Bill Bryson, Notes From a Small Island

Bill Bryson grew up in Iowa and moved to England in 1973. After twenty years there, he moved back to the U.S., but before he did took a tour of the U.K., mostly by public transport and with a view to writing about his adventures. Hence this book, which is the first I've read from the author (though I did see the Robert Redford movie that resulted from his Appalachian Trail book, A Walk in the Woods).

Bryson likes to walk. He admires good architecture. He loves England—its people, its oddities, its land. He's a clever, often outright funny writer, and I now understand why he's had such success as a travel writer. He's curmudgeonly, and every now and again comes off as an arrogant jerk, but it's possible that he exaggerates when describing those incidents and isn't in real life as obnoxious as he portrays himself. Reading this book, one feels something of his admiration for England, though I'm prone to that to begin with (albeit having never been there). I do wish that the book included photos of the places he describes, and lots of them, but there are none. Also maps. There are no maps! I very much wanted to follow along with Bryson's journey in some handy way. I think it would also have been a bit more interesting to me if I were familiar with the areas he describes. I'd sign up for a book detailing his jaunts through Connecticut, for example—though I suspect knowing the place would also make a reader more likely to find Bryson's observations annoying, as they are so often negative!