Notes on Returning to Bryson's Witty Musings

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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 220 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Laugh out loud

Loved this! Bill Bryson shares a unique view of how we live.
Small things that we take for granted become fodder for his
lively and hysterical commentary. I literally laughed out loud.

Bryson's best

I was a stranger to Bill Bryson's work, myself, having avoided his, then new, highly touted, runaway hit, A WALK IN THE WOODS, because it was a highly touted, runaway hit. Herd behavior among humans generally irks me. (I read A WALK later and wondered what the fuss was about. STRANGER is far superior.) This is not a book to read with food or drink in your mouth or throat. Heimlich's trick may not save you. Bryson describes everyday life in America with delightful humor, irony, befuddlement and charm, in prose that repeatedly left me gasping with laughter, wiping tears while I plucked the book off the floor. When he turns more serious, his warmth and sentiment feel absolutely sincere. Having lived twenty years in England, the essays in STRANGER are weekly columns about reentry to Bryson's native land, written for Britain's Mail on Sunday newspaper. The quality of this writing is so uniformly excellent that my first impulse is to take up a collection to send Dave Barry on a two decade remedial sabbatical to the Isles. (Tasteful humor for adult readers is evidently still written and read over there.) STRANGER may be the funniest essay collection in my memory, though like Bryson I am teetering into the years when memory is iffy and, again like the author, it wasn't my strong suit in the first place. Top notch, eh, what?

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Hilarious

I am a big fan of Bill Bryson, and this book did not disappoint. It's full of his trademark witty observations and often outrageous, pee-your-pants funny humor.

The book is a collection of essays Bryson wrote for a newspaper after he had returned to the US after 20 years of living abroad. Each essay (2 to 4 pages) tackles a different topic of modern American life: the post office, television, holidays, airplane travel, to name just a few. He has such a unique view of things and events that we take for granted or consider mundane, especially when he compares life in the US to life in England. His style of writing is informal and conversational, which makes you feel like you're talking to an old friend.

A wonderful, sharp, insightful, and hilarious book, sure to keep you reading, laughing, and thinking for hours!

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Notes on Returning to Bryson's Witty Musings

'I'm a Stranger Here Myself' is the second book of Bryson's that I've read, and I have to say that I have not laughed out loud so much at a book in all of my life. Composed of short essays for a magazine in London, 'Stranger' chronicles (as I'm sure you already know) Bryson's return to America after twenty years away. But this time...he's got a family. A very British family.

Which, I have to say, imbues the book with a sort of charm that I don't think it would have had otherwise. As other reviewers have pointed out, Bill Bryson is a bit of curmudgeon, but he is less curmudgeon-y in this book than others, or so I've heard. His musings on American life slide from the funny and absurd to the poignant and probably horrifying, and it is all done to great effect. Some of the things still hold true, even nine years later, while others seem a bit outdated. Talking about a television with fifty channels no longer phases most Americans.

However, for the most part, the book is highly enjoyable. The one thing that I have to say that is detrimental to the book is the fact that it is composed of many - and I do mean many - small chapters, which don't have the chance to breath and stretch out as I would like to have seen. That is not to say that the shorter chapters didn't make the book a bit more easily consumed. But, then again, I am a big fan of Bryson's.

This book is highly recommended to fans of Bryson's and those looking for a funny mosaic of American life.

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Bryson At His Curmudgeonly Best

I hereby nominate Mr. Bryson to take over Andy Rooney's spot on "60 Minutes", whenever Mr. Rooney retires or passes on.

reviews: 1, page 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11

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