so what's yr take on Bill Bryson?

It's maybe not a fair comparison, but Paul Theroux is streets ahead.

agreed ... what i like the least about the book is that any actual insight into the uniqueness of the places he writes about are tossed to the wayside due to the fact that he's a very boring person. how many times in this book does he repeat exactly the same day over and over again? wake up -> walk to the next town -> find a place to stay, make some jokes about it -> walk around in the rain looking for a place to eat -> eat, make jokes about it -> drink beer -> go to bed.

zzZZzZZZzZZZz. it wasn't a bad read, though, and i would be curious to read what he has to say about other places.

I can't forgive Bryson for slagging off Oxford.

There are other travel writers that I recommend - Pico Iyer (Video Night in Kathmandu: And Other Dispatches from the Not-So-Far East and The Lady and the Monk: Four Seasons in Kyoto) and Tony Horwtiz (Blue Latitudes, Confederates in the Attic, and Lost in Baghdad Without a Map) and Freya Stark (Valley of the Assassins) and, well, on and on.

I'm often on the lookout for good travel writers so these recommendations are most welcome, thank you.

Have you read Twain's "Innocents Abroad"? Had me rolling at points - a bit dated and not PC, but excellent none-the-less. Tim Cahill's works (Pass the Butterworms," etc.) I have had recommended to me, but I've not read them yet.

Waiting on my shelf are several about Japan - "Tokyo Underworld," "Lost Japan," and - hmmm - can't recall the other. Oh well. But "Speed Tribes" is a fascinating (and really funny in parts) look at modern Japanese society - though I've no idea how accurate it is (it looks at some of the underside of Japan, like street gangs and porn stars and such).

I'm looking for a decent travelogue of India, if anyone has any suggestions.

I dislike Paul Theroux (Kingdom by the Sea). He namedrops relentlessly. I think that he too is keeping a diary about his holiday and it is not the kind of holiday I take nor would wish to. Maybe he would be more interesting writing about places where he doesnt know too many people (I haven't read any of those because, basically, I don't like travel writing).

Despite it dealing with the seaside in all its forms, I certainly don't think "Kingdom by the sea" was intended as his holiday at all. He avoids tourist traps and prefers to concentrate on seeing the Brits off their guard - during their own holidays, during the Falklands war and with a royal baby due. As a Brit, it was excruciating sometimes, and a lot has changed in this country since '82, but I recognised a great deal.

Interesting you mentioning the namedropping, Isadora. I've often found the least interesting bits to be those where he goes in search of some writer or other. Is that what you meant?

His new African book is also great, if a little repititive. The only one that I haven't particularly warmed to was his Chinese one ("Riding the iron rooster".

His novels I like less, although "Kowloon Tong" is worth a go.

"Last places" by Lawrence Millman, which deals with the Viking trail of Iceland, Greenland and Labrador etc. is fascinating stuff, even if the writer suffers from traveller's snobbery - See how intrepid I am! - and machismo.

I tend to prefer travel books about how things are now, so I've never read Twain's travel stuff. Maybe one day...

I thought of a couple of other recommendations for you - an odd little book called "Magnificant Corpses," by Annelie Rufus - basically she travels around Europe looking at holy relics in Catholic churches - gives some info. about the saints, and so forth. I found it to be fascinating, though maybe that's 'cause I am not Catholic - it was all new concepts for me. Also, one of my personal favorites "A Fez of the Heart," which is basically a history of modern Turkey, combined with a travelogue, as the author travels through-out Turkey researching the history of the fez (which is closely tied to political developments). It's kind of trite, now, but Jason Elliot's "An Unexpected Light," is an interesting look at Afghanistan in the last decade or so.

I'll be interested in hearing your take on "Falling Off the Map."

Tag - I don't know if it counts as a travelogue or not, but I found Jon Ronson's "Them" to be intriguing. Kind of far-fetched at moments and terribly amusing at others, and always distrubing - he *did* travel in the process of writing - but maybe it's more of a - well - I don't know how to quantify the book, come to think of it.

If you've not read it yet, check-out Tony Horwitz's "Baghdad Without a Map and Other Misadventures in Arabia" for some offbeat insight into Middle Eastern cultures (the stuff about the funeral for the Shah is incredible!). I gave it to several people for Christmas and have gotten decent responses back, so that's a good sign.

Oh, and back to Iyer for a moment - his "The Lady and the Monk: Four Seasons in Kyoto" is quite pleasurable reading, too. He provides an interesting insight into the Japanese culture and how Westerners function within that culture, among other things. I found it quite engrossing and it's given me the best "feel" for the culture, so far.

Just to remind everyone that 'A Short History of Nearly Everything' is awesome.

discuss.

Yes, that's a good read - as is Mother Tongue, his one about English. Not so keen on his travel writing.

i just started in on "short history" after a friend lent me a copy. it's pretty cool.

he makes his conversational tone seem very easy, but it's really an accomplishment with material like that.

As befits the audience Bryson aims for, A Short History of Nearly Everything concentrates very hard on "lol! scientist!" types of anecdotes and on "danger, will robinson!" topics, like supervolcanoes and comets striking the earth. This keeps people's attention and in the meantime they may absorb some information. But it is very much the Discovery Channel version of science.

As for Bryson's usual schtick, I've read about five of his books, so I must enjoy it. He does have a predictable style and manner, but the majority of readers tend to like this. If they enjoy the first book they pick up and read by a particular author, they generally pick up the next one looking for a repetition of their first experience. Bryson seems to know this and delivers very consistent, if somewhat monostyled, material. He excels at the half-page-to-one-page anecdote and his books all tend to be a loosely connected series of these.

Aimless otm, just started this and there is indeed a lot more biographical anecdote than I was expecting, and less science. You get the feeling that if someone doesn't have an interesting personal history then their discoveries will get glossed over or even ignored. As far as it goes it's entertaining enough but personally I prefer a little more sci in my pop sci.

if someone doesn't have an interesting personal history then their discoveries will get glossed over or even ignored

this is actually what happens in real life, though.

not rly. i mean jj thompson's discovery of the electon was pretty big news but obviously he's not enough of a character for bryson who gives it a mere half-sentence aside. and the book is full of weirdo eccentrics whose discoveries weren't recognised in their lifetime.

meh, when they prove the electron exists then jj will get his dues.

I have a few Bill Bryson books and have found them mostly enjoyable and entertaining. But I remember getting annoyed at Mother Tongue because he was trotting out folk etymologies I was fairly sure were discredited, which kind of made me wonder abt the quality of the information in his books on subjects I haven't read about already.

(don't have specific examples, sorry - been a while since I read it)

Plus one of his early books abt a series of coach trips round Europe was pretty high on the "ha, these weird Euros speak funny, and do stuff not quite as Americans do! how backwards!" quotient, so I've been avoiding the one about Britisherland for fear of my blood pressure, but I'd like to think that after a couple more decades of travelling the world he's a little less amazed by minor infractions of American coach etiquette.

Must confess that A Short History of Nearly Everything has been sitting unread on the bedside table for months now, so can't comment on that one.

I like Bryson plenty, though I'll admit its in that "easy to read in bed sleepy" kind of way, my copy of "History" is dog-eared from reading so often because it is easy to pick up and just read a random section of.

I agree on yr comment on discredited etymologies in Mother Tongue - I'm in no way learned on English origins and even I was going "wait, I know thats just a furphy" about a few bits. But it was written some time back I suppose.

His book on Australia is pretty amusing, even if for its section on my hometown Canberra being basically a boring planned city with no pubs and a load of bewildering parks with buildings dotted in them. Horribly accurate!

streets ahead!

fucken grew up w/ this dude's books, very good stuff p much throughout

Science (quantity of) in this improves once he leaves behind the era of the victorian polymathic autodidactic eccentric gentleman scholar.

Disappointed he trotted out the old "glass flows" canard tho, that was busted years ago.

he was trotting out folk etymologies I was fairly sure were discredited

Disappointed he trotted out the old "glass flows" canard tho, that was busted years ago.

this is the problem i have with him - his style is very easy and very off-the-cuff and like he didn't so much research as read some stuff and find the interesting bits, which makes it really fun to read until you run into something and think 'but this was proven to be not true?' (and then, because it's a Bryson and hundreds of people have read and regurgitated him, double-checking by internet is super tedious)-- and then everything else becomes sort of suspicious.

also for some joke college class i had to read all of mother tongue and answer about 200 questions on the content which were basically reading comprehension and, wow, there are few better ways of making you hate a person's prose style.

Being fair, the scientist contingent of ILX is probably not the audience he was aiming for. As one of the dumber inhabitants of this site, I personally appreciate the folksy approach, and am happy to repeat dubious Bryson facts in the pub.

Aw man I didn't know glass didn't flow, that is something my parents would tell me as a kid looking at old windows. Still not going to believe it doesn't 100% until I find an old windowpane which is fatter at the top but I guess there is a reason they were not generally put in that way up which might proclude the ones that were put in that way up lasting until the present day.

I am a mere dabbler in pop-books when it comes to both science and etymology, and I'm certainly not a frequent traveller, so I still enjoy Bryson's books and probably repeat his facts too, just am happier without the little sore thumbs of "wait, can I believe any of this?". But I'll concede that breezily readable books on either subject are pretty hard to find and I should be glad of them.

Still not going to believe it doesn't 100% until I find an old windowpane which is fatter at the top

there is also the problem of v old telescopes with glass lenses which still work fine, and undeformed 5000 year old glass vessels.

sorry for harshing yr buzz tho

aren't there any kids left in ur neighbourhood that still believe in santa claus? why you in here picking on us?

guess it'll be quickest to just paste this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions

I was just reading this which says that telescopes don't count. I have seen some Roman glass which was pretty nicely symmetrical though but thought they might just have had since-forgotten sekrits of the glass-making trade. Ah well.

xpost oh no, a list of things I should've known but didn't

OMG yes, the glass flow was the one thing that jumped out for me as well! I remember it being a big "if you believe this you are RONG" meme on one of the snopesy type Usenet groups back in the day (forget which one now).

And like c sharp I'd then think "and then everything else becomes sort of suspicious", cause like, if you've caught him on this one fact, what of others?

Still. Bryson ain't a scientist. He's a storyteller. And to be honest, his dramas of scientists squabbling and stealing each other's thunder is the best thing about ASHOAE.

lol @ mr big scientist posting his facts from wikipedia. i suppose this is what increasing govt debt worldwide has reduced research to tho. ;_;

Black holes, unlike the common image, do not act as cosmic vacuum cleaners any more than other stars.[31] When a star evolves into a black hole, the gravitational attraction at a given distance from the body is no greater than it was for the star. That is to say, were the Sun to be replaced by a black hole of the same mass, the Earth would continue in the same orbit (assuming spherical symmetry of the sun). Due to a black hole's formation being explosive in nature, the object would lose a certain amount of its energy in the process, which, according to the mass–energy equivalence, means that a black hole would be of lower mass than the parent object, and actually have a weaker gravitational pull

ok i'm in love with this one.

Enjoying his new book on the body:“The Body: A Guide for Occupants” Some good facts in there and reminders to eat better.

I hate Bill Bryson because I got his book Mother Tongue when I was about 20 and it was the first thing that got me interested in linguistics, then a few years later, when I actually started studying the subject, I found out that the whole book is lies he made up, I tried fact checking and got to 15 things that were wrong just on the first few pages. It took a good 10 years to remove all the bullshit interesting facts he'd placed in my head.

Then later I remember hearing one of his audiobooks on radio 4 and he was being rude and condescending about a waitress in the midwest, and it sounded unnecessarily mean.

Didn’t hear that audiobook, but feeling this.