Notes from a Big Country - Bill Bryson

I've read several of Bill Bryson's books and thoroughly enjoyed them, so when "Notes from a Big Country" came up on BookMooch I was looking forward to reading it without having to pay for it (I know the library is another option, but I like to keep books written by my favourite authors - and Bryson is certainly in my top 20). Rather than being a book as such, it is a collection of 78 short articles which Bill Bryson wrote for a column (which he ...
...Night & Day magazine during 1997-1998. Therefore as you'll see it is very much written for a British audience. === About Bill Bryson === Born in Des Moines (Iowa) in 1951, Bryson moved to England in the late 1970s and spent 20 years over here before moving back to the US with his British wife and children. This gives him a very different outlook on things, and he has been described as an honorary Brit. It means that he can joke about the Americans ...

marymoose99 11.07.2008 · Read full review
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Review of Notes from a Big Country - Bill Bryson

...not the latest written), was Notes from a Big Country. As I said, delivering trivial facts and figures in an amusing fashion is Bryson's forte and when those facts are about the land of his birth (USA), and are compared then related to his once adopted homeland (UK), I can visualize him virtually drooling at the prospect. And so, following his return to live in New England after 20-odd years domiciled in Olde England, when the editor of the British ...
...weekly magazine column documenting his return home, you would imagine he'd leap at the chance. Actually, he kept complaining that he didn't have the time and was dragged into the enterprise kicking and screaming. I'm afraid it shows. The book is a collection of 78 of these articles which were written over a period of 18 months between Oct '96 and May '98 after he and his English family returned to the US and settled in New Hampshire. As they ...

proxam 26.01.2009 (27.01.2009) · Read full review
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Review of Notes from a Big Country - Bill Bryson

...life in 1990s America, but Notes from a Big Country comes close. Bryson tells us what's good and great about the US and what isn't (at least, in his opinion). Apparently, we Europeans have far superior chocolate and coffee. Good to know. I really liked this book - it's funny and full of personality. Just how I imagine Bill Bryson to be. Notes from a Big Country - Bill Bryson ISBN 978-0552997867 RRP £8.99; available on Amazon for £6.99. Also available ...

DoubleFantasy11 08.07.2008 · Read full review
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Review of Notes from a Big Country - Bill Bryson

Taken from Bill Bryson's weekly column in the Mail on Sunday's Night and Day magazine, and is a compendium of over seventy of his articles there. They focus on American life, the oddities of, differences from here, and generally anything funny and intersting about our neighbours across the pond. One of my favourite chapters is the one in which Bryson examines reasons for visits to A&E while he is flicking through books in a library. Some of them ...
...more people are injured each year by sound recording equipment than are by razorblades!? And somehow over 260000 people each year manage to injure themselves with ceilings, walls or inside panels. Amazing! Other chapters deal with topics such as convenience food, beaurocracy, winter in Des Moines, the american obsession with rules, reasons to be worried (apparently the Pentagon gets hacked a LOT, and police forces sometimes lose explosives in public ...

freeridemtber 28.03.2007 · Read full review
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Review of Notes from a Big Country - Bill Bryson

I've been as far north as the Isle of Skye, as far west as Dublin, as far east as Durban and as far south as Cape Town, but I've never been to America. Yet, reading this book, Bill Bryson's descriptions of his return to his homeland after twenty years or so in Britain, I feel as though I could have been there with him. This book, so I read at the start, was a compilation of the first eighteen months of a weekly column Bill wrote for the Night and ...
...I don't think I ever read the original columns but I could read this book over and over again. In each chapter Bill tackles, in his own inimitable fashion, the complexities and problems, dilemmas, frustrations and emotional bits about going "home again". In fact his first column discusses precisely this - he has come back to his homeland after doing every adult thing he ever did (buying a house, getting a mortgage, acquiring DIY items etc) in Britain ...

KateHurst 19.05.2009 · Read full review
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Review of Notes from a Big Country - Bill Bryson

This book gives a hilariously unique view on everything to do with the many aspects of life in America today. His unique blend of British humour combined with the bluntness that is so characteristic of many americans makes this hugely varied book a highly entertaining read. Taken as extracts from his weekly column for the Daily mail, this book contains about 80 of the best from his years of writing, covering a wide range of topics, from American ...
...burocracy. This book is surprisingly easy to read. The columns are each laid out seperatly as completly independant views that change subject with each new section. This makes the book ideal for less persistant or dedicated readers as you can jump in and out of the book at pretty much any point and still find it very entertaining. That said I found the book utterly unputdownable, and have read it through many times. Even now it still makes me burst ...

bnmnmmb 04.06.2008 · Read full review
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Review of Notes from a Big Country - Bill Bryson

Let me start by saying that this book has got to be the funniest non-fiction book out there and by some distance. Drawn from his articles written in the British press, Bryson tells us about how his family have settled after they have moved back to America. It is a completely unbiased take on American life and as I have said before, I don't laugh out loud as a rule but this book made me guffaw. Some parts of it are so funny that in trying to read ...
...For me, the only writing in non-fiction that comes close is Tony Hawks, especially the Irish one. It is an amazing gift to be able to write seemingly so easily and yet put an effortless smile on people faces. There are so many good points that it is easy to gloss over the problems. Occasionally, there are boring chapters that never really get going but the chapters are in such lovely bite size chunks that they soon pass. The book is so easy to pick ...

kipper54 07.02.2009 · Read full review
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Review of Notes from a Big Country - Bill Bryson

This book is the reason Bill Bryson is my favourite author. Many years ago I used to read a column in a Sunday supplement that had me crying with laughter, the writer's wit and comfortable style was the highlight of my weekend. So imagine my delight when I discovered this book which pulls together nearly 80 articles from almost a 2 year period into one book. As my first Bryson book, i've gone on to read (and buy) a further 8 of his books based on ...
...many years, Bryson decided to move his family with him back to America, but he finds, after so long away, that things have moved on in his home country. Each chapter of the book represents one of his weekly articles to the Mail on Sunday. They range in subject from diet to trying to find the american translation of polyfilla, and show how Bryson, and his family, try to adapt to their new life in the States. The joy of this book is that because each ...

cnmatthewsuk 11.11.2007 · Read full review
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Review of Notes from a Big Country - Bill Bryson

I bought this book due to the reviews that I have read and family recommendations. I thought that the book was going to be good as Bryson has a Worldwide reputation for being the best travel writer. I wasn't exactly sure what to expect from this book as it was my first Bryson book that I read. My first impressions of Bryosn after the first few chapters were that he is your average guy and a light hearted, relaxed writer. I was impressed in how much ...
...incedibly funny he was in his subtle mocking of American people and their values. The stand out chapters of this book are where he went to the supermarket and was amazed by the amount of breakfast cereals and hoe ridiculous it was that people could eat this for breakfast. He talks about how New Hampshire is the friendliest state in America and how you can leave your house and cars unlocked with absolute no worry, he mentions how locals looked at ...

glovework 15.04.2007 · Read full review
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Review of Notes from a Big Country - Bill Bryson