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I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away
Bill Bryson

Broadway, 2000 - 304 pages

average customer review:based on 224 reviews
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   highly recommended  highly recommended






You may want to refrain from reading this book in public

Bill Bryson has woken up from a coma. Although he has never been on life support or had people anxiously wring their hands while standing over his bed, he has just woken up from a coma. Twenty years ago Bill Bryson made that international journey to Britain and started a new life, complete with wife and kids. Two decades later he packs them all up and journeys back to his motherland, America. He finds that in the twenty years away from his native land things have changed a lot, some for better, some for worst. This is his account on moving back to America after twenty years away.
Bryson was called upon by a British magazine to write weekly columns about returning to America and unleashes a whole new level of wit and flavor as he comically blunders through life for the first few months back. Although sometimes he complains a little too much, it is a book that you will want to refrain from reading in public. Bryson includes interesting and eye opening statistics on mainly pointless but highly entertaining topics. Did you know that 142,000 people per year are sent to the emergency room for injuries inflicted by their clothing, or that there are 256 people in Stockholm named Lars Larson?
Through all of these random statistics Bryson also brings up a good number of points such as why is there a twenty-four hour hotline on floss, or about even important things like red herrings in the political world and what they are trying to cover up. Bryson has written a beautiful love letter to his native country and although possibly irrelevant to life it is a great read and I highly recommend it for anyone who needs a good laugh.


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An American Portrait

After reading and enjoying "Notes From a Small Island," I was looking forward to Bryson's witticisms in regards to every day life in America. Although an American, having spent twenty odd years in England gives Bryson a unique perspective on what makes America, and Americans, tick. "I'm a Stranger Here Myself" is a collection of essays Bryson wrote for an English audience; but they lack none of their charm when read by an Anglophile American.

"I'm a Stranger Here Myself" is and odd conglomeration of essays that deal with a range of topics: small-town America, shopping, the inconvenience of our numerous "conveniences", and several entries on his own ineptness when it comes to technology. In each of his essays Bryson is a bit of a wanderer, starting in one direction, only to go off on a tangent. Usually he's able to bring himself back to the point, and can even poke fun at himself for doing so. His wanderings are what sets his style and what generates the largest laughs or head shakes of disbelief.

While Bryson is at times critical of what happens in America, "I'm a Stranger Here Myself" is a loving portrait of a revered country. However, Bryson's perspective is one of a man living a blessed life. He now resides in a virtually crime-free small New Hampshire town and grew up in small-town Iowa. His essays sometimes lack the experiences that growing up or residing in other areas might offer. However, due to his extensive travels, Bryson's perspective is truly unique and a joy to read.


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A stranger in a strange land.

"The intricacies of modern American life" leave Bill Bryson wondering, "what on earth am I doing here?" in this collection of short, anecdotal essays (pp. 231; 286). Born in Des Moines, Iowa, Bryson (best known for NOTES FROM A SMALL ISLAND, A WALK IN THE WOODS, and A SHORT HISTORY OF NEARLY EVERYTHING) lived in the Yorkshire Dales of England for twenty years before returning to the States in 1995 with his English wife and his four children (p. 1). The Brysons lived in Hanover, New Hampshire, before recently returning to Britain (where Bryson is reportedly finishing a new book on Shakespeare).
This book offers a compilation of Bryson's whimsical contributions from 1996 to 1998 to London's Night & Day magazine, offering his humorous observations upon life in the United States and in New England in particular. While Bryson recognizes that there is a great deal about American culture that is appealing--"the ease and convenience of life, the friendliness of the people, the astoundingly abundant portions, the intoxicating sense of space, the cheerfulness of nearly everyone who serves you, the notion that almost any desire or whim can be simply and instantly gratified (p. 286)--with his characteristic wit, he chooses instead to skewer American culture in all of its idiosyncrasies--diners, drive ins, dental floss hotlines, diets, processed foods, cable TV, lawsuits, drug laws, running shoes, and garbage disposals.

I am a big Bill Bryson fan. I have rated this book with three stars only when measured against some of his better books--A WALK IN THE WOODS, NOTES FROM A SMALL ISLAND, A SHORT HISTORY OF NEARLY EVERYTHING, for example. This book didn't hold my attention as those books did, and Bryson's reunion with American culture didn't leave me with a sense of wonder and delight. Rather, his encounters with the American "have-a-nice-day" culture left me feeling like a disenchanted stranger in a strange land myself. Ah, well, who wants to be "normal" by the cultural standards described here anyway?

G. Merritt




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reviews: 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, page 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20



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