标签: bill bryson

Someone just went into my office to ask me a question about the game of Cricket. They think that since I'm English I should know everything there is to know about the sport. Anyway, this brought to mind a quote by one of my favorite American authors, Bill Bryson, from his book In a Sunburned Country (for some reason this book is called Down Under in the UK) describing his travels in Australia. I bet you can't read this aloud to a friend without laughing... "After years of patient study (and with cricket there can be no other kind) I have decided that there is nothing wrong with the game that the introduction of golf carts wouldn't fix in a hurry. It is not true that the English invented cricket as a way of making all other human endeavors look interesting and lively; that was merely an unintended side effect. I don't wish to denigrate a sport that is enjoyed by millions, some of them awake and facing the right way, but it is an odd game. It is the only sport that incorporates meal breaks. It is the only sport that shares its name with an insect. It is the only sport in which spectators burn as many calories as players—more if they are moderately restless. It is the only competitive activity of any type, other than perhaps baking, in which you can dress in white from head to toe and be as clean at the end of the day as you were at the beginning. Imagine a form of baseball in which the pitcher, after each delivery, collects the ball from the catcher and walks slowly with it to center field; and that there, after a minute's pause to collect himself, he turns and runs full tilt toward the pitcher's mound before hurling the ball at the ankles of a man who stands before him wearing a riding hat, heavy gloves of the sort used to handle radio-active isotopes, and a mattress strapped to each leg. Imagine moreover that if this batsman fails to hit the ball in a way that heartens him sufficiently to try to waddle forty feet with mattress's strapped to his legs, he is under no formal compunction to run; he may stand there all day, and, as a rule, does. If by some miracle he is coaxed into making a miss-stroke that leads to his being put out, all the fielders throw up their arms in triumph and have a hug. Then tea is called and every one retires happily to a distant pavilion to fortify for the next siege. Now imagine all this going on for so long that by the time the match concludes autumn has crept in and all your library books are overdue. There you have cricket. The mystery of cricket is not that Australians play it well, but that they play it at all. It has always seemed to me a game much too restrained for the rough-and-tumble Australian temperament. Australians much prefer games in which brawny men in scanty clothing bloody each others noses. I am quite certain that if the rest of the world vanished overnight and the development of cricket was left in Australian hands, within a generation the players would be wearing shorts and using the bats to hit each other. And the thing is, it would be a much better game for it." This snippet from YouTube has Bill Bryson reading from his book. This includes quite a lot more material than is shown above. I love the way Bill makes up silly terms to describe his impression of what's going on...

Someone who works in this building just walked into my office to ask me a question about the game of Cricket. Their reasoning was that since I'm English I should know everything there is to know about the sport. Anyway, this brought to mind a quote by one of my favorite American authors, Bill Bryson, from his book In a Sunburned Country (for some reason this book is called Down Under in the UK) describing his travels in Australia. I bet you can't read this aloud to a friend without laughing... "After years of patient study (and with cricket there can be no other kind) I have decided that there is nothing wrong with the game that the introduction of golf carts wouldn't fix in a hurry. It is not true that the English invented cricket as a way of making all other human endeavors look interesting and lively; that was merely an unintended side effect. I don't wish to denigrate a sport that is enjoyed by millions, some of them awake and facing the right way, but it is an odd game. It is the only sport that incorporates meal breaks. It is the only sport that shares its name with an insect. It is the only sport in which spectators burn as many calories as players—more if they are moderately restless. It is the only competitive activity of any type, other than perhaps baking, in which you can dress in white from head to toe and be as clean at the end of the day as you were at the beginning. Imagine a form of baseball in which the pitcher, after each delivery, collects the ball from the catcher and walks slowly with it to center field; and that there, after a minute's pause to collect himself, he turns and runs full tilt toward the pitcher's mound before hurling the ball at the ankles of a man who stands before him wearing a riding hat, heavy gloves of the sort used to handle radio-active isotopes, and a mattress strapped to each leg. Imagine moreover that if this batsman fails to hit the ball in a way that heartens him sufficiently to try to waddle forty feet with mattress's strapped to his legs, he is under no formal compunction to run; he may stand there all day, and, as a rule, does. If by some miracle he is coaxed into making a miss-stroke that leads to his being put out, all the fielders throw up their arms in triumph and have a hug. Then tea is called and every one retires happily to a distant pavilion to fortify for the next siege. Now imagine all this going on for so long that by the time the match concludes autumn has crept in and all your library books are overdue. There you have cricket. The mystery of cricket is not that Australians play it well, but that they play it at all. It has always seemed to me a game much too restrained for the rough-and-tumble Australian temperament. Australians much prefer games in which brawny men in scanty clothing bloody each others noses. I am quite certain that if the rest of the world vanished overnight and the development of cricket was left in Australian hands, within a generation the players would be wearing shorts and using the bats to hit each other. And the thing is, it would be a much better game for it." This snippet from YouTube has Bill Bryson reading from his book. This includes quite a lot more material than is shown above. I love the way Bill makes up silly terms to describe his impression of what's going on...  

As a follow-on to my recent review on Bill Bryson's latest book – At Home: A Short History of Private Life – there's another Bryson book that I particularly enjoy called A Short History of Nearly Everything .   This is so good that I recently re-read it for the third or fourth time (not in a back-to-back compulsive manner you understand – these readings were spread over the last couple of years).   Honestly, I cannot find the words to describe just how good this book is. If I ever managed to write a book half as good as this one I would die a happy man (well, maybe not, but you know what I mean).   The amazing thing to me is how Bryson ties everything together in such an intelligent and easy-to-follow manner, leading the reader all the way from the creation of the universe to our current level of understanding with regard to how life formed, the age of the earth, the rise of civilization, gravity, geology, chemistry, and how we came to discover and understand things like plate tectonics and particle physics.   In addition to the author's humorous tongue-in-cheek asides, one delightful aspect to this book is the tales of the various people who discovered these things, many of whom never gained the recognition they deserved.   Another strength of the book is the way information is built up in layers. Consider the age of the earth, for example. Early on, Bryson notes that:   Human beings would split the atom and invent television, nylon and instant coffee before they could figure out the age of their own planet.   Bryson then returns to this topic many times throughout the course of the book as different people and scientific disciplines added more to the picture. We start in 1650, when Archbishop James Ussher of the Church of Ireland made a careful study of the Bible and concluded that the Earth had been created at midday on 23 October 4000 BC (you may laugh, but I know folks who believe this to this day).   In the 1770s, the Frenchman Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon estimated the age of the Earth as being somewhere between 75,000 and 168,000 years old based on the rate at which it was radiating heat. In 1862, Lord Kelvin suggested that the Earth was 98 million years old. Other people came up with their own values; similarly for the dawn of complex life. As Bryson says:   Such was the confusion that by the close of the nineteenth century, depending on which text you consulted, you could learn that the number of years that stood between us and the dawn of complex life in the Cambrian period was 3 million, 18 million, 600 million, 794 million, or 2.4 billion – or some other number within that range. As late as 1910, one of the most respected estimates, by the American George Becker, put the Earth's age at perhaps as little as 55 million years.   Later in the book Bryson explains how the discovery of radioactivity affected our understanding of the Earth's age. And, still later, how the radioactive analysis of meteorites finally gave us a definitive age for the earth of 4,550 million years (plus or minus 70 million years).   And this is just one topic among hundreds – perhaps thousands. Throughout the course of the book we touch on almost everything you might wonder about, including earthquakes, volcanoes, Yellowstone Park, fossils of prehistoric creatures and our understanding of them, the evolution of man, the origin of the science of geology (which is MUCH more interesting than I would ever have expected), and so much more.   I tell you, if I were going to be exiled to a desert island and could take only 10 books with me, this one would be very close to the top of the list!   The only real problem is that I have one of the original versions – the most recent incarnation is an illustrated version. I probably don't have to tell you that this is right at the top of my Amazon "Wish List" and – as soon as I do take possession of this little scamp – I'm sure I'll read the whole thing again (it's that good!).

As a follow-on to my recent review on Bill Bryson's latest book – At Home: A Short History of Private Life – there's another Bryson book that I particularly enjoy called A Short History of Nearly Everything .   This is so good that I recently re-read it for the third or fourth time (not in a back-to-back compulsive manner you understand – these readings were spread over the last couple of years).   Honestly, I cannot find the words to describe just how good this book is. If I ever managed to write a book half as good as this one I would die a happy man (well, maybe not, but you know what I mean).   The amazing thing to me is how Bryson ties everything together in such an intelligent and easy-to-follow manner, leading the reader all the way from the creation of the universe to our current level of understanding with regard to how life formed, the age of the earth, the rise of civilization, gravity, geology, chemistry, and how we came to discover and understand things like plate tectonics and particle physics.   In addition to the author's humorous tongue-in-cheek asides, one delightful aspect to this book is the tales of the various people who discovered these things, many of whom never gained the recognition they deserved.   Another strength of the book is the way information is built up in layers. Consider the age of the earth, for example. Early on, Bryson notes that:   Human beings would split the atom and invent television, nylon and instant coffee before they could figure out the age of their own planet.   Bryson then returns to this topic many times throughout the course of the book as different people and scientific disciplines added more to the picture. We start in 1650, when Archbishop James Ussher of the Church of Ireland made a careful study of the Bible and concluded that the Earth had been created at midday on 23 October 4000 BC (you may laugh, but I know folks who believe this to this day).   In the 1770s, the Frenchman Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon estimated the age of the Earth as being somewhere between 75,000 and 168,000 years old based on the rate at which it was radiating heat. In 1862, Lord Kelvin suggested that the Earth was 98 million years old. Other people came up with their own values; similarly for the dawn of complex life. As Bryson says:   Such was the confusion that by the close of the nineteenth century, depending on which text you consulted, you could learn that the number of years that stood between us and the dawn of complex life in the Cambrian period was 3 million, 18 million, 600 million, 794 million, or 2.4 billion – or some other number within that range. As late as 1910, one of the most respected estimates, by the American George Becker, put the Earth's age at perhaps as little as 55 million years.   Later in the book Bryson explains how the discovery of radioactivity affected our understanding of the Earth's age. And, still later, how the radioactive analysis of meteorites finally gave us a definitive age for the earth of 4,550 million years (plus or minus 70 million years).   And this is just one topic among hundreds – perhaps thousands. Throughout the course of the book we touch on almost everything you might wonder about, including earthquakes, volcanoes, Yellowstone Park, fossils of prehistoric creatures and our understanding of them, the evolution of man, the origin of the science of geology (which is MUCH more interesting than I would ever have expected), and so much more.   I tell you, if I were going to be exiled to a desert island and could take only 10 books with me, this one would be very close to the top of the list!   The only real problem is that I have one of the original versions – the most recent incarnation is an illustrated version. I probably don't have to tell you that this is right at the top of my Amazon "Wish List" and – as soon as I do take possession of this little scamp – I'm sure I'll read the whole thing again (it's that good!).    

During the recent holiday I read Bill Bryson's latest tome – At Home – and, as usual, he far exceeded my expectations. As Bill says: "Houses aren't refuges from history. They are where history ends up."   Before we plunge deeper into the fray, I have to say that I love Bill Bryson's work. He always manages to come over as being wildly enthusiastic about the topic in hand while achieving the perfect balance between interest and humor. His books are replete with nuggets of knowledge and tidbits of trivia, which are enhanced with his little bon mots that always bring a smile to my face (it's not the size of your bon mots, of course, it's what you do with them that counts ).   Just to set the scene, Bill was born in Des Moines, Iowa, USA, in 1951. In 1973 he visited England and decided to stay after landing a job working in a psychiatric hospital. While there he met and married a nurse named Cynthia. Bill and Cynthia moved to the USA in 1975 so he could complete his college degree. Two years later in 1977, they returned to England, where they remained until 1995, at which time they moved back to America. Then, in 2003 the Brysons and their four children travelled back across "the pond" to England, where they now live in Norfolk. Phew!   Bill has written many wonderful books. Notes from a Small Island talks about his experiences in England; I'm a Stranger Here Myself recounts his return to America in 1995; and In a Sunburned Country (which had me laughing until I cried) we follow Bill as he meanders his way around Australia. I intend to write reviews of all of these books – and his many others – just as soon as I get a free moment, but we digress...   When the Brysons returned to England in 2003, they purchased a Victorian parsonage in Norfolk, which Bill describes as "A part of England where nothing of great significance has happened since the Romans decamped."   The underlying premise of At Home is that Bill walks us around his home explaining the history of each type of room. Along the way he covers a multitude of topics like sex, hygiene, nutrition, and the way in which people from different social classes enjoyed life (or not, as the case might be). Although mostly rooted in English history over the past few hundred years (with the occasional excursion into the deeper past), we also get a good dose of American history along with forays into European history.   In reality, Bill uses this book as a platform (or perhaps an excuse) to regale us with all sorts of historical facts, from architecture to electricity, from food preservation to epidemics, from the telephone to the Eiffel Tower, from crinolines to toilets to the spice trade and the spice islands...   Speaking about islands, one reviewer of this book on Amazon said "I always finish Bill Bryson's books with the thought that he would be the absolute top person on my list of people with whom I'd like to be stranded on a desert island." I know just what he means.   To be honest, I think it's fair to say that this is probably not the best of Bill's books, but that's only because he has set such a high standard in his other works. Sometimes he rambles on a bit and many times he wanders off-topic, but I don't really care because I always seem to enjoy where we end up. The bottom line is that I personally really enjoyed At Home and would happily recommend it to anyone.