makes me want to travel, see everything, watch people, laugh at odd traditions and just enjoy what you get ( )

Bryson's travel writing is brilliant, funny - and non better than his look at his adopted country. More on the UK now you're back, please, Bill! ( )

Last summer I was reading one of Fabio Volo’s witty love stories,"IL GIORNO IN PIU' ", and I discovered that all around the world there are nice cafés called Starbucks where you can comfortably sit and just have coffee – especially long American coffee, big mugs of it – reading, writing, or just looking around for hours if you like. The atmosphere he described was so inviting I heartly wished to go to one of those cafeterias somewhere in the world some day. It came true and I found myself alone in a Starbuck’s café in London about 3 weeks ago during the Easter holidays. Why am I telling you about that? Because I read part of the book I want to tell you about just in that place, for 2 hours, sipping a very huge quantity of English/American coffee. I was sitting there alone waiting - unlike Fabio Volo who was waiting for a beautiful Italian girl in New York to make her a surprise- for my husband and son who were visiting the Stanford Bridge, the stadium of the Chelsea football club. So, all alone there, I spent some time leafing through Bill Bryson’s NOTES FROM A SMALL ISLAND, which I finally completed last night. It was odd to read this travel book about England, written by an American journalist/writer, while I was an Italian tourist visiting London for some days…
After nearly two decades in Britain, Bill Bryson, took the decision to move back to the States for a while, to let his kids experience life in another country, to give his wife the chance to shop until 10 p.m. seven nights a week, and, most of all, because he had read that 3.7 million Americans believed that they had been abducted by aliens at one time or another, and it was thus clear to him that his people needed him (!)
Bill Bryson is considered a master of witty prose and indeed he made me amile more than once and laugh out loud even at some of his humorous anecdotes. He tells about his last trip around Britain before leaving his much-loved home in North Yorkshire, a sort of valedictory tour of the green and kindly island that had so long been his home. His aim was to take stock of the nation's public face and private parts and to analyse what precisely it was he loved so much about a country which had been home to him for so long.
A short excerpt from pp. 98-99 of 1995 edition:
"One of the charms of the British is that they have so little idea of their own virtues, and nowhere is this more true than with their happiness. You will laugh to hear me say it, but they are the haappiest people on earth. Honestly. Watch any two Britons in conversation and see how long it is before they smile or laugh over some joke or pleasantry. It won't be more than a few seconds. (...) I used to be puzzled by the curious British attitude to pleasure, and that tireless, dogged optimism of theirs that allowed them to attach an upbeat turn of phrase to direct inadequacies - 'well, it makes a change', 'mustn't grumble', 'you could do worse','it's not much, but it's cheap and cheerful', 'it's quite nice REALLY' - but gradually I came round to their way of thinking and my life has never been happier. I remember myself sitting in damp clothes in a cold café on a dreary seaside promenade and being presented a cup of tea and a teacake and going 'Oooh, lovely!', and I knew the process had started". ( )

What an utterly wonderful way to travel a country, vicariously. Bryson's humor is disarming, and his writing clean and easy to read. The way he describes the various parts of the country clearly demonstrates that he loves this England that he lived in for ten years, loves it enough to treat it with both praise and affectionate criticism. Whether he is extolling the virtues of certain under-appreciated areas, or sharply undermining cities that he finds obnoxious or well below expectations, you almost have the feeling of a parent towards a child, both praising and admonishing. Bryson doesn't shy away from his own faults and virtues either; many anecdotes focus on the close and personal, relating almost all the geography he traverses to his own life in some way. This correlation makes the experience much more human and intimate.

I haven't read a travel essay in a long time, and those I did read weren't even from this century, so this was a new reading experience. I loved it! Who knew that nonfiction could be so engrossing? (Sorry, nonfiction fans, that's just my personal bias of fiction coming out.) I will definitely be reading more by Bryson. In fact, I think if I do another book challenge, I will create a travel category. The only bad thing about reading this book was that now I want to go to England, and see all the places for myself! ( )

This travelogue examines Great Britain from the perspective of a twenty-year resident who will soon be leaving it to return to America and wants to take it all in one last time. In many cases, Bryson's assessments of his last looks at his adopted country are laugh-out-loud funny, possessing the charm and good humour of traditional British wit alongside an American sensibility of knowing when to dig a little harder (even, sometimes, at himself). Unlike some travel guides, the book is not an effort to explain in thorough detail the best and worst things to see and do in travelling across Britain, but many readers will come away feeling like they've discovered at least one extra little hamlet or village to add to their list of places to visit. However, you also get a good sense of Britain as a place to live in terms of how the British themselves experience and inhabit their "small island" space. Sometimes the observations are obvious, and sometimes Bryson seems to notice the same things (architecture, bizarre hotel practices, the inaccessibility of public transport on Sundays) in each of the places he visits, but overall, the presentation is an honest look at a Britain that is not perfect, but that you can't help but love anyway. If you have any affinity for this little corner of the globe, the book is a jolly good read. ( )