Rating: 
Summary: Big Sky land and Small Town Mores
Review: Bill Bryson has the humor of Dave Barry and the travel instincts of a less snobbish Paul Theroux. The mix is pure pleasure and at times so hilarious it should come with the warning: read in privacy unless you don't mind helpless displays of public cackles and tears on planes, trains and automobiles. A native of Des Moines and a longtime resident of London he takes this nostalgic tour across his homeland with a flask of vinegar and a pot of honey. He can't help feeling love and appreciation for the sometimes pathetic but often well meaning yokels he encounters on this quest to find the perfect small town. At his best he is as perceptive and scathing as Mark Twain but walks away enamored with a country obsessed with gaudiness and quick buck fixes of dubious glamor.Haven't we all met the Reaganite good old boy who injects his diatribes about how Nixon was robbed without concern to the general drift of the conversation only to turn a corner and be wowed by the generosity and spaciousness of the guy one seat over on the barstool! It's actually a tough love letter that rings true and makes the affection sound genuine and earned.
Rating:
Summary: Bryson = Laughs
Review: If you're looking for a book that summarizes life in rural America as a gift for your elderly Aunt Mildred, then this probably isn't the book you want. If you're looking for a social commentary of the Pre-Clinton era America, then this probably isn't the book you want. If you're looking for a travel guide with detailed descriptions on where you can get a great meal or a soft bed at attractive rates, then this probably isn't the book you want. If you're looking for a book that will make you laugh out loud, then look no further. I've been through many of the towns BB mentions in The Lost Continent, so it was even more fun reading these relentlessly funny attacks on the yokels across America - I live in a town with 1,400 people and at least 500 pickup trucks, so I believe I can speak with some authority on the yokelness of this great country! And I also have a father that took the family on these awful summer vacations that are funny thinking about now but were nothing short of torture at the time.
Yes, Bryson is a lazy slob that cuts corners (don't forget how he skipped at least 900 miles of the Appalachian Trail a few years back) but he just has a knack for making me laugh. My wife hates him because I'm constantly reading passages aloud to her - interrupting her reading of the latest in the "How to Murder Your Husband in Cunning Yet Painful Circumstances" mystery series.
I only gave "The Lost Continent" 4 out of 5 stars because I enjoyed some of his other books even more, plus I have this longstanding problem with giving perfect scores - probably due to poor potty training or something like that. Anyways, Bryson is one of my favorite authors (along with Mark Twain & P.G. Wodehouse), so maybe my review is biased, but this is a very funny book - unless you were a big fan of President Ronald Reagan. In that case, you probably haven't laughed since they granted statehood to New Mexico, so this may not be the book you want either.
Rating: 
Summary: This is one of the funniest travel books ever!
Review: It's not supposed to be a serious travel book, people! Maybe it's because I have lived in many of the places Bryson describes in this book, but I recognize all these types of people he meets along the way and he is dead-on in his descriptions. This book made me a Bryson fan forever, although some of his other book never quite hit this level of hilarity (with the exception of A Walk in the Woods). I used to read this on the train to work, and I had to clamp a hand over my mouth to keep from laughing aloud! This is one of my alltime favorite books! Just TRY it!
Rating: 
Summary: Well, Ok.
Review: Certainly not Bryson's best. But I still love his ever present cynicism. I felt he was a lot more negative in this book than in "I'm a Stranger Here Myself" . Which deals with some of the same topics. If you are an avid Bryson reader, then yes do take the time and read it. However do not expect for it to live up to some of his other works.
Rating: 
Summary: Moderately funny at times, mostly liberal drivel.
Review: So a guy takes a trip around America and finds something wrong with our country at every turn. He doesn't believe in God, hates all Republicans (especially Reagan) and disrespects war heroes like Eisenhower. If he hates America so much maybe he should move to another country. Oh wait, he did that. He just came back here to write this book and make some money.
Rating:
Summary: Retirement? or a Near Death Experience?
Review: After reading only half of this book it's clear Bryson is bored. Perhaps he should just put away the typewriter, go work at Walmart as a greeter and work on his social skills.(Acually, I would buy that book!) Or maybe he should go out into the middle of a lightening storm so he can almost get hit by lightening. Maybe that would jolt some life back into his writing. I'm used to, and can enjoy, Bryon's quasi-European thumbing of his nose on small town America and its inhabitants. But, I've read my computer manual with more facination. A day in the life of Bryson on the road: Get up, eat breakfast at lowlife cafe, drive under grey skies, look at stupid plaque denoting historical significance of area, eat lunch at a lowlife cafe, drive, reflect on childhood with father, eat dinner at lowlife cafe, get a hotel, watch the local access channel and ponder how it reflects stupid Americans, go to bed, repeat past day all over again. ...and again, and again. I'll read his Austrailian book due to all the great reviews. It may sound crazy, but I actually feel a little bit bad for Bryson. He seemed very sad as he drove...and sadly missed...a great country.
Rating:
Summary: Witty and observant, but tone gets tiresome
Review: Bryson is a very good travel writer and a clever social critic, but people expecting a book on par with A Walk in the Woods might find themselves a bit disappointed. Bryson is very funny, but I think he employs an English sense of humor which tends to run a bit more biting than the American brand. He's clever, he's more accurate than many of us want to admit, but it gets tough to read a couple hundred pages from someone who sounds an awful lot like a cynic. Like the back of the book says, he's as observant as de Tocqueville, but he's less optimistic. A good book from a good writer, but be warned.
Rating:
Summary: On the Road Again
Review: This book was my introduction to the cynical, twisted but always hilarious mind and writing of Bill Bryson. The basic premise was to re-discover America after years of exile(?) in Great Britain by driving around the country and observing how life had changed in his absence.
A number of reviewers are put off by the fact that he does not hold everything that he encounters in mystical awe. He does on occasion, approach a mean-spirited tone, but more often than not his comments hit the mark. Others point out that he never stops and talks to the people of the country, but simply drives through. Well, isn't that pretty much what America is today, a driving society.
All in all, a funny book that will bring back memories of that great institution, the Family vacation. If you've enjoyed Bryson's other works, by all means check this one out, you won't be dissapointed. If you're looking for an earnest travel log or some gentle folksy humor, you'd best look elsewhere.
Rating: 
Summary: What a nasty book.
Review: Ostensibly in search of the perfect small town, Bryson drives all over the United States and finds nothing but ugliness. It never seems to dawn on him that the bleakness he sees all around him has nothing to do with America and everything to do with what's inside his own head. Every town he visits is a disappointment. The downtowns are dull, or the traffic's too heavy, or the food is bad, or there are too many trailers. Even the rich ones are awful--they have too many yuppies and they feel like stage sets. He even manages to revile a town in New Hampshire because the people there smile at him too much. Peacham, Vermont, on the other hand, is almost perfect. In that town, Bryson never spots a soul. He also likes another completely empty town, a summer resort in northern Michigan that has shut down for the winter season. It's Bryson's idea of heaven, and he can't stop raving about its spectacular empty mansions--not, that is, until he reaches a completely false community constructed by Henry Ford, who collected the houses of great men like Lincoln and Edison and gathered them into a kind of ghost town for heroes. Of course Bryson likes this place--there's no risk of encountering an actual inhabitant. Every person who once actually lived in those houses is dead. Bryson reserves his greatest scorn, though, for people. Everyone he sees is too fat, too old, too sad, or they drive too slowly. And worst of all, there's those doggoned waitresses! The fools won't stop trying to help him, refilling his water glass, asking if he needs anything else, thanking him for his requests. In return, he fantasizes about squirting them with ketchup and congratulates himself for never leaving tips. He does seem to like his mother, but that's about it for humanity. I hope she likes him back, because I certainly don't. I couldn't stop imagining wistfully what a writer like Garrison Keillor might have done with material like this--a writer who is a true humorist and not just an insult machine, a person whose mind is open enough and imagination is rich enough to discover what's actually worth knowing about the places where real people live. From a mind like Keillor's, the story of a trip like this one might have been entertaining. From Bryson's, it will sour your stomach, glaze over your vision with one more layer of dusty disappointment, and waste a stretch of your time.
Rating:
Summary: Hilarious
Review: One of the funniest books I've ever read. He makes so many snide remarks that make you laugh outloud. He writes what we are all thinking at some time.
|
