Last year my husband and I took up hiking as a hobby we could do together. He has an aunt who is gradually hiking pieces of the Appalachian Trail. When I was looking for books to fill out my Travelogue category this one came up in my Recommendations and I thought it was very appropriate. I've read several reviews that say this book is hilarious, laugh-out-loud funny. I found a few humorous parts, but overall I wouldn't classify it as a hilarious book. There were several beautiful passages that I thought captured how I have felt when out in the great outdoors. And... there was a little more foul language than I care to read, which impeded my enjoyment of it a little. It did make me want to lace up my hiking boots, not to hike the AT, but to be outdoors in general. ( )

get immersed in the experience

Bill Bryson recounts his bumbling travels on the Appalachian Trail with an old friend, Stephen Katz. With lots of humor, vivid descriptions, and a smattering of botany and geology, this was a hugely enjoyable read. I'm not sure if I entirely believe his encounters with fellow travelers (they seem a little too humorous not to be embellished), but the stories are fun and I learned a lot along the way. I only wish I'd picked up the book earlier. ( )

This is not a book I was planning to read. A Walk in the Woods was thrust upon me by my wife’s scuba diving friend/coworker because not only is she a fine person, but she apparently also has excellent taste, and may have been aware that, as a lad and young adult, I had lived a mere dozen or so miles from the Appalachian Trail, and I had done an extensive amount of hiking, including that local (in the most expansive sense of the word) part of the AT.

Well, it seems that I have a new (to me) author to add to my ‘favorites’ list. It’s a book that really made me want to get up and do the hike with him. I am a notoriously slow reader, but polished this one off, all two hundred and seventy-four pages of this paperback edition, in less than a week – most of it on a treadmill. I was able to read about eight pages per mile (mine, not his) and reckon that I burned almost three thousand calories in the process.

Despite Mr. Bryson’s seeming infatuation with death-by-bear-or-murder that is visited several times in the book, it is a thoroughly enjoyable read for a number of reasons. He mentions a few books that he read in preparation for his hike. I happen to already have had two of them in my possession, as a thru-hike was once (several times, actually) a personal goal of mine. I also had out my copy of New York Walk Book so that when he wrote about trekking the AT in the New Jersey through west of the Hudson River part of New York (which I’ve done several times in my youth), I could compare notes and references. Alas, the author skipped that part entirely! I was, however, able to directly relate to his account of how things were on Skyline Drive and in Front Royal, Virginia. My first wife and I had bicycled through there about ten years earlier, and got a room at Skyland Manor (coincidentally on our 3rd wedding anniversary). We hiked a few miles of the AT while we were there.

This book is well written, witty, quite humorous throughout and sometimes sullen. I have no doubt that he wrote a truthful account of the adventure he and his hiking partner (or he alone) undertook, now thirteen years ago. There is a richness of description of the environments they found themselves in, of the people they met, and poignant histories of the areas he visited. This guy can really write!

As it turns out, this isn’t the first book of his I’ve read. I reference my eBook copy of his Bryson’s Dictionary of Troublesome Words more often than I care to admit. I wasn’t aware that it was the same Bill Bryson! Coincidentally, it was a mere two weeks ago that I bought a copy of his Dictionary for Writers and Editors (guess why). So, is it possible that this language/word-oriented fellow (who happens to be a mere year older than me) would be writing about arduous, plodding schleps in quasi-remote areas of seemingly nowhere? You bet your G.O.R.P. he did! I picked up another of his books last night. It’s not going to be my next read, but it’s taking a higher priority on my TBR list than the majority of books already there.

Get this book – you’ll love it! ( )

Reading A Walk in the Woods was an unusual experience. I loved it, I hated it, and then I liked it. That was the progression of the book for me, and I can’t help but wonder if, on some level, that parallels Bryson’s own feelings about the Appalachian Trail.

The book begins with a great deal of humanity, humor and wry reality as Bryson and his hiking companion, Steve Katz, get ready for and set out on the trail. The supplies they bought, even the decision to bring Katz along, the first few days and the long hauls later on, good experiences and bad, were all a delight to read.

Mid-way through the book, however, it took a disastrous turn. The book, I mean, not the hiking trip. Bryson soldiered on without Katz for a time, and as a “day hiker”, driving to locations along the trail, hiking for the day, returning to his car and going home. He describes very vividly how unsatisfying this often was. The problem is, he also chose this part of the book to delve into forestry, ecology, environmental debate, and industrialization for long passages at a time. It was – quite miserable to get through, to be frank. Especially after the delightful and personal account that began the book, I did not enjoy the abrupt shift into textbook-like, didactic material. Why did the tone change so drastically? Was Bryson’s experience of those separate legs of the trip similarly, disjointedly changed?

In the end, Bryson and Katz hike together again and the writing style goes back to something like what it was in the beginning. It was hard, though, to shake off those middle bits, and the end felt a bit unsatisfying as a result. But I liked the book, I did; at least, the first half was wonderful enough to make up for the rest. ( )