by Bill Bryson
This book was not at all what I expected... However, knowing what Bryson is like, it is exactly what I should have expected it to be.
I thought that it was going to be a room by room exploration of his house, an old rectory, in Norfolk. How that could fill 536 pages did puzzle me a bit and so I gave it a try when Jean brought it home from the library.
It really has little to do with that house but instead is a fascinating, almost stream of consciousness, ramble through the factoids that he collects when doing his research... which must be almost all of his waking hours.
Reading the book can best be compared to surfing the internet, but doing it very well and encountering only things that are fascinating.
We all know about Charles Darwin... but how many of us know that he spent eight years on the manuscript of a treatise on barnacles? Then he spent another three years producing a 684-page study of barnacles and a companion work on fossil barnacles...
The beauty of this information is that it prepares us for the punchline that Bryson had in waiting. Upon the conclusion of the work, Darwin said: "I hate a barnacle as no man ever did before."
Great!
One of the great beauties of the book is that it can be picked up and read at any time whether you have minutes or hours to spend with it. It can be put aside for days and then opened at the bookmark and off you go yet again.
It brought me great pleasure ...
Reviewed by David Nale
I thought that it was going to be a room by room exploration of his house, an old rectory, in Norfolk. How that could fill 536 pages did puzzle me a bit and so I gave it a try when Jean brought it home from the library.
It really has little to do with that house but instead is a fascinating, almost stream of consciousness, ramble through the factoids that he collects when doing his research... which must be almost all of his waking hours.
Reading the book can best be compared to surfing the internet, but doing it very well and encountering only things that are fascinating.
We all know about Charles Darwin... but how many of us know that he spent eight years on the manuscript of a treatise on barnacles? Then he spent another three years producing a 684-page study of barnacles and a companion work on fossil barnacles...
The beauty of this information is that it prepares us for the punchline that Bryson had in waiting. Upon the conclusion of the work, Darwin said: "I hate a barnacle as no man ever did before."
Great!
One of the great beauties of the book is that it can be picked up and read at any time whether you have minutes or hours to spend with it. It can be put aside for days and then opened at the bookmark and off you go yet again.
It brought me great pleasure ...
Reviewed by David Nale
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