words in scarlet ink

There were a couple of authors I hit heavily in 2018, the first of which being Bill Bryson.

I read/listened to:
The Road to Little Dribbling: Adventures of an American in Britain
In A Sunburned Country
At Home: A Short History of Private Life
Shakespeare: The World as Stage
A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail
Journeys in English
A Short History of Nearly Everything
The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid
Neither Here Nor There

and, last but not least, I’m A Stranger Here Myself.

Bryson writes about history and travel, and I enjoy his wit, knowledge and humor on these subjects.

His travel books in this bunch were The Road to Little Dribbling: Adventures of an American in Britain (Bryson in Britain), In A Sunburned Country (Bryson in Australia), A Walk in the Woods (Bryson on the Appalachian Trail), and I’m A Stranger Here Myself (Bryson in America after living abroad for 20 years with his British wife).

A Walk in the Woods is probably Bryson’s most famous travel book, and it was adapted into a film starring Robert Redford and Nick Nolte in 2015. Bryson and a friend of his from high school, who he calls Stephen Katz, set off to hike the entire Appalachian Trail together. For those who don’t know, the Appalachian Trail is a marked 2,200 mile hiking trail that runs from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Mount Katahdin in Maine and, IIRC, is the longest hiking only trail in the world. Bryson and Katz do not end up hiking the whole trail, but they do hike a good portion of it, and A Walk in the Woods is, by far, one of the funniest travel books I have ever read. The frenemy-like relationship between Bryson and Katz only adds to the hysterics, and when they accidentally pick up Maryellen as a traveling companion, the results are downright hilarious.

While all of Bryson’s books are, at points, laugh out loud funny, his travel books are uniquely humorous. The culture clashes (particularly in foreign countries and regions in the USA outside of his own), his desire to do things in a frugal manner, and his gift for capturing the characters of people he meets combine into relatable, funny experiences that anyone who has ever felt like a fish out of water can appreciate.

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid was a memoir, and while funny and insightful and quite interesting, Bryson’s nostalgia for 50s and 60s America made me cringe a little. I don’t think I’m nostalgic by nature, and the 50s and 60s were a hard time for a lot of people. I just have no desire to return to the era. However, I do get Bryson’s desire for people to return to being politer and quieter.

The other books by Bryson on my list were history books. Most had a central theme, although how closely he stuck to the theme varies. At Home: A Short History of Private Life was about the history of home life and actual rooms in houses, though it branched out quite a bit. A Short History of Nearly Everything is probably Bryson’s most famous history book on my list, and it was quite interesting. It was complex but understandable, with Bryson explaining points of chemistry, geology, biology, and physics in terms the average reader can understand. It was also the only book of Bryson’s he didn’t read for his own audiobook, which was disappointing. I loved listening to Bryson read his audiobooks.

But my favorite of his history books was, of course, Shakespeare: The World as Stage. I don’t know if my love of Shakespeare has been mentioned here. I haven’t read a play on its own in quite some time – since before I started keeping this blog, I think. I read a ton of his plays growing up, for school and for fun, at least two a year for all the summers I went to Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival. I haven’t been there in a while. But I love Shakespeare because of HVSF, and am fascinated by the mystery surrounding Shakespeare himself.

Bryson jumps into those mysteries head first, interviewing scholars, establishing what is and is known about the world’s most famous playwright, discussing what can be proved and disproved or neither, as well as discussing questions of authorship, lost plays, and background of cultural, social, political, and historical events of the time that influenced the work.

One thing that I found particularly interesting was that plots and characters by authors and playwrights during Shakespeare’s time were considered common property, and Shakespeare consequently used established characters and plots from other plays, most of which survive in pieces or in name only in the historical record. The plays themselves have disappeared.

The whole book was very interesting but one part that Bryson does focus on towards the conclusion of the book is that people seem determined to believe that William Shakespeare – whether they think he was a composite person or a pen name for one author or many authors – didn’t write his own works. Bryson goes on to say that the theories about who the true authors really were never seem to quite fit and that this determination also doesn’t seem to apply to other authors at the time, Ben Johnson or Christopher Marlowe being prime examples.

I think the fact that people can’t believe that Shakespeare wrote his own work kind of speaks to the work’s enduring brilliance. After all this time and all this study and scholarship, people still can’t believe that one man wrote all those plays. It’s incredible.

So that was my journey through Bill Bryson’s works. I highly recommend all of Bill Bryson’s stories. You will learn stuff, and laugh out loud doing it. I also highly recommend the audiobooks, which Bryson reads himself with his dry, humorous delivery.