At 28% in, I've decided to quit and call it an official DNF. But yes, I'm going to rate and review it anyway, because Bryson deserves it.

The Lost Continent was born when Bryson was struck by nostalgia and an urge to reconnect with his home after his father died. He says he wanted to see if the magic places of his youth were as good as he remembered. So he journeyed back to America, borrowed his mom's car, and set out, initially planning the type of road trip vacation his father took the family on when he was a kid, but soon morphing his meanderings into a quest to find the perfect small town. From his musings, I think he wants some sort of Pleasantville (yes, the movie) that has alcohol and a college.

From the beginning, where Bryson describes his parents and the family vacations, he fails at being cynically and sarcastically amusing. Instead, he comes across as mean-spirited, condescending, and impossible to please. His dad, who was probably a nice guy, is portrayed as an idiotic, short-tempered cheapskate, and his mother is a bland lump whose commentary is limited to saying "I don't know, dear" or offering you a sandwich. Every place he stops is just ruined by the discovery of a rusty car up on blocks, or an unmown yard, or the prevalence of modern cookie-cutter architecture instead of fine Victorian houses. If he happens to drive past a big box store, well, that town is marked off the list! Inhabitants of the towns sometimes cause their hometown to be crossed off, too. These people have the nerve to speak with an accent, or be overweight, or play their music too loudly. Funny, all of them have lower IQs than Bill. Several times in my short 84+ page foray into this waste of time, Bryson wrote judgmental comments about how racist America is--not just the South--and yet managed to sound like a racist doing so. More faults with towns included the lack of a view, the lack of a bookstore, traffic, bad weather. Whenever he stopped to tour some landmark, like the birthplace of a famous person, for example, it was too expensive, too boring, too crowded; if the place seemed okay, Bryson just resorted to bashing the person for their shortcomings. He repeatedly fabricates derogatory names for things--Crudbucket Ohio, Senator Poontang, the Blackbutt Indians.

All this negativity has become overwhelming and tedious. I stopped reading, but consulted the 14 page index (can you believe it includes an index?) in the back and scanned several things of interest looking for some redemption. Alas, he wasn't really kind or generous to Colonial Williamsburg, Cooperstown, Tennessee, the Smoky Mountains, Donald Trump, Barry Manilow, Asheville/Biltmore Estate, Melungeons, Mexican music, or anything else. I wish I'd never paid money for this, and I wish I'd never gotten around to reading it. Though I enjoyed A Walk In The Woods, One Summer, and most of all, In A Sunburned Country, I still have a few unread Bryson books on my shelves, and now fear something I may've found funny in the new books might seem snide and tainted with this newly discovered side of the author.

This was the first travelogue written (or published, at any rate) by Bill Bryson, and if he'd stopped there, I'd have been quite happy. (I expect his publisher won't agree with me.) The mixture of self-deprecation, memoir and travel experience works quite well in this book, and (in contrast to his later efforts) utterly without straining.

Gentle self-mockery and on-point outward observations before they became his shtick.

Hey, I just remembered - I don't like Bill Bryson.
I made it all the way to the end of the first CD, just to be certain I wasn't mistaken about my opinion, and nope, I wasn't.
I still don't like Bill Bryson.

This is especially repugnant coming straight off Something Rich and Strange: Selected Stories

Note to self: Please stop trying with this guy. You do not like him. You never have, you never will.

*sigh*
Alright. Here's the thing. I really liked Bryson's book about his trip on the Appalachian Trail. So when I saw this at a used book store in great condition, I thought it was a no-brainer that this would be worth it. And it was I guess. If you want to take a few big steps back.
This is from 1989. It's written by an upper-class, Midwestern, white guy that moved to London years before this trip that he takes around America in the book. The back of the book says that it's his 'search for the perfect small town'. Spoiler, he doesn't really find it. Everything annoys him.
I could write how he is unnerved by black people, disgusted by poor people, or frustrated by everyone because they aren't as smart as he is. Instead, I'll sum up what the book is like with Bryson's own words.
"I drove on, thinking what an ironic thing it was that the really beautiful places in America - the Smoky Mountains, Appalachia, and now Vermont - were always inhabited by the poorest, most undereducated people."
This is his complete mindset for the entire book. It was kind of a bummer. Product of the time? I think so. This kind of mindset was the way of life in the early 90s. Honestly, if you like Bryson, just skip this one.

Bryson drives around the continental USA and complains about almost everything. Amusing, but in many ways Bryson seems like a jerk in this book. (I very much liked "A Brief History of Everything". But I think I'll be skipping his travel books.)

One example of jerkishness: complains many times about waitresses seeming not enthusiastic and helpful enough, and also states that he doesn't tip.

Weirdest moment: he tells the story of how his mother once had a maid who caught Cancer and quickly died. Is this relevant to anything? No. He just thought this would be more interesting than talking about whatever he saw while driving through Nevada.

I probably should have stopped when after the first 50 pages he had already twice had disparaging things to say about horses. Well, Mr. Bryson, horses think you smell bad, too!

I usually like Bryson's books. Besides being funny, he is a good writer. Always holds my interest...until this one. I enjoyed the first 50 pages, even laughed out loud once, but Bryson began to whine. It was difficult for him to find anything or anyone that he liked. It got so bad that he was not likable either. It is better to evaluate the people and places you visit without name-calling and nastiness. It was turnoff.

[Audiobook] Classic Bill Bryson entertainment!

Would have made for an amazing road trip book, but runs work too.

I’m reading a travelogue after a while and Bryson’s cheeky interpretation of all what he sees in his native land after emigrating to Europe kept me chuckling.
For someone who finds India itself to be a huge landmass, this book made me once again realize the vastness and of course the stretches of open land that make the US of A much-much bigger than India. What is interesting is that most of what he has to say about America in this almost three decade old book rings true for the Indian cities of today – unaesthetic structures, burgeoning urban suburbs, ubiquitous malls, tourists all over and a group of youngsters more commonly known today as “the millennials”.

If it was suppose to be satyrical, it didn’t work. If it was suppose to be funny, it really didn’t work.

Bryson at his crankiest and most ill-tempered: Clearly has an axe to grind
I've been enjoying my Bryson binge-fest of audiobooks, as most are good-naturedly ironic or mildly sarcastic, but this ones steps directly over that line into contempt territory right from the outset. He really does have an intense dislike of small-time America and its residents. Justified or not, it's pretty unrelenting, to the point you feel sorry for the people he encountered. He's not just pointing out their foibles - he's ridiculing them outright. Not one of his better ones, really needs to dial it down.

DNFed. Mean-spirited man makes fun of small towns and the people who live in them and passes it off as humour. Newsflash Bill- this isn’t funny.

I got through 30% and gave up. I had just posted about my gratitude for all the great books read this year. That jinks me. This author was critical, mean and sarcastic. Maybe he had a catharsis later in the book? I’ll never know.