If you're from the UK or have a particular interest in their ways, the book to me was so so and I didn't finish.

Fresh and jarring observations from the young Bryson. ( )

Good travelogue. A bit redundant, but I enjoyed it. ( )

I always enjoy Bryson, and I was looking forward to this book as I'm a huge anglophile. The book was decent enough, but I wish he'd spent more time talking about the history rather than a lot of the mundanities of travel. And I wish he'd gone to slightly more interesting places. A lot of the towns he was in were, well, kind of boring. That may have been part of the point of the memoir, but still. The book did have its share of LOL moments, of course. ( )

Maybe it's because I've worked for 25 years in customer service, but listening to some middle-class dude complain about trivialities is not my idea of entertainment, it's work.

In the main, the book was okay. There were some hilarious bits, however, much of the humor was in the form of grousing, which is not to my taste. I was thinking it was going to be a 3-star book as some bits dragged, but then . . . at page 274, so close to the end, I hit this:

In the end, fractious and impatient, I went into a crowded McDonald's, waited ages in a long, shuffling line, which made me even more fractious and impatient, and finally ordered a cup of coffee and an Egg McMuffin.

"Do you want an apple turnover with that?"asked the young man who served me.

I looked at him for a moment. "I'm sorry," I said, "do I appear to be brain-damaged?"

"Pardon?"

"Correct me if I'm wrong, but I didn't ask for an apple turnover, did I?"

"Uh . . . no"

"So do I look as if I have some mental condition that would render me unable to ask for an apple turnover if I wanted one?"

"No, it's just that we're told to ask everyone, like."

"What, you think everyone in Edinburgh is brain-damaged?"

"We're just told to ask everyone, like."

"Well, I don't want an apple turnover, which is why I didn't ask for one. Is there anything else you'd like to know if I don't want?"

"We're just told to ask everyone."

"Do you remember what I do want?"

He looked in confusion at his cash register "Uh, an Egg McMuffin and a cup of coffee."

"Do you think I might have it this morning or shall we talk some more?"

"Oh, uh, right, I'll just get it"

"Thank you."

Well, honestly.

That's just not funny. Subjecting an employee to shaming sarcasm because you're having a crappy day isn't my idea of humor. It's not even my idea of being a basically acceptable human being.

I read a bit further on to see if the author ever expressed any sort of awareness that the scene above describes an overbearing bully belittling a employee in the middle of a rush for executing their job as required by their employer. He didn't.

There were some good laughs in the book, but nothing that could make up for my disgust at this. In particular given that it was preceded by another bit where he totally blows up on some poor hotel clerk, this seems likely to be pattern behavior. I gave the hotel scene a pass since he owned some chagrin for that one. But this, this is completely unacceptable behavior. If you aren't bothered by this, you are part of the problem.

I DNFed shortly after this scene even thought there were only 37 pages left. I'm so disgusted by what I just read that I feel faintly queasy. ( )