A loving and hilarious—if occasionally spiky—valentine to Bill Bryson’s adopted country, Great Britain. Prepare for total joy and multiple episodes of unseemly laughter. Twenty years ago, Bill Bryson went on a trip around Britain to discover and celebrate that green and pleasant land. The result was Notes from a Small Island, a true classic and one of the bestselling travel books ever written. … travel books ever written. Now he has traveled about Britain again, by bus and train and rental car and on foot, to see what has changed—and what hasn’t.
Following (but not too closely) a route he dubs the Bryson Line, from Bognor Regis in the south to Cape Wrath in the north, by way of places few travelers ever get to at all, Bryson rediscovers the wondrously beautiful, magnificently eccentric, endearingly singular country that he both celebrates and, when called for, twits. With his matchless instinct for the funniest and quirkiest and his unerring eye for the idiotic, the bewildering, the appealing, and the ridiculous, he offers acute and perceptive insights into all that is best and worst about Britain today.
Nothing is more entertaining than Bill Bryson on the road—and on a tear. The Road to Little Dribbling reaffirms his stature as a master of the travel narrative—and a really, really funny guy.
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Per usual Bill Bryson writes in his conversational and often distracted manner. The story, a travelogue concerns his revisiting places in the UK that he has been before and some he hasn’t. This is not “A Walk In the Woods”, but a view of the world from an older person who has opinions and inner conversations that we who have made the long journey through six or seven decades can appreciate. I didn’t rush through it, and it was an enjoyable conversation with a fellow traveler on the road to curmudgeon-ism. Some laugh out loud, but mostly chuckling at Bill’s observations of the way the world was and how it is now: different.
This is the sequel to “Notes from a Small Island” which the author wrote in his forties while traveling around the U.K. Now he is in his sixties and he is a bit crotchety. Thus, the tone is not quite as upbeat as the earlier work. Still, I can read anything written by Bryson.
Great guide for those planning to wander through England. This book is a nice introduction to GB’s nooks and crannies. Interesting.
another wonderful book by Bill Bryson…need i say more?