I've noticed that many of the poor reviews for this book were from people who weren't English and/or hadn't been to England before, which doesn't actually surprise me to be honest. As I'm about as English as PG Tips and garden fetes, I understood all the references and in-jokes, but can easily see why they'd be annoying to someone who didn't know the country.

However, I think that self-deprecation is the key to British humour (yes, I've included Scotland, Wales and N. Ireland in this bit) and that's why I loved this book so much. I did think some things were a little far-fetched and made a haughty scoffing noise in their direction, before remembering that things like that do actually happen over here and acting nonchalantly again.

I would recommend this book to someone who knows enough about England (well, Britain really) to appreciate the references. Now I'd better go and make a cup of tea. That wasn't an "Ooh, look at me, I'm sooo stereotypically English" end to this review by the way; it was a genuine 5 o'clock in the afternoon necessity.

I have read, and liked, several Bryson books prior to Notes From a Small Island. I found this one ... unpleasant. On the last page, he said he loves everything about Britain, but spent the previous 316 pages apparently trying to convince us otherwise. It was just an incessantly snarky, whiny travelogue. Except for a few positive impressions, he mostly seemed happy only when drinking heavily or gorging himself. Even then, he often criticized the beer and food. Twice he described berating people (an innkeeper and some poor kid behind the counter at a McDonald's) without any suggestion of shame for his boorish behavior. In one stunning bit of irony, he talked about British people who have visited America and then regale him with their negative views of it. "I'll never understand why people do that," he complains. Um, got a mirror, Bryson? I've traveled very widely, in both developed and developing nations, and can give you a list of everything wonderful or fascinating about each place. I've never once sat around in a new town or bit of countryside gloomily brooding about what's not to my liking. That's just no way to travel. And it sure as hell isn't the way to write about traveling.

I wasn't sure how much I'd get out of reading a book about my home country written by an American... but it turned out to be a joy. I hadn't realised, until I read the book, that Bryson had lived in the UK for many years. It gives him a rather unusual perspective on the place and makes for interesting reading.

It also helps that I enjoyed his sense of humour. It's a little morbid at times; he makes a joke about the Zeebrugge ferry disaster at one point that a lot of people may find to be in bad taste; but I'm not easily offended, so it didn't worry me too much. I laughed quite a bit while reading this book and, as I read about half of it out walking myself, that lifted my spirits and helped me stay the course. (I'm desperately trying to shift some of this excess weight I've been carrying around for years, so I'm trying to do a 90 minute walk every day. It seems to be working; I've lost about 28 lbs so far...)

On occasion, he portrays himself in a less than sympathetic light, being downright rude to various customer service folks across the country who were only doing their jobs as the company they're working for asks them to do it. Here's a tip for folks out there: if you have received bad service from a customer service employee, please feel free to complain. If you have a problem with a company policy that the employee has absolutely no control over, ask to speak to their manager; don't be a complete fucking arsehole to the poor bloke/lass who is only doing their job. If you do that, it's YOU being a shitty human being, not them.

To Bryson's credit, he usually realises he's being a dickhead on these occasions; usually when it's too late to do anything about it.

Anyway, it was a real pleasure to see the UK through Bryson's eyes for a while. It almost had me feeling patriotic for a second... but then I slapped myself in the face and started thinking like an intelligent human being again. I'll definitely be reading more of Bryson's work in the future.

So, about a month ago, I moved to England from the U.S., to London. (Recently enough that it still feels a little bit preposterous to say.) One of the things we had to do, in packing our suitcases, was select which books we'd carry with us for the next several weeks and which would travel the long way inside a shipping container. If my count is correct, we brought 16 books with us, and this was one of my picks.

I like Bill Bryson and I figured this would be fun to read as a new resident of England, as a sort of joking but genuine guide to people I'd like to get to know, as well as to some places I'm eager to visit. As soon as I started reading, though, I found that I wished I had done it another way: I got the sense that I didn't much agree with him at all, and wish I had read this instead after accumulating some years of my own, when I'll be able to articulate why.

This book is 20 years old (indeed, it's been so long, he is about to publish a sequel) and in many ways that makes it a really interesting historical perspective on modern England. Bryson settled in the U.K. in 1977, two years before Thatcher came to office, and he decided to leave (and wrote this book) in 1994, four years after she was ousted. The outlook from where he sat, in the mid-90's, was bad.

So the book, then, is positively drenched in this pessimism, the hope lost that anything kind or fair or reasonable will ever be restored to the country, because the government is stone broke with no end in sight. In quite a lot of the places he visits, Bryson basically observes that everything is stupid now, and surely only going to get worse, before it ultimately disappears altogether. It's extremely sad. I'm curious whether the sequel will be interested in addressing the discrepancies between these expectations and the realities of British life in these past 20 years (a majority of which he's spent as a resident again). The country Bryson moved away from in 1995 isn't one I'd have been eager to try living in. But in 2015, on balance, I feel optimism.

It isn't Bryson's dated facts that prevented me from enjoying the book, though. There are other things about its 20 years' age that really no longer flatter him. The negative, cranky character he casts of himself is incredibly unpleasant. He writes as an observer of absurdities, but really he is doing almost nothing but complaining about people and places and things until I could hardly stand it. I nearly tried to keep count of the rants that began "Now here is something I've never understood," or "I have simply never seen the appeal of," etc. I guess that these are funny to some readers, because they're sure written as if they're a hoot. He also both repeats and contradicts himself a lot, and I started to think he didn't really have principles about anything, but just liked to hear himself opine.

But often, there's something so much darker and weird about it: he'll say the nice hotel receptionist has a brain the size of a bean, he'll call someone's wife stupid for no reason, and he'll spend a full page talking about the eating habits of overweight people as if they are cartoon zoo animals. (If you think I might be overreacting, read that, I mean it. Make sure you make it to "their chins glistening with chocolate." It's a disgusting way to describe people, satire or no.) And for goodness sake, for someone spending a solid 7 weeks as a full-time tourist in order to write this book, he sure has some kinda disdain for tourists, doing the exact same things he's doing -- it's just that they're being mindless buffoons about it, of course, and he's gonna get paid.

I couldn't get past this mean-spirited attitude, however much self-satire was sometimes involved, and it impacted my enjoyment of the entire book. There's a dated quality to Bryson the narrator that just doesn't gel with a contemporary tone. I kept thinking about the "typical 90's dad" brand of humor, the Dave Barry and hapless sitcom sorts: the way he talks about his wife here as if all she cares about is shopping and the car, but calls her lovely all the way through so it's all fun. Giving the benefit of the doubt, I'm deciding that I only really dislike "1995" Bill Bryson, in particular. However, this is also the first of Bryson's travel books I've read, and humor and travel are genres that rely wholly on the author's personality. I'm a little warier than I was before.

I'm not sorry I read this, and it did make me laugh, and I did make a nice list of places I hadn't heard of before that I'd like to visit myself: Virginia Waters, Corfe Castle, Snowshill Manor, Welbeck Abbey, Morecambe, Near Sawrey, Durham. Bryson and I share a love for seeing a nice old house. And I think, soon, we'll probably share a love for this funny old country.

Hm. I've been to England only once in my life (so far). Last year. I went to London only but I do like a number of things about Great Britain (Brexit not being one of them - surprise!). So of course I had to read our favourite grumpypants' take on it. Especially since it was yet another funny buddy-read with Jeff (read his review here).

The interesting thing I wasn't aware of is that Bryson isn't a Brit living in exile the US, but an American who married a British woman and lived in England for a while! Considering his grumpiness, neurotic behaviour and stinginess, he can pass as a native amongst Her Majesty's subjects and no problem.
Well, actually, there are a few problems. Such as Bryson despising the whole notion of royalty and kings and queens still existing nowadays. He's also unappreciative of Oxford and the University of Cambridge. To say nothing of - brace yourselves - his refusal to drink tea!
Then again, he does seem to like at least some old architecture like the original Natural History Museum in London. And then there is (or was until this trip) his romantic notion of train journeys.

Long story short, this is Bryson returning to England after not having lived there for quite a while and this time, even more than upon arriving for the very first time, he notices all the little and not-so-little things that make the British quintessentially British.
We're talking about history by architecture as much as famous politicians and artists. We're talking about the humble way of dealing with all that history (such a stark contrast to the pomp the afore-mentioned royals represent and drag through the streets). We're talking about, shall we say, interesting food. We're talking about unique names for said food as well as places and more. We're talking about 900-year-old hedges. We're OF COURSE talking about queuing (and other manifestations of good behavior).

When talking about this author, the word travelogue comes up a lot. I usually don't like those but prefer to experience a place for myself. But Bryson has this way of writing more than just an account of his trip through a country. It's usually a 360°-view with references to current political issues, history, social topics, nature and more. All packed in his signature grumpy and somehow funny way of complaining about everything.
Nevertheless, after reading about his ambitious hiking trip as well as his fearfulless tackling of the most venomous continent on Earth, I have to say that this was not his best - though it still made me chuckle quite a few times.

Back before I had ever read any Bill Bryson, I had mentally lumped him into the Dave Barry category of humor. You know, fairly wholesome and genial, maybe a touch of cornball, the sort of guy who might eventually parlay his silliness into a kids book. I think this impression had something to do with his author photo:

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Not only does he look like he has lived in a cozy part of Britain and might enjoy ambling and training all over it as he does in this book, he looks exactly like the sort of man I'd want to be my grandpa.

The real Bryson is much more cantankerous than either of my existing grandpas. This yields plenty of funnies in its own way. For example:

"I took a train to Liverpool. They were having a festival of litter when I arrived. Citizens had taken time off from their busy activities to add ice cream wrappers, empty cigarette boxes, and plastic carrier bags to the otherwise bland and neglected landscape. They fluttered gaily in the bushes and brought color and texture to pavements and gutters. And to think that elsewhere we stick these objects in trashbags."

But what it also means is that when he gets annoyed -- by the rain, by less than pleasing hotel accommodations, by having to eat breakfast at McDonald's because the high-class Scottish hotel he knowingly booked ahead of time also has a costly restaurant (who'd have guessed?!) -- he is sometimes inexcusably mean or superior. I'm talking about the way he treats the McDonald's cashier who asks him if he wants to try an apple pie with his breakfast or the hard of hearing old man who gives him inadequate help getting to Port Sunlight, who Bryson tells to "die soon" as he walks away.

Look, I don't mean to sound wizened at 24 or anything, but there was a time when I enjoyed mean humor and probably could have told someone who'd annoyed me to "die soon" for laughs without it weighing too much on my conscience. Shocker: in that time, I was also pretty unhappy myself. I don't look back fondly on being miserable and will never understand why other people are pleased with themselves for instances of acting like total jerks.

If it weren't for those two moments, I would have given this book four stars. Bryson's got a keen eye for picking out and sharing unusual bits of history and culture, such as the reclusive Duke who built an interconnected tunnel system from his house and sealed himself up in his coach so that he could travel without having to talk to anyone, or the stuff that makes up headlines in provincial newspapers ("WOMAN, 81, DIES"), or how Yorkshire neighbors will walk right into his home, sending him running into the pantry in his underwear. He's an unequaled tour guide -- that is, if you keep him in an amiable mood.

My first exposure to Bill Bryson was "A Walk In The Woods" which is about his desire to leave modern America behind and go for a stroll along the Appalachian Trail. I love that book and found it to be hysterical and at other times very sensible in his commentary about the world around us.

"Notes From A Small Island" also reflects his desire to stroll through countrysides and insert some social commentary about the communities he encounters. But this time his location is Great Britain and it is a farewell tour of the country he called his home for over 20 years.

Not being British and having never been to any part of Britain I must admit I was at a total loss for many of the references he makes about the culture (pop to political) and the language. I constantly felt like a bit of an outsider listening in to some great inside jokes that flew right over my head.

But the sections where he described human nature in general, or the portions about Scotland where I did have some personal frame of reference thanks to a Scottish roommate in college, I found to be very funny and entertaining. It is obvious this book was written about Britain for a British audience and because of it I had a nice descriptive tour of the geography, the people and, of course, the wet weather.

I was a little surprised by the sudden brash insertions of vulgarity and showy tell-offs of people who happened to annoy him. I don't really recall that style from my reading of "A Walk In The Woods" but maybe I just don't remember it because I was laughing too hard. I swear myself all the time so it wasn't offensive personally, but it felt like it was thrown in there purposefully to fit in or something.

I also tired of his constant criticism of the architectural horrors - even though I agree with his frustration and anger about it. Just hammered that point a little too often for my tastes. I get it - stupid architects destroyed pieces of history left and right for shopping plazas which is blasphemy. More about the human interest please, which he writes very well.

Overall the book was an easy read that could be picked up and put down without problem so it would be great to read on a commute or in between other books. It was entertaining enough but I would recommend more for people not completely clueless like me about Britain - the humor would be appreciated much more.

An excellent travel book, I really liked it and would have given 5 stars but for the sprinkling of potty mouth language. I found the book quite informative and humorous, and it still would have been just as humorous without the vulgarities. Looking forward to The Road to Little Dribbling.

Since I moved to England this fall, I haven’t done too much travelling around the country. I’ve been to London a couple of times, neither of which I did much that could be described as a touristy; the same applies to my trips to Cambridge. I went up to Scotland during the half-term and had a good time there, but I’m looking forward to visiting a few other places around the UK. Until I do, travel writing like Notes from a Small Island will have to serve to whet my appetite.

Bill Bryson is a brilliant writer. n  A Short History of Nearly Everythingn is one of my favourite books. Bryson has a deft touch to description that makes him an apt writer of non-fiction; he manages to make something that could be dull and make it come alive through anecdotes and humour. I knew he had done some travel writing, a genre that’s been on my mind while teaching AS Literature. So I picked this up during a trip to Waterstones and settled into what I hoped would be a very unique perspective on Great Britain. Bryson didn’t grow up here but has lived here for decades. Preparing to move back to the United States with his family, he tours the island one last time. The result is certainly unique, but not in the way I wanted.

The prologue chapter is every bit as brilliant and entertaining as I had hoped it would be. Bryson relates his first days in England, in 1973. He describes butting heads with the formidable Mrs Smegma, the proprietor of a boarding house and perpetually disapproving of whatever Bryson does. He reminisces about his youthful awe over the differences between Britain and the United States, and it’s a delightful prelude to the beginning of his tour of the country twenty years later.

I’d be exaggerating if I said that the book goes drastically downhill after that strong start, but it would not be wild hyperbole. Notes from a Small Island suffers from two chief defects. Firstly, as I noted above, Bryson is a brilliant writer—and, unfortunately, he knows this. Secondly, it turns out that his reactions to various places in Britain are very similar and often involve a lot of unfavourable comparisons to how things used to be.

Bryson’s wit often seems to get the better of him here. Of course, there are plenty of moments when that humour works well and livens up what might otherwise be a mundane description of his travels through Brighton or Yorkshire. Unfortunately, it often seems like his humour is there to distract us from the fact that he isn’t actually talking about the particular place in question. There are segues into sexist ruminations on the differences between men and women (and he himself labels at least one such episode as sexist, as if that somehow excuses it). At least twice during visits to Chinese restaurants he makes comments that are, if not racist, then culturally insensitive. Such moments were enough to make me feel uncomfortable, particularly because I had so wanted to find this book funny. And throughout the book, he manages to portray himself as a short-tempered, intolerant, rude person who would probably make a terrible travelling companion. To be fair, he seems to be aware of these shortcomings and occasionally even apologizes for them. But he also seems to labour under the delusion that this makes him even more interesting rather than less.

The second defect concerns how Bryson describes the way the places he visits have changed over the decades. In almost every case, he manages to point out how development and change has ruined a city. He laments the arrival of indoor shopping malls and the slow destruction of Britain’s hedges. He complains about the motorways, about the rail system, about the distribution and diversity of restaurants. It wouldn’t be so bad if each successive chapter weren’t just more of the same. It’s as if he set out not just to tour Britain but to find as much fault with it as possible in order to justify his relocation to the United States. For someone who claims to love the country—and he does make several keen observations in favour of Britain and its people—he spends a lot of time sounding like someone who doesn’t want kids on his lawn.

It’s not all bad news. There is charm to be had in Notes from a Small Island. Bryson shares in common with certain humour writers that talent to transform what are assuredly mild incidents in their lives into wild, slightly absurd anecdotes that nevertheless have the ring of truth. These otherwise excellent moments are spoiled by how repetitive Bryson manages to make the book feel. After the first few chapters, the novelty has worn off. As I approached the end of the book, I was paying very little attention to what he was actually saying, because it felt like more of the same.

Notes from a Small Island doesn’t replicate the sense of wonder and enjoyment I derived from A Short History of Nearly Everything. It doesn’t quite give me a sense of the country in which I’m living either. Instead, it’s more like a catalogue of Bill Bryson’s unfavourable experiences across Great Britain. It’s occasionally funny and occasionally charming but not the encomium of travelling through Britain that I want or need.

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This is the first Bill Bryson book I’ve read, although I’ve had several on the TBR list for a while including this one. Having finally gotten around to reading it, I really enjoyed it and found a surprising amount of it to be laugh-out loud funny (including the description of the humble multi-story car park!), especially in the first two-thirds of the book.

I wonder if this is because he has a more ‘British’ sense of observational humour, having lived over here for so long, or whether I just have the same kind of slightly cynical outlook that he does. (For the record, I also like Jon Ronson, whose style is somewhat similar). And he had a good line in one-liners, like “It is an interesting experience to become acquainted with a country through the eyes of the insane, and, if I may say so, a particularly useful grounding for life in Britain” and “Correct me if I’m wrong, but you would think that if one nation ought by now to have mastered the science of drainage, Britain would be it”.

Living in the UK I can visualise a lot of the places, situations and types of people, which may also have added to my positive view on the book. I’m also a fan of ‘random acts of tourism’, as you can come across some amazing gems that way, although I would probably have been one of those who told him “gosh, you’re brave” when he proposed touring Britain on public transport.

he can be exceedingly and unnecessarily rude at times (I thought the hotelier in Weston had exactly the right response – to be so polite the following day that Bryson was ashamed of how he’d behaved), and it is a bit dated in places (but then, it was first published in 1995, so I guess it would be), which is why I only gave it 4 stars, instead of 5.

But overall I really enjoyed it, and I’ll almost certainly read more of his books. First on the list is his biography of Shakespeare, in this 400th anniversary year of Shakespeare’s death.

I really struggled with this book. The first book I read from Bryson was A Walk in the Woods, a fabulously funny and ironic account of his attempt to walk the Appalachian Trail. I've read several other things by him since and really liked most of what I read.

That is why I was so surprised and how utterly mediocre this book turned out.

Don't get my wrong, there are several funny and witty spots and some excellent observations. The opening pages are the best of the book.

But it felt like Bryson didn't want to go on this trip. It felt like he could care less about meeting people. Most of the book is him just describing what he did while moving around ALONE. I don't mind that he complains about modern architecture or crumbling cities. I don't mind the criticisms of the trains and buses. That is all part of traveling. What bothered me though was how few people he interacted with and how the UK was reduced to a catalogue of hotels and cafes disconnected from the people and cultural idiosyncrasies that make up a modern nation. He had no plan. Nothing he wanted to learn and explore. No questions to ask.

I just don't think he wanted to do this. He publisher probably pushed him to do it, gave him some money and off he went. And that blasé comes through in the text.

Perhaps most annoying is the fact that there was no map in the book. Oh sure, I couldnt have pulled out my atlas every night when I laid down to read but lets me honest. That is a pain. Any travel book needs a series of maps. One for each chapter almost. I want to know where he is going. Where he walked.

Again. I just dont feel like he and his publishers really thought this out or took it seriously.

It took me forever to read this because I was constantly picking it up and putting it down, not because I wasn’t enjoying it, but because it’s one of those books where it works to read it in this way, and I read so many other books during the times I took breaks from reading this book.

Sometimes I just don’t like Bill Bryson as a man. There’s a smattering of things he writes that are cruel, crass, and otherwise makes him unappealing to me, and he sure drinks a lot of beer, but the nasty material is a tiny minority of the book’s content.

He’s basically a likeable and interesting guy who is an explorer, much of it done via walking, and he has a refreshing sense of what constitutes adventure.

He’s a skilled writer. He’s very, very funny; I laughed out loud and chuckled many times.

I’ve always wanted to go to Britain so for me this was a bit of armchair traveling. Unfortunately, much of this book made me wish I’d visited the place (and most other places) at least a few decades ago. Bryson makes clear the homogenization that’s taken place at various British locales, and this book was written 15 years ago so who knows what he’d say now. I’d still love to go but I’d skip some of his destinations. He also writes much about the history of his destinations and I found most of the information fascinating.

One thing that tickled my funny bone is that when he was in one small English town, he saw the old “This is Cinerama” movie, a movie I remember from my childhood, and brought me right back to the United States of America. I hadn’t realized the movie was already old the first time that I saw it, but I do remember loving that film and other Cinerama movies.

There’s a glossary of English (vs. American English) words in the back of the book. Given that I’m a bit of an Anglophile, I already knew the definition of most of the words, but having it in the book was a fun touch.