Notes from a Small Island

Rating:
Summary: The funniest book i have read! and i dont like travel books!
Review: I read this book about a year ago, but i loved it so much i had to write and recommend it. Even now i can still laugh at some of the incidences that i can remember from the book, the landlady in Dover, and old men discriptions especially. it was the first ever travel genre book i had read, and i loved it! i can remember reading the book in my room at halls last year, and i was laughing so load at some of the observations that my flat mates came to investigate. They have all subsequently borrowed, and read the book, and loved it. At the moment my book is somewhere at home in Essex being read by my dad. I do not think i will ever get it back! When i read the book i can remember thinking how true some of the observations were. And cringing at the unflattering ones because they are also true, like any other country we are not perfect. Although we like to think we are, especiallly after a couple of pints down the pub! I am by no means a nationalist, but it made me feel very fond for my home country. I recommend this as a must for any anglophile, or anyone who has visited Britain and liked the sometimes dry humour that passes as conversation over here. This book isn't meant to be serious travelogue, and as long as you read it thus i think anyone could appreciate it! Bill Bryson did a great job describing this country, and its somewhat wierd and peculiar inhabitants. Ta for a enjoyable read. WARNING, do not read this book in any public place, as you might get some very strange looks coming your way when you laugh out load. Take it from one who knows!

Rating:
Summary: Exellent! Hillarious, I feel like they're my pals! (B&K!)
Review: As soon as I began to read this book, I could not put it down! I could relate to many of Bill's experiences and encounters. What an exellent and unique author! An everyday kind of guy, with a wonderful mind in which to tell his great tales and put across some of his funny,witty but also often serious views of the people, places and cultures that he encounters throughout Europe. Here is a great man, who is not afraid to say it often like it is! I must say finally,that the closer we got to Bill & his brilliant and funny lifelong pal Katz's final destination (which was Turkey,the more I kept in a sense, my yearning to 'stay on the road', in other words, not finish the book! I'll say no more, or give away any clues, as you must read it for yourself~ 'enlightening!'

Rating:
Summary: Travels in Britain giving rise to memories/ thoughts on it
Review: This is my first Bill Bryson and I must say I enjoyed it. My only disappointment was the use of the four letter f ... word, which to me ought not to find a place in a book of this kind. But the author is American ... writing for an American audience primarily, I suppose! However, I did enjoy Bill's shuffle around Britain and the use of Americanisms and,I fancy, some words of his own making. His comments are perceptive and entertaining and his prose lively to hold the reader's constant attention. Although besotted with a love of GB, he is still able to make trenchant criticisms where he finds these necesary, especially about the so-called architecture of modern buildings. Having been born and bred in southern England and London and having made recent visits to places through which he travels, I found his revealing comments much in line with my own views, particularly about the British character and characters. This won't be my only Bill Bryson book. I trust the others are not dotted with"f..."!

Rating:
Summary: Hilarious but shallow
Review: This is my first Bill Bryson book. I spent the last one year in England and I can readily see the truth in some of his observations - the weather and getting from point A to point B are very English subjects of conversation. The English are eccentric, witty and loveable. I found myself laughing out aloud may times but I must admit some of the humour is forced. And halfway through the book he stops offering any worthwhile insight into the towns he is visiting (except may to criticize the town planners, architects etc). Most of the times he is just in and out of trains or buses and looking for a place to eat. A good laugh, but not a travel guide by any means. Nevertheless you will enjoy it if you have already visited Britain

Rating:
Summary: Reading this book in public can attract attention
Review: This was my first Bryson book, bought due to boredom in normal Scottish summer weather conditions. In fact I did not begin to read it until I was returning to Dubai and ignored the inflight entertainment completely. Bill Bryson's observations are more astute than Paul Theroux's and far more entertaining.

I laughed out loud so many times I attracted attention to myself in the BA lounge at Heathrow, and later in Dubai when travelling to Singapore reading "Neither Here Not There".

At last an American with a British sense of humour.

Rating:
Summary: Boring
Review: The book initially attracted me as the first couple of chapters were humourous and well-written. But after that, the book got progressively boring, repetitive in style, predictable, lacking in life, soul, and colour. It is difficult to imagine what the author is trying to describe if you've never been to England, so what is the point in reading the book? Compared to other travel writers, I found Bryson boring, boring, boring. I would not pick up another one of his books.

Rating:
Summary: This is a comical and Clever book!
Review: I thought that Bill Brson would be a reasonable writer, but seeing as I lived in England, the book wouldn't appeal to me. I loved it however and each piece appealed to me the same way that any funny book does. Thankyou Bill for this Book.

Rating:
Summary: Many very funny episodes, with tedious bits in between
Review: Bryson seems to have absorbed much of the best parts of British humour during his stay. At times the writing reminds me of Douglas Adams, and there were many times where I laughed out loud.

On the other hand, while his point about the destruction of heritage in favour of concrete and glass needed to be made, it didn't really need to be made on every second page. The judgements that he renders on towns he visits within five minutes of getting off the train wear thin after a while.

As well, at times the humour does seem to descend into the mean spirited. As an example which struck close to home for me, I found his description of a joke you could play on "people from Newfoundland or Yorkshire" using the London underground map to be a little unecessary.

Rating:
Summary: Bill Bryson's England is so much like India
Review: Reading Bill Bryson Notes from a Small Island on a 5000km journey across the heart of India on Indian Railways, showed how three centuries of English rule had shaped the way we are today. My India is not very different from Bill's England. We too have bus routes that reach destinations 2 minutes after a possible connecting train leaves; and how wonderfully the two establishments would expect the other to re-schedule; only to immediately change the original timings when one has grudingly agreed to align to the other's.

Its a brilliant piece of humour in which every ex-colony of Britain would find something similar happening at home.

Now if I am to travel to England, I would surely find it homely.

Thanks to "Notes from a small Island".

Rating:
Summary: A wonderfully funny insight into rural England
Review: Bill Bryson manages to put into words what many of us "Brits" feel about the quintessential English way of life. Tea at Eleven and crumpets before bed. His travels around the country and his encounters with the dreaded landlady are memories of every middleaged man in England and his holidays with parents in the bleak seaside weather of an English coastal town. A great reminder of how holidays were and perhaps should be.