Author:
ill Bryson
Publisher:
Random House Audio; Unabridged edition
ISBN:
0147526876
Language:
English
Formats:
Kindle,Hardcover,Paperback, Large Print,Audible, Unabridged,Audio CD, Audiobook, CD, Unabridged,
Category: Books,Travel,Europe, FREE Shipping,
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. 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.
From the Hardcover edition.
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. 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.
From the Hardcover edition.
Travel literature is the genre that made Bill Bryson famous. From his debut, The Lost Continent (1989), to Down Under (2000), the cerebral yet comedic author from Des Moines, Iowa helped resuscitate the travel narrative and take it mainstream. However, after the millennial publication of his romp around Australia, Bryson diversified, penning books about science (A Short History of Nearly Everything), his youth (The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid), the Bard of Avon (Shakespeare), and everything from the spice trade (At Home) to baseball (One Summer).
My first Bryson read was A Walk in the Woods, giddily passed around my workplace, and hurriedly followed by the prequel to The Road to Little Dribbling: Notes from a Small Island – the book that made Bill a celebrity in Britain and supposedly outsold more than any other travelogue. Subsequently, I was hooked and devoured most of Bryson’s other efforts. Some of those efforts (e.g. Shakespeare) are outstanding, but it was the travel narratives that left the deepest impression.
Bill Bryson introduced me to travel literature, meaning that prior to A Walk in the Woods, I didn’t know the category existed. In an interview, Bryson intimated he liked Paul Theroux (whose Kingdom by the Sea may have inspired Notes from a Small Island) and Redmond O’Hanlon, so I read their books and the authors they liked and discovered a rich genre populated by talented and erudite writers. Bill Bryson also introduced me to a unique style: fluid yet humourous, informative yet entertaining, charmingly complimentary yet devastatingly critical. Once a fan who eagerly anticipated Bill’s newest release, I eventually discovered other wordsmiths and gave his last two efforts a miss.
Twenty years ago (yes, really!), Bill Bryson wrote the brilliant "Notes from a Small Island" about his travels around Great Britain. This is a sequel, of sorts, with Bryson again travelling around Britain and making observations. He explains in Chapter 1 that his plan was to travel between the two points that were the furtherest apart when separated by a straight line: Bognor Regis in the South and Cape Wrath in northernmost Scotland. Rather than follow the line religiously, he determined to use it as a rough guidance whilst visiting as many new places as he possibly could.
This is rubbish. In fact, Bryson veers all over the south of Britain, going as far west as Cornwall and Wales and as far east as Norfolk and East Anglia, and showing remarkably little interest in venturing north. Two thirds of the way through the book and he's only made it to Birmingham. Scotland gets a mere 12 pages of the total 381 (Wales gets 15). So really, he should have been honest about the fact that when he says Britain, what he really means is England. There is a map at the front of the book showing all sorts of places in Britain: it bears zero resemblance to the places that he actually visits.
The other thing that emerges - and I suspect the real reason for the lower English focus - is that rather than being one long piece of travel, this is a group of day trips and overnight trips, which are broken up by family events and trips to the US and various other commitments. If this was to be the approach, I wish Bryson had taken a bit more care in the planning. So often he turns up somewhere, realises it's Sunday and the museums are closed, and then gives up and leaves again.
Notes from a Small Island
Veering from the ludicrous to the endearing and back again, Notes From a Small Island is a delightfully irreverent jaunt around the unparalleled floating nation that has produced zebra crossings, Shakespeare, Twiggie Winkie's Farm, and ...
One Summer
In that year America stepped out onto the world stage as the main event, and One Summer transforms it all into narrative nonfiction of the highest order. From the Hardcover edition.
Notes From a Big Country
So firm was he, in fact, that gathered here are nineteen months' worth of his popular columns about the strangest of phenomena -- the American way of life.Whether discussing the dazzling efficiency of the garbage disposal unit, the mind ...
A Walk in the Woods
An instant classic, riotously funny, A Walk in the Woods will add a whole new audience to the legions of Bill Bryson fans.
In a Sunburned Country
Australia is an immense and fortunate land, and it has found in Bill Bryson its perfect guide. From the Trade Paperback edition.
The Dogs of Littlefield
The Dogs of Littlefield is “a compelling, poignant yet unsentimental novel that examines life, love, and loss” (Sunday Mirror, UK).
Made in America
Bill Bryson, who gave glorious voice to The Mother Tongue, now celebrates her magnificent offspring in the book that reveals once and for all how a dusty western hamlet with neither woods nor holly came to be known as Hollywood...and ...
The Lost Continent
"I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to." And, as soon as Bill Bryson was old enough, he left. Des Moines couldn't hold him, but it did lure him back.
Heart and Brain
From paying taxes and getting up for work to dancing with kittens and starting a band, readers everywhere will relate to the ongoing struggle between Heart and Brain.
The Little Book of Management Bollocks
Read this book and you will be transformed overnight into a successful modern manager, capable of talking authentic management bollocks at any hour of the day or night, because, let's face it, talking bollocks is what modern management is ...
The Road to Character
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE ECONOMIST • “I wrote this book not sure I could follow the road to character, but I wanted at least to know what the road looks like and how other people ...
Dispatches from Pluto
Adventure writer Richard Grant takes on “the most American place on Earth” the enigmatic, beautiful, often derided Mississippi Delta.
The Road to Little Dribbling
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. From the Hardcover edition.
Overland in Forty-nine
It was a little dribbling spring off the road on a mountain side; by waiting and not being overly particular as to a little mud, we managed to get enough to assuage our thirst and somewhat relieve the cattle. The next water was at 'Rabbit Hole ...
Parliamentary Debates, Volume 14
With respect to the taxation, had the Road Boards to thank the Provincial Government for that? ... The honorable member, in referring to the Wan- gtmui River, spoke of it as a little dribbling stream, that could not hold shipping; and advised them ...
The Californian, Volume 4
We hasten down to quench our thirst, and get a sight of them : the road becomes too steep to walk, but we can slide. ... It did not look very grand, it is true it was but a little dribbling stream in a large bed ; but it could doubtless get up a grand ...
The Open Road: Official Organ of the Society of the Universal ..., Volume 7
What will your little dribbling ' ' business ' ' cares amount to in a hundred years from now? But the benediction of one October day in the woods will be with you, blessing you and enriching your soul till time is not. Come, then. Take my hand.
An Illustrated History of Duke Basketball
There was little dribbling and players passed the ball the same way they shot it with two hands. Only one guard was permitted to ... Two weeks later, Trinity took a train ride to Wake Forest for its first road game. The result was essentially the ...
Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 20
Behind him stood a thin person in another white choker, and a little boy like a plump spider beyond all in white chokers. ... The horses had a bite of hay further on, and then trotted square and brisk till sunrise, when we halted for a more general feed at a road-side gasthaus. ... a queer flat-domed tower; and a wrought-iron skeleton of a saint, rusty and honey-combed by the little dribbling fountain below.
Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 20
Behind him stood a thin person in another white choker, and a little boy like a plump spider beyond all in white chokers. ... The horses had a bite of hay further on, and then trotted square and brisk till sunrise, when we halted for a more general feed at a road-side gasthaus. ... a queer flat-domed tower; and a wrought-iron skeleton of a saint, rusty and honey-combed by the little dribbling fountain below.
Author: As If!
Dancers Among Us
The Elements
Atlas Obscura
Super Graphic
Wings in Orbit
This Vast Southern Empire
The Cask of Amontillado #1
Golden Girls Forever
Footnotes from the World's Greatest Bookstores
Suggestible You
20 Ways to Draw a Tree and 44 Other Nifty Things from Nature
The Crash of 2016
The Official Guide for GMAT Review 2016 with Online Question Bank and Exclusive Video
Atlas of the World
SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome
The Harbinger
The Secret History of Twin Peaks
The Trouble with Pleasure
Caught in the Revolution
