Great Edutainment

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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 222 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

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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Great Edutainment

Back to New England after a two decade long spell in the old one, Bryson penned these articles for a British newspaper supposedly over protestations that he didn't have the time to do so. You would never know it. The result is a thoroughly entertaining book. Well, OK; a pretty entertaining book. But, it's thoroughly entertaining in places, not to mention brimming over with wonderful bits of utterly useless information.

Like any collection of essays some are better than others (of course), but the good ones really shine. Living in the UK allowed Bryson for a cultural comparative model, and upon return to his homeland the good, the bad, the ugly, and (most importantly) the absurd all became abundantly clear. In short, American society was begging to made fun of. Bryson skewers new and unsettling trends along with what he previously took for granted or never gave much thought to. Absolutely, he complains a good deal, but he does it well and goodness knows someone has to. His writing flows in that buoyant, easy manner for which he has become famous. Some jokes fall flat, but most hit their mark. And he could descibe moss for a full two paragraphs and still make it sound interesting. I bought I'M A STRANGER HERE MYSELF as NOTES FROM A BIG COUNTRY which was paired with his book about England entitled NOTES FROM A SMALL ISLAND. Together, these form a compendium called THE COMPLETE NOTES which held my interest for weeks, and which - admittedly - encouraged me to have a go at writing myself.

Troy Parfitt, author

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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.

reviews: 1, 2, page 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

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