Scan barcode
beckyyreadss's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
slow-paced
2.0
I decided to read this book because I bought a poster with 100 books to read in your lifetime. This is the sixteenth book I've read on this poster. As with most books on this poster, I struggled with it. I don’t know if it’s the whole classic feel to them, but this was a mission to finish, which I was gutted about considering it was a book based on the UK and was hoping I would enjoy it more.
This book is based on Bill Bryson and in 1995, before leaving his much-loved home in North Yorkshire to move back to the states for a few years with his family, he insisted on taking one last trip around Britain, a sort of valedictory tour of the green and kindly island that had been his home for so long. His aim was to take stock of the nation’s public face and private parts, and to analyse what precisely it was hr loved so much about a country that had produced Marmite, zebra crossings and places named like Farleigh Wallop, Titsey and Shellow Bowells.
For some bizarre reason I though this book was a fictional book based on places in England, not a memoir. So, I was a little disappointed but decided to carry on and then I was bored. Bill Bryson does nothing but complain about the UK. As someone born and bred in the UK, we get it, but we are used to it, where he starts complaining about how everywhere looks the same besides a few places that he describes in great details. But then for the places he found boring, he spent the whole chapter shitting on it especially places in the North West and as someone based in the North West it wasn’t funny. I found myself skimming through the bits where he was repeating himself about trains and chow each hotel was practically the same.
I would have thought there was some other characters mentioned that would have moved the story along, but besides the hotel staff he had a go at for being left out in the rain, there was just mentioned of strangers, but no, so I ended up skimming through it because I couldn’t care about his adventures.
The only reason why it’s not one star is because the strangers were mentioned and the British slang and humour which I could finally understand made me half-chuckle a few times in this book.
I don’t think I'm going to carry on with the series or read any other of Bill’s work.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Ableism, Fatphobia, and Sexism
Moderate: Body shaming, Bullying, and Misogyny
Minor: Racial slurs and Racism
busybeezle's review against another edition
funny
informative
lighthearted
medium-paced
3.0
I enjoyed this book at the beginning. Bryson seemed to have a genuine affection for (some of) Britain (the bucolic bits, the historical bits) and for (some of) its people (the ones who barely interacted with him and on whom he could project his own ideas of what British people are like and what he liked about them). I was charmed by the early chapters, although since they took place in a part of England (Dorset) I visited as a child, I'm pretty sure personal nostalgia played a big role in my liking that part of the book. But as others have said, this gets repetitive fast, and Bryson quickly becomes an atrocious travel companion.
He may very well be a lovely person in real life, but here he comes across as a smug, condescending, sexist, fatphobic bully with a serious anger management problem. He screams at a couple out walking their dogs. He screams at manager of a hotel he's staying at. He melts down when some poor teenager working at McDonald's asks him if he wants to add an apple turnover to his order. And he seems to think we should be cheering him on: 'Yeah, Bill! You sure told that McDonald's employee! How dare he follow his manager's instructions and try to upsell you? No, of course you shouldn't have said "no thanks" like any normal person. You needed to put him in his place!'
At one point, he gleefully recounts hitting a ten-year-old child with his bag, just because the kid happened to be sitting across from him on a train and I guess Bryson couldn't cope with another human daring to exist in the same space for the length of a single train ride. It's no wonder his own wife and children didn't accompany him on this trip--he sounds like a terrible person to have to travel with. It's a shame, because I enjoyed one of his other books (America: One Summer, 1927) and had heard such great things about this that I went into it with high hopes. I left with such a strong dislike for the author, I don't know that I'll ever want to read anything by him again.
He may very well be a lovely person in real life, but here he comes across as a smug, condescending, sexist, fatphobic bully with a serious anger management problem. He screams at a couple out walking their dogs. He screams at manager of a hotel he's staying at. He melts down when some poor teenager working at McDonald's asks him if he wants to add an apple turnover to his order. And he seems to think we should be cheering him on: 'Yeah, Bill! You sure told that McDonald's employee! How dare he follow his manager's instructions and try to upsell you? No, of course you shouldn't have said "no thanks" like any normal person. You needed to put him in his place!'
At one point, he gleefully recounts hitting a ten-year-old child with his bag, just because the kid happened to be sitting across from him on a train and I guess Bryson couldn't cope with another human daring to exist in the same space for the length of a single train ride. It's no wonder his own wife and children didn't accompany him on this trip--he sounds like a terrible person to have to travel with. It's a shame, because I enjoyed one of his other books (America: One Summer, 1927) and had heard such great things about this that I went into it with high hopes. I left with such a strong dislike for the author, I don't know that I'll ever want to read anything by him again.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Fatphobia and Sexism
ghp73's review against another edition
adventurous
lighthearted
medium-paced
2.5
Content Warnings
Moderate: Misogyny and Sexism
Minor: Ableism and Fatphobia
lineyrose's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
medium-paced
3.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Fatphobia and Sexism
samvansam's review against another edition
informative
medium-paced
1.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Fatphobia
Moderate: Ableism, Body shaming, Bullying, Racism, Sexism, and Xenophobia
Would've enjoyed it if not for the fatphobia, ableism, and racism that Bryson repeatedly uses for "jokes." Did not finish the book, threw it out after making myself go through two-thirds of it. I really hope he's changed his mind about such things being funny now that he's also come out with a pop-sci book about the human body, but really, why did they leave these things in in a new (2015) edition? Extremely disappointed because I think I could've really enjoyed this book otherwise as it discusses more than just the big touristy destinations in Britain and Bryson has plenty of other ways to show the reader that it's not just the British that can be funny.