely that this is true. From 1973-75 I was fortunate enough to live in Queensland and this book resonates well with my experiences from so long ago, if updated. Australians (Aussies - pronounced Auzzies - NOT! with an s sound) are simply wonderful people. I am glad the Bryson points out their open friendly exuberance. He was fortunate enough to travel throughout the continent while I lived in a few towns up and down the coast of a really delightful place. Queenslanders are usually and falsely cast as backward or "mad as cut snakes". Queensland itself is often referred to in a patronizing way as the Cinderella state. But my experience of it was not like that at all. Yes, in the more rural places lacked the infrastructure of urban places (as do all rural spaces - it is sort of the definition isn't it?) and in 1973 Brisbane was still a smallish feeling city. But when I was able to travel there in 1995 on business Brisbane had become a gleaming modern city. And in New South Wales Sydney is utterly beautiful. Anyway, Bryson gives you the flavor of many places in this vast continent (it is bigger than the 48 states of the US). He specializes in the out of the way. He finds things that really do tie in to the history and fabric of the place. He has a real talent for this. Bryson makes is seem easy and light, but it is hard work to write like that. I recommend this book highly to everyone who is thinking of visiting this wonderful place and to everyone who wishes they could get there. Heck, to those who know nothing of the place and think they might like to learn something more than kangaroos and koalas! It is a breezy read that you can get through rather quickly and yet learn more than you suspect as your turn its pages while wiping tears of laughter from your eyes.
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