I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After Twenty Years Review
3.5 stars (round to 4)
I didn't like this book quite as much as A Walk In The Woods or some of Bryson's other books, because it isn't about travel or adventure. So it isn't as exciting. It is about more mundane, everyday things.
Still, it is a pretty good book, and Byron's wit and sense of humor make it fun to read. It is a collection of weekly columns that he wrote for a newspaper. The basic theme is what it is like to return to live in America, for a native-born American who has been living in Britain for over 20 years. Thus, Bryson is able to view the culture from both the British and American perspectives. This does lead to some interesting essays.
Most of the essays have nothing to do with either British or American points of view, or comparisons of the two cultures. These include essays about such things as: the demise of the diner, Bryson's ineptitude with home maintenance and contractors, the sinking of the Titanic, Rules For Living, a family trip to the beach, etc. They are amusing, and do give an overall picture of the American lifestyle, especially as it is lived in small-town New Hampshire.
There is a humorous illustration at the beginning of each essay, which is often a collage and always relates to the theme of the essay. They are a nice touch.
So although I wouldn't consider this Bryson's best work, it does make for a lighthearted and pleasant read.
Having recently read Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond, I was particularly interested in an essay about unusual foods which includes a discussion of Edward O. Wilson's book, The Diversity of Life. Wilson takes the opposite position on why we eat the particular foods that we do, than does Diamond. (Wilson believes that we eat only a very few of the wide range of available edibles simply out of habit, because they happened to be the things that our neolithic ancestors cultivated. Diamond suggests that certain plants and animals are far more suitable to agriculture and domestication than others, and their availability at any given place determined how successful the culture was that lived there.)
(288 pages)
I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After Twenty Years Overview
The master humorist and bestselling author of A Walk in the Woods now guides us on an affectionate, hysterically funny tour of America's most outrageous absurdities.
After living in Britain for two decades, Bill Bryson recently moved back to the United States with his English wife and four children (he had read somewhere that nearly three million Americans believed they had been abducted by aliens--as he later put it, "it was clear my people needed me"). They were greeted by a new-and-improved America that boasts microwave pancakes, twenty-four-hour dental-floss hotlines, and the staunch conviction that ice is not a luxury item.
Delivering the brilliant comic musings that are a Bryson hallmark, I'm a Stranger Here Myself recounts his sometimes disconcerting reunion with the land of his birth. From motels ("one of those things--airline food is another--that I get excited about and should know better") to careless barbers ("in the mirror I am confronted with an image that brings to mind a lemon meringue pie with ears"), I'm a Stranger Here Myself chronicles the quirkiest aspects of life in America, right down to our hardware-store lingo, tax-return instructions, and vulnerability to home injury ("statistically in New Hampshire I am far more likely to be hurt by my ceiling or underpants than by a stranger").
Along the way Bill Bryson also reveals his rules for life (#1: It is not permitted to be both slow and stupid. You must choose one or the other); delivers the commencement address to a local high school ("I've learned that if you touch a surface to see if it's hot, it will be"); and manages to make friends with a skunk. The result is a book filled with hysterical scenes of one man's attempt to reacquaint himself with his own country, but it is also an extended, if at times bemused, love letter to the homeland he has returned to after twenty years away.
I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After Twenty Years Specifications
In the world of contemporary travel writing, Bill Bryson, the bestselling author of A Walk in the Woods, often emerges as a major contender for King of Crankiness. Granted, he complains well and humorously, but between every line of his travel books you can almost hear the tinny echo: "I wanna go home, I miss my wife."
Happily, I'm a Stranger Here Myself unleashes a new Bryson, more contemplative and less likely to toss daggers. After two decades in England, he's relocated to Hanover, New Hampshire. In this collection (drawn from dispatches for London's Night & Day magazine), he's writing from home, in close proximity to wife and family. We find a happy marriage between humor and reflection as he assesses life both in New England and in the contemporary United States. With the telescopic perspective of one who's stepped out of the American mainstream and come back after 20 years, Bryson aptly holds the mirror up to U.S. culture, capturing its absurdities--such as hotlines for dental floss, the cult of the lawsuit, and strange American injuries such as those sustained from pillows and beds. "In the time it takes you to read this," he writes, "four of my fellow citizens will somehow manage to be wounded by their bedding."
The book also reflects the sweet side of small-town USA, with columns about post-office parties, dining at diners, and Thanksgiving--when the only goal is to "get your stomach into the approximate shape of a beach ball" and be grateful. And grateful we are that the previously peripatetic Bryson has returned to the U.S., turning his eye to this land--while living at home and near his wife. Under her benevolent influence, he entertains through thoughtful insights, not sarcastic stabs. --Melissa Rossi
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Customer Reviews
No Stranger to Wit - William J Higgins III - Laramie, Wyoming United States
Pass the plate of satire please.
Salt and pepper that with fun and embellishment and what you have is lively storytelling.
These essays remind me of sitting in the garage on a summer evening with family and good friends sipping a few cold refreshments. We call them sessions. Blather. Nonsense made sensible, at the time they are conveyed anyway. Guess we have another name for it now. Brysonology.
Bryson recalls people, places and events after moving back to the states that strike him as funny, odd and unusual. The literary angle is what makes this a page turner.
Getting a haircut from a guy named "Thumbs", hunting down the ideal hotel accommodations, Thanksgiving reminisces, ferreting out Christmas decorations, modern day flawed inventions, hooking up the new computer (in the nineties), frustrating IRS forms, days at the ballpark, shopping, airline travel, on and on.
Mr. Bryson, you make many people laugh. And that is a good thing. See you in the garage.
The funniest book I've ever read - Elizabeth Somer, M.A., R.D. - Oregon
I love this book. It is the funniest book in my large library of good reads. I have read it over and over, and every time, it makes me laugh until I cry. I laughed so hard while reading it on an airplane one time, that the women in front of me turned around and told me to "shush!" From commentaries on how to totally fail at ordering gourmet in restaurants, to the stumbling, bumbling attempts we all make to fix our computers, get a decent hair cut, or even have a little fun with chop sticks and the garbage disposal, anyone needing a bit of joy in their lives should read this book, or at least keep it handy...just in case.
Great batch of humor. - S Starr - Missouri
I read this book a few years ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. Great laughs, well worth the read.
*** Product Information and Prices Stored: Sep 01, 2010 12:41:04
