The funniest Bryson book I’ve read so far… a collection of fun insights and anecdotes about American society in Bryson’s charming, witty style. Recommend the audiobook read by William Roberts!

In Bill Bryson's collection of essays written for publication in a British paper, based on his relocation to the States after 20 years in England, he pokes fun equally well at Brits and Yanks, and had me in tears I laughed so hard. Every time somebody gave me a look for bursting out in laughter inappropriately I recommended the book to them. Originally written in 1999, there are bits which haven't aged well (regarding technology mostly) but still so way much worth reading anyhow - even just for the list of great British vernacular on pg 266: gormless, skive, chivvy, berk, pillock, plonker, naff, prat. (!!!)

Bill Bryson: I first learned about him when I read “A Walk in the Woods,” his book about hiking (part of) the Appalachian Trail. I enjoyed that book a lot, and so when I found a few more books by Bryson in a Little Free Library near my house last fall, I helped myself (after leaving some of my own books, naturally). Recently I finished one.

So, the premise here is that Bryson, his wife, and their four kids lived in England for 20 years. They moved back to America (to New Hampshire, to be precise), and this book is comprised of a series of essays Bryson wrote for a British newspaper. They’re ostensibly about the differences he observes between England and the US, although honestly a majority of them don’t even address that topic. It is definitely a topic rich with possibilities.

Reading this book reminded me of how much I enjoy Bryson’s writing. He has a keen sense of observation, and an excellent ability to express what he sees. The way he uses language is wonderful. His writing is hilarious in a dry-humor type of way that I love.

He describes the aspects of America that thrilled him upon his return: “I was as dazzled as any newcomer by the famous ease and convenience of daily life, the giddying abundance of absolutely everything, the boundless friendliness of strangers, the wondrous unfillable vastness of an American basement, the delight of encountering waitresses and other service providers who actually seemed to enjoy their work, the curiously giddying notion that ice is not a luxury item and that rooms can have more than one electrical socket.”

He waxes eloquent about his love of all the freebies our country offers, countering that with a Yorkshire baker’s “where you had to pay an extra penny — a penny! — if you wanted your loaf of bread sliced. It’s hard not to be charmed by the contrast.”

There are parts of this book that are dated (it was published in 1999), and a few bits, like Bryson’s gripes about the government, that I didn’t feel worked too well. But I can’t even fault him much for that, because I loved the writing in this book so much. I’ll be reading more of Bryson’s books.

In a relaxed style, full of humor and fun, and tackling almost anything you could think about, the author describes his experience about returning to the US in the late 90s, where he settles after 20 years living in the UK.

As an expat about to return to the US, this book simply wasn't Weird enough for me. It in no way captures my experience of how completely absurd the US feels upon returning after an extended absence.

Obsessions with skinny white girls named Jessica; the unbelievable noise, especially from radio and TV; un-ending ads for stuff on sale (which exist in other places, but when it's in another language, I just tune it out); the fact that no one walks anywhere; the enormous bodies(quitting smoking maybe wasn't such a great idea, folks...); the amount of non-food items for sale in a grocery store; the general ignorance and out-right disinterest in news from other places; the list goes on.

I like Bryson's humor, but I think I like his earlier work best. ("Fat Girls from Des Moines" remains one of my favorite Granta reads.)

Thoroughly enjoyable with laugh-out-loud moments. Bryson narrated this which made the experience even better.

Lovely collection of articles. Funny, witty, charming, reads like a dream. I can hardly wait to begin reading another book by Mr. Bill Bryson.

Today I had a doctor's appointment and that is when I remembered I am also reading this book. It is a series of humorous columns written by the author detailing his experience returning to the US. It makes for quick reading and is good when I am somewhere busy like a waiting room or airport.

Well, it took several doctor's appointments and a hospital stay but I finally finished the book. The time it took me to read is no reflection on the quality of the book. Bryson is an outstanding writer. I can't wait to read another of his many books.

Bill Bryson, I'm a Stranger Here Myself (Broadway Books, 1999)

At funtrivia.com, one of the (many) ways a quiz can go from a relatively high ranking to "very poor" between the time I start and the time I finish is a factual error that causes me to get a question wrong. Research is a beautiful thing.

Half of me is willing to give Bill Bryson the benefit of the doubt; the other half is ready to excoriate him on what may be a false impression. I'll attempt to keep it reserved.

Bryson's column "The Waste Generation," about two-thirds of the way through I'm a Stranger Here Myself, starts off with a statistic that's quite simply wrong ("One of the most arresting statistics I have seen in a good while is that 5 percent of all the energy used in the United States is consumed by computers that have been left on all night." Wrong; a computer and a monitor, left on twenty-four hours a day, together consume approximately a dollar's worth of electricity per month. The computer is one of the most energy-efficient machines on the planet today). The American home computer revolution happened while Bryson was out of the country, so I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. It would have been nice, however, had he mentioned his source.

A forgivable error, perhaps, though basing a whole column on it is rather disturbing. But the part of the column that bugs me is farther down: "I have glanced out hotel room windows late at night, in a variety of cities, and been struck by the fact that lots of lights in lots of office buildings are still burning... why don't we turn these things off?... Why, after all, go through the irksome annoyance of waiting twenty seconds for your computer to warm up each morning when you can have it at your immediate beck by leaving it on all night?"

Two different questions with two entirely different answers, but Bryson goes on to turn it into a discussion of American wastefulness with its natural resources. He may be reaching the right conclusion, but if so, he's doing a 180 from where he started. To answer the latter question first, in modern computers with the Energy Saver features (which do nothing of the sort) turned off, it takes less power to leave a computer on all night than it does to shut it down and start it up. (To address another point he makes in the same passage, it's also more efficient to leave cars running for short periods rather than turning them off and back on. Any electrical appliance requires something of an electrical security deposit to get started, just like an apartment renter has to put down "amount of monthly rent times three" or somesuch in order to move in.) The former answer takes longer, but the short answer is that the Federal government, during the 1974 oil crisis, was taking out full-page ads in various magazines (I used to see them on a regular basis in Time) telling us that leaving lights on all night in buildings is what we SHOULD do, because electric lights give off heat, and at the time it was cheaper to heat a building by leaving its lights on and cranking the gas heat down six degrees or so. That situation went away with the end of the fuel crisis, of course, but the government never took those ads out in time.

Here's where I get a little wonky with Bryson. The subtitle of the book is "Notes on returning to America aftetr twenty years away." If the number is, in fact, twenty, then Bryson was in the country when the Government was running those full-page ads. And thus, given that he's all too well aware of the average Joe's lack of common sense, he could have come to the same conclusion by poking fun at the fact that the average Joe never stopped leaving the lights on all night after the fuel crisis was over. But he doesn't.

Humor is a wonderful thing (and let me hasten to say that there is a good deal of it here), but one of the prerequisites for humor of any sort should be that's it's based on fact. The humorist is, in many cases (and certainly in this one) using humor to get a point across, and doing so with factual errors leaves a very bad taste in my mouth. Factual errors by ignorance leave less of a bad taste in my mouth than factual errors by design. That's what I see in this essay, and it makes me wonder how many others, with circumstances with which I'm less acquainted in this book, are founded on the same sleight of hand. Perhaps one error shouldn't taint my view of a whole book, but I can't help it. After all, when an expert witness admits he falsified one fact in one trial that changed the outcome, how often do you think he'll be getting called to testify after that?

I try to give Bryson the benefit of the doubt for most of it, because his heart's mostly in the right place, and his brand of humor is the understated, easy kind that resides at the top of the humor heap. But I'll never be able to read another word of Bryson's without the 1974 energy crisis in the back of my head. ** 1/2

This was my Saturday morning cafe read. So-so for me, some of it had me laughing (trying to do your taxes and dining out). Overall an enjoyable read that has me wanting to find more books of short stories/essays. My favorite by Bryson is A Walk in the Woods.

January 1, 1996

A very funny perspective. It must be hard to be both a native and an outsider. Fortunately, Bryson is funny as hell, so the difficulty of it all is related in a way, that might make you laugh out loud, if you're a laughing out loud sort of person.

Library copy

3.5/5