This is Bryson’s swan song to his adopted home of England, where he lived for over 10 years. Bryson decided, after he and his wife were leaving the UK to return to the States, to take one final trek around this “small island” and write about these farewell experiences. This was the first one of Bryson’s books that I read (I had heard of his bestselling books A Walk in the Woods and In A Sunburned Country about Appalachia and Australia respectively) and I chose this one to start with because of my love of England. I’m so glad I did. A combination of serious and critical views of modernism and how it has taken over the relics and sentiments of the past to very droll, yet side-splittingly funny little snippets of the everyday life of the British. I believe he was having fun with this, as if he was winking at his intended audience when something good was about to happen. I now have read his other books and they do possess the same sarcastic tone and are all well-written and hard to put down, but if you are an Anglophile, this one is the one to read!

Delightful stodgy British accent on audio version

It's taken me a long time to get through this, partly because I only tend to read non-fiction when I can't sleep, but mostly because I didn't enjoy it. I liked A Brief History of Nearly Everything, the only other of his I've read, but that was more facts and much less opinion. Here, it's all his long-winded pompous opinions, a smattering of facts, very few of them interesting, and his meandering descriptions of the somewhat random places he chooses to visit on a 7 week solo tour of the UK before he moves back to the USA. My biggest problem with the book is how mean he is - in both senses of the word. He cruelly mocks just about everyone he meets, loses his temper and yells obscenities at people, and makes derogatory comments about just about everywhere, even the places he professes to like. He is also unbelievably tight with money - I know a lot of travellers are like this, but given he had been living in England and working for at least 10 years, and has already had at least one book published, and can afford to stay in posh hotels when he feels like it, the way he grumbles about the price of everything, and sneaks in and out of places to avoid the fee, despite commenting of the poor funding of eg the cathedrals he says he admires so much.
Some of his comments are quite witty, and I don't mind a bit of snark. I found the descriptions of places I've actually been to - surprisingly few considering I spent my first 29 years living in the UK - more entertaining, but it wouldn't inspire me to visit any of them.

I could read Bill Bryson's travel tales forever. Something about his endless enthusiasm for the oddities of people and places, his sense of humour, and his unique insights on history and culture. Notes from a small island is a very interesting read, whether you've visited the UK or not. Also, in the modern age of Trip Advisor, Google and other technologies to make travel plans, reading about Bryson's misadventures and spontaneous detours is excellent.

I don't remember why I bought this book.  But I loved it to the last page, and rolled on the floor most of the time.  Subsequently, I have bought almost all of this author's prolific work.  He can be a tiny bit vulgar, but where he is, it fits.  This guy was born in the ole USA, and moved to the UK for 20 years, where he married and had a family.  He was about to move back to the US, and decided to go see all the stuff he never had the time to do.  (I grew up in San Francisco, never walked across the Golden Gate Bridge, because it would always be available when I had more time.)  So, it is a bit of a travel book, a lot of humor, and a real page turner.  He then wrote a book on what it was like to go back to the US after 20 years.  Then later he picked up and moved Back to the UK, and wrote a book about that too.

Once again dear reader, I have found myself lining the pockets of a man who time and time again seems to entertainingly tread water while unbeknownst to the us all, the real story can be found only a few feet below the surface.

I had already had a go at "A Walk In The Woods" some years ago, attracted by what seemed like a compelling start and Bryson's sardonic and clever humor. Eventually however, I abandoned it about 80% through when I realized it was becoming as arduous as the Appalachian trek itself.

But then this guy went and wrote a book on Australia which, having been a home of mine for a good many years, I was unable to resist. For a bit. This time, 70% through, I once again legged it. I found much of what he claimed to observe inauthentically recalled. Poetic license gone wild. Fine for the fiction section but that's not where that book was.

As you can no doubt already tell, I'm not that smart. So once again, having also spent 11 years in the UK,  and with my UK-residing father frequently bellowing his affections for this author, I was, in a moment of defenselessness, pillaged by the most innocent of Amazon special offers in my inbox. Enthusiastically, with my prior Bryson experiences a distant or reflexively shelved memory, I dove hard into this book looking for wit, easy rolling prose and some expectation of quirk and depth.

Only to quickly hit the riverbed and put my back out.

I'll say this about the man. He's gifted with words. I have a penchant for English vernacular and a British sense of humor and Bryson does possess it in spades. All this despite his coming from a part of America in which the corn dog is a crowning cultural achievement. But you know Goebbels was pretty good with words too and I wasn't a fan. I know what you're thinking. The comparison is not fair. (If you're in doubt, I do mean to Bryson, not Goebbels).

Our friend Bill spends a great deal of potentially illuminating energy huffing and puffing rather than shedding light. Instead of taking us on a journey, he instead garage us along, serving up a detailed account of the ways in which he is peeved. He is content to relay his unlimited supply of utter annoyance, cynicism and unkind thoughts. With great abandon and joy he hurls harpoons at most of what he observes; from the food, to the culture, to a small familial pod of grim, hefty British hotel guests whom he witnesses encircling and devouring a disproportionately large number of desserts. Now look. I've been served potato salad with Shepherd's pie and chips whilst in England. I know things get get a bit starchy from time to time. And granted, not everyone in the UK is Kate Moss. I'm not even sure Kate Moss is Kate Moss, but I felt his ramblings on the unattractiveness of some of those that crossed his path to be somewhat rich coming from a man with a fine face for the printed word.

Nonetheless, I was determined - if only to please my gentle natured father - to finish one of Bryson's books for the first time. You know, like I did with almost every other book I ever bought that wasn't by Mr. Bryson. In the true spirit of a book about Great Britain, I elected to keep calm and carry...well you know what I mean, for heaven's sake.

In the end, this book offers a reasonable number of witty but all too often disparaging and smug comments that offer little to middling insight into the whys and hows of British character. Little in the way of quirky country flat cap wearing herdsmen. Nothing about the folk who deliver the mail in 364 days of rain a year. Little of the milk man who can tell you that thanks to the odd lonely housewife on his route, delivering milk on a feeble and emasculating flatbedded electric milk float can be a more manly pursuit than one might ever imagine.

No, alas not. Mostly just menus, place names and bus schedules. Mostly a litany of complaints, each more mopy than the last about how dreaded the trains, the hotels and (obviously) the weather is. Peppered, of course, with the odd agreeable meal and castle runs. Travelogues are of limited appeal when they comprise largely of the main protagonist trying his best to get the hell away from wherever he is as soon as possible. (Karl Pilkington gets a pass though.) I must say, it's the first time I've ever wondered, in the middle of a book, "If Milton Keynes is really THAT bad then why not just KILL YOURSELF?"

In the end of course, after farting, drinking, elbowing the china cabinets, and occasionally declaring a desire to punch the lights out of Britain, Bryson tries to smooth it all over by wrapping up his journal in a patronizing drenching of platitudes about British character; standard fare: their wry, splendid humor, their indefatigable spirit, and the marvel of the green, rolling views from their hilltops. He effuses the gift of living there for decades. He speaks of how he will miss it. He laments, pondering on how he will surely return. But deep down, this last minute effort to redeem the tone of the book sounds a little hollow. A bit like watching a politician speak at the podium with the wife he just cheated on watching stoically at his side, as he speaks of love of family, while trying to apologetically extricate himself from an adultery scandal.

In the end, this book, though admittedly appealing to my darker side, seems to be mostly a long description outlining which buses and trains Bryson caught, how inconvenient their schedules were, who annoyed him immensely, and how damn cold and soaking wet he was for a good deal of the time while said annoyance was in progress.

Perhaps his familiarity with Britain was his undoing. Perhaps he forgot, after a few decades away from conservative talk radio, all you can eat buffets, and weight loss miracle belt informercials that so much of what he was looking at, was really quite a marvel in the way so much of Europe clearly and obviously is. Sure, it gets complicated. Sure, it has its shortcomings. Sure, pretty much all the shower water pressure absolutely sucks. But then, after cursing while toweling off, you get to walk out the door and see a cathedral that is 800 years old. Or eat black pudding. Or drink your pint on the street outside the pub. In the drizzle. It's a place full of bloody wonders.

That all said, I recall now he did in fact have a good many things to say about the bookshops. No doubt, it was encouraging to know there was something worth reading out there.

Three stars!

No es otro libro más sobre Inglaterra, sus pueblos, sus edificios, costumbres o historia. Es un libro sobre todo lo demás! Bill Bryson nos trae una Inglaterra desconocida y nos la enseña con su peculiar forma de ver las cosas y con un sentido del humor extraordinario.
Puede estar hablando sobre la estructura de la estación de tren mientras espera que llegue el suyo, y de repente salta de tema y te habla de la vida de las palomas o de la forma que tiene uno de actuar al momento de viajar.
Lo he leido en público y la gente me miraba raro cada vez que soltaba una carcajada.

Vingt ans après son arrivée en Angleterre, Bill Bryson décide de refaire son voyage initiatique Outre-Manche - le tour de la Grande-Bretagne jusqu'à John O'Groats avant de repartir aux Etats-Unis avec femme et enfants. Il raconte son périple dans ce livre plein d'humour, d'anecdotes pittoresques et d'histoires cocasses telle que la véritable histoire de Harry Gordon Selfridge et des Dolly Sisters, ou encore celle de la "chanson des Orcades" composée par les tommies morts d'ennui qui y étaient postés pendant la Seconde Guerre Mondiale. Le tout écrit dans un style alerte et dans un anglais très correct et recherché, ce qui est un plus pour le lecteur non anglophone. Ce livre est le meilleur de la demi-douzaine que je possède de cet auteur.

Seule réserve: Mrs Smegma, la patronne tyrannique de la pension de famille au tout début du livre, a été affublée d'un patronyme moins répugnant dans les éditions récentes. What a shame!

funny and informative .

Actually, a previous reviewer sums up this book and author quite nicely - Mr. Bryson is much better with places than with people.  That being said, I must say I have never laughed so hard while reading a book as I have with this particular publication; good thing I read it at home and not someplace public as people would have been giving me funny looks.

I am going to be traveling to the UK soon and thought it would be nice to read someone else's thoughts and views about the country.  So I logged onto Amazon and picked up this book, in which Mr. Bryson (an American who lived in Great Britain for 2 decades) details his travels via train, bus, and on foot through various portions of the country.

I appreciated the author's candidly hilarious experiences, thoughts and views, and almost poetic (well, sometimes more like a limerick than a poem - ahem) descriptions of the countryside, towns, buildings, and people.  The only time I take issue with this book is during a few of his less-than-happy encounters with some of those people described, where Mr. Bryson occasionally comes off as being rather rude (ok, sometimes it felt justifiable - to me - as when he was up against an older couple who used him as their whipping post regarding their recent trip to the US). But I took issue with his treatment of a poor young man working at a McDonalds in Scotland who was simply doing his job and didn't deserve the fractious diatribe to which Mr. Bryson subjected this kid.  Granted, the author was suffering an apparently large hangover, but even I wouldn't be so rude(well, I don't *think* I would, and I've had my own share of hangovers).  Perhaps it's also because I used to work in the service industry and have myself dealt with less-than-cheerful customers who tended to blame the order-taker for a variety of ills.

Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed this book and do recommend it to anybody interested in reading about the beauty, vagaries (funny as well as sad), and small histories of a country as seen through the eyes and experiences of a non-Brit who loves this country whole-heartedly.

Excellant writing. Very engaging , funny and informative. Highly recommend it

I’ve read this a couple of times now and enjoy it just as much. He packs so much humour into each paragraph but so much of it is subtle and self-deprecatory that it never gets in the way.
This must be one of my favourite books.