Notes from a small island - Bill Bryson (Notes from a Small Island - Bill Bryson)

Member Name: Pandora321

Product:	Notes from a Small Island - Bill Bryson
Date:	03/08/09 (42 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Laugh out loud funny, light reading

Disadvantages: Sporadic swearing may offend some readers

Bill Bryson is a well known travel writer, and this time it's our very own United Kingdom under his humorous microscope. After almost 20 years' living in the UK, the Bryson family are returning to the USA so Bill decides to take one last jaunt across our island, revisiting old favourites and finally checking out places he always meant to visit but never quite got around to until now.

~Bill Bryson~
Bill Bryson grew up in Iowa, USA in the 1950s (as he describes in his autobiography 'The life and times of the thunderbolt kid') and has since travelled much of the world, writing around 10 books based on these explorations, including 'The lost continent' (America), 'Neither here nor there' (Europe) and 'Down Under' (Australia). He has a highly unique writing style that is rather sarcastic and occasionally a bit 'grumpy old man' but always absolutely hysterical. His observations of his own and foreign cultures always nail that culture to a 'T', often with comments about something that you'd never really noticed yourself but as soon as you read it you're nodding and going 'that is sooo true!'. The witty stories are always cleverly interwoven with well-researched, interesting background information, facts and figures. Personally I love his writing style (and secretly wish I was brave enough to say the rather succinct things he says to the complete imbeciles he meets!) and would recommend any of his books without hesitation.

~This book~
In 'Notes from a small island' Bryson explores the cities, countryside and culture of Great Britain, pondering the unique idiosyncrasies that make our country so interesting. Although American, Bryson lived and worked in the UK for almost 20 years so he has a good grounding in the niceties of British life and has had time to get acquainted with some of those strange tics that you wouldn't find anywhere else. In true Bryson style, right from the start of the book he was pointing out, with precise accuracy, the things in British life that I completely take for granted but that, viewed by a stranger to the lands, are, it has to be admitted, a bit odd. For instance, he explains that while staying in Dover in a boarding house, the landlady came into the residents' lounge with tea and biscuits and 'everyone stirred friskily to life, rubbing their hands keenly and saying, 'Ooh, lovely.' To this day, I remain impressed by the ability of Britons of all ages and social backgrounds to get genuinely excited by the prospect of a hot beverage.' This is a very astute observation - who among us hasn't sat in a tearoom on a washed-out holiday with howling gales outside, but when they bring over your cup of tea suddenly everything is all right with the world and your holiday's ok after all? (well, I have anyway). It's so British, it's brilliant.

These hitting the nail on the head observations continue as Bryson braves buses, trains, hiking and the occasional hire car to visit old and new haunts in London, Bournemouth, Exeter, Oxford, Porthmadog, Liverpool, Bradford, Glasgow, Inverness and John O'Groats, among others. His slightly potted route varied according to places he used to live and wanted to re-visit, places he'd heard of and always meant to visit, places that sounded interesting as his train went past, and places that happened to be the first train out of the current hellhole he was in. Thus, he sees an eclectic mixture of cities, historic towns, new towns, and countryside. His adventures in each are faithfully recounted, although sometimes somewhat exaggerated for comedic effect (I hope!): 'By mid-afternoon I found myself increasingly crawling under barbed wire, fording streams with my pack on my head, wrenching my leg from bear traps, falling down, and longing to be elsewhere.' Personally this is exactly my sense of humour and my husband was rather disturbed by me continually laughing out loud as I read.

What really makes this book, as a Brit, is that, despite the large number of unique 'interesting' traits us British have, and once Bryson starts pointing them out you notice we have a lot, Bryson does genuinely like Britain and the British, so while pointing out our oddities as the craziness they are, he does so with good humour and warmth. It is, after all, these strange cultural quirks that make us British. Bryson writes colourfully, bringing the UK to life for those who have never visited and sending the rest of us into flashes of recognition of ourselves and our island co-habiters. The book is full of interesting information that I certainly never knew about our island - did you know we have 12,000 medieval churches and 600,000 known sites of archaeological interest, for example? - and although Bryson does take the piss out of us, he does it engagingly and in the knowledge that he actually loves Britain and will miss it greatly on his return to the USA, so it doesn't jar with a British reader. I'd thoroughly recommend reading this, or any Bryson book, to any travel writing fan, although some people may be offended as he does swear quite a bit, particularly when having a bad British Rail day (completely understandably!).

I'll finish with one of my favourite quotes from the book: 'I have a small, tattered clipping that I sometimes carry with me and pull out for purposes of private amusement. It's a weather forecast from the Western Daily Mail and it says, in toto: 'Outlook: Dry and warm, but cooler with some rain.''

Thanks for reading :)

Summary: Light-hearted look at Britain