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Loading... The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America (1989)by Bill Bryson
  
Folio Society (422) » 7 more Books Read in 2020 (1,179) Books Read in 2016 (4,325) 2015 UpROOTed (1) Allie's Wishlist (7) Books I've read (56) No current Talk conversations about this book. very funny; enjoyable; liked reading about all the places he'd been where I'd been too, and seeing what he had to say about them (  ) MarkLacy | May 29, 2022 |  yeah - a bit too stereotypical for my liking. (  ) donhazelwood | Mar 11, 2022 | Written in the 1980s, this book shows its age. Bryson makes comments that would not be publishable today. He remarks on women's bottoms (fetish, methinks), skin color, and obesity. While never declaring itself a travel guide, Bryson provides uneven coverage. He is overly dismissive of some areas of the US (Detroit, Nevada...) and too adoring of others (Iowa, Iowa, Iowa). Nonetheless, when not cringing, he made me laugh out loud at times. (Tetons --as in the Grand Tetons-- is French for tits...thank goodness the French didn't discover the Grand Canyon) (  ) mjspear | Nov 23, 2021 | Want a disappointment this book was for me. I absolutely loved A Walk in the Woods and enjoyed In a Sun-burnt Country, but here Bryson seems to have no lightness of spirit at all. The occasional laughs found in this book are drowned beneath the unkind and limited view he offers here. Ostensibly this is a chronicle of Bryson revisiting his home country and taking a nostalgic driving tour. And that would have been great! But this book is not that. Instead it’s a collection of columns Bryson wrote for a British newspaper about his trip down memory lane. I don’t know if he thought he’d get more laughs from Brits by continuously moaning about the US, or if he was a more callow writer then and thought smarminess could be a substitute for wit or humor. This is one of Bryson’s early books. I’d give it a hard pass. ( )1  Matke | Oct 20, 2021 | Got to be the snottiest book I've ever read. ( )1 unclebob53703 | Oct 1, 2021 | no reviews | add a review
Belongs to Series
And after 10 years in England he decided to go home, to a foreign country. In an ageing Chevrolet Chevette, he drove nearly 14,000 miles through 38 states to compile this hilarious and perceptive state-of-the-nation report on small-town America. From the Deep South to the Wild West, from Elvis' birthplace through to Custer's Last Stand, Bryson visits places he re-named Dullard, Coma, and Doldrum (so the residents don't sue or come after him with baseball bats). But his hopes of finding the American dream end in a nightmare of greed, ignorance, and pollution. This is a wickedly witty and savagely funny assessment of a country lost to itself, and to him. No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)917.30492 — History and Geography Geography and Travel North America United States TravelLC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.67)
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