Bryson writes beautifully and I found the information here very interesting. I've always been far more interested in social history and the mundane and that great and the grand (and never good at dates). This book fits that bill precisely, it's full of minutiae that engaged me for all that it's quite a big book. I didn't get tired of reading and was in fact surprised to suddenly find I had finished (the bibliography is quite long so I was fooled as the the length of the text). My only complaint is that although I found almost everything Bryson wrote about interesting, I didn't think it made a coherent whole. It went this way and that, and I enjoyed the trip in every direction, but as to his claim that all this has to do with our homes, I don't think so, no more so than everything in history has to do with us and our homes. ( )

Possibly my favourite Bill Bryson ever. Within each chapter/room of the house he ties in lots of history and goes off into fascinating explorations of many things -- he either has an incredible brain or an incredible research staff or both. It took me ages to finish -- it's not the kind of book I can read straight through -- but I relished every hour spent with it, and I already want to start it again. ( )

(Print: May 27, 2010; Doubleday (UK); 9780385608275; Hardcover; 536 pages; illustrated.)
Audio: 10/5/2010; 9780307707383; Penguin Random House Publishing Group; duration 16:33:39; 13 parts.
(Feature Film: No).

SUMMARY/EVALUATION:
I selected this one when I saw it displayed somewhere—not sure where, probably Goodreads, but not necessarily. I hadn’t read anything by this author and decided to try it….now, I want to read everything by this author.
The author took me through his home in Wramplingham (Norfolk). He explains that it was a rectory and describes it’s surroundings as seen from a top floor landing. And then, before I knew it, I was learning about Joseph Paxton's Crystal Palace at the Great Exhibition of 1851 and really wishing I could have been there to see it!
Punctuated with light touches of humor throughout, the book continues as a tour through each area of the house, which, while it includes a description of that area in his home, also finds numerous associations to reveal to us — the origin of the area and its historical uses-often in both the United Kingdom and in America, the history of various appointments one would find in the room—a discussion of dining chairs included the origin of Chippendale furniture, etc.
The audio is 16 hours long, so I had to check it out from the library more than once (which meant long periods of waiting for my "hold".), but I was determined to complete it because there is so much fascinating information.

AUTHOR:
Bill Bryson (12/8/1951) Wikipedia tells me that Bill was born in Des Moines, Iowa. He attended Drake University for a couple of years but gave it up to backpack in Europe in 1973 with a friend. He liked it enough to decide to stay. He returned to America with his wife in 1975 to complete his education at Drake. They then returned to Britain in 1977 where they have spent most of their lives since. Bryson writes non-fiction. These are just a few of his earlier works that I hope to get to:
"The Penguin Dictionary of Troublesome Words"; 26 April 1984; Language; Republished in 2002, as “Bryson’s Dictionary of Troublesome Words”.
"The Palace under the Alps and Over 200 Other Unusual, Unspoiled and Infrequently Visited Spots in 16 European Countries"; January 1985; Travel.
"The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America"; August 1989; Travel.
"The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way" (US) / "Mother Tongue: The English Language" (UK); 1 June 1990; Language. Adapted for "Journeys in English" in 2004 for BBC Radio.
"The Penguin Dictionary for Writers and Editors"; 29 August 1991; Language; Republished, in 2009, as “Bryson’s Dictionary: for Writers and Editors”.
"Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe"; 1 February 1992; Travel Featuring Stephen Katz.
"Made in America" (UK) / "Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States" (U.S.); 4 July 1994; Language.
"Notes from a Small Island"; 16 May 1996; Travel; Adapted for television by Carlton Television in 1998.
"A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail"; 4 May 1998; Travel Featuring Stephen Katz; Adapted into a feature film in 2015.
"Notes from a Big Country" (UK) / "I'm a Stranger Here Myself" (U.S.); 1 January 1999; Travel.

NARRATOR:
Bill Bryson. He’s among the minority of authors who narrate their own books quite well.

GENRE:
Non-fiction, History, Architecture

SUBJECTS: (not a comprehensive list) Architecture, Great Britain history, American history, archeology, diseases, households, landscape architecture, sociology, antiques, furniture, Volkerwanderung (Great Migration), Skara Brae, Samuel Pepys, Victorian England, Monticello, Jefferson, Mount Vernon, Washington.

SAMPLE QUOTATION:
From “The Kitchen”
“In the summer of 1662, Samuel Pepys, then a rising young figure in the British Navy Office, invited his boss, Naval Commissioner Peter Pett, to dinner at his home on Seething Lane, near the Tower of London. Pepys was twenty -nine years old and presumably hoped to impress his superior. Instead, to his horror and dismay, he discovered when his plate of sturgeon was set before him that it had within it ‘many little worms creeping’.
Finding one’s food in an advanced state of animation was not a common-place event even in Pepys’s day – he was truly mortified – but being at least a little uncertain about the freshness and integrity of food was a fairly usual condition. If it wasn’t rapidly decomposing from inadequate preservation, there was every chance that it was coloured or bulked with some dangerous and unappealing substances.
Almost nothing, it seems, escaped the devious wiles of food adulterers. Sugar and other expensive ingredients were often stretched with gypsum, plaster of Paris, sand, dust and other forms of ‘daft’, as such additives were collectively known. Butter reportedly was bulked out with tallow and lard. A tea drinker, according to various authorities, might unwittingly take in anything from sawdust to powdered sheep’s dung. One closely inspected shipment, Judith Flanders reports, proved to be only slightly more than half tea; the rest was made up of sand and dirt. Sulphuric acid was added to vinegar for extra sharpness, chalk to milk, turpentine to gin. Arsenite of copper was used to make vegetables greener or to make jellies glisten. Lead chromate gave bakery products a golden glow and brought radiance to mustard. Lead acetate was added to drinks as a sweetener, and red lead somehow made Gloucester cheese lovelier to behold, if not safer to eat.”

RATING:
I gave this book 5 stars. It would seem a great deal of research went into this book. I enjoyed the humor and felt it was quite well written, and though long, it held my interest.
( )

Classic Bill Bryson at his most tangentially fascinating. I've been reading this gradually for about nine months and it's always a joy to pick up. Biggest downside is somewhat unexamined decision to focus on history of the western Europe and the US, but a book has to set boundaries somewhere.... ( )

Four stars because I really enjoy Bryson's style and sense of humor.

Much of this book is fascinating but at the same time reading it is a bit like doing boring reading for homework. It's a great source of obscure and interesting facts and history - the kind of things that sink deep into your brain and you don't even remember knowing them until you find yourself watching Jeopardy and you realize you know who built the Erie canal.

It didn't enthrall me enough to keep me running back to it but I still enjoyed it. I think it would be a really good book to read at the same time you are reading a novel. ( )