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In a Sunburned Country

by Bill Bryson

3.97 · rating details · 18,619 ratings · 1,975 reviews

Every time Bill Bryson walks out the door, memorable travel literature threatens to break out. His previous excursion along the Appalachian Trail resulted in the sublime national bestseller A Walk in the Woods. In A Sunburned Country is his report on what he found in an entirely different place: Australia, the country that doubles as a continent, and a place with the fr...more

Paperback, 335 pages

Published May 15th 2001 by Broadway Books (first published 2000)

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Sep 12, 2008

Collette rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: people that yearn to see the world.

Shelves: history

Ok! First of all I'm here to tell you that non-fiction is normally not my bag. I think I got this book because I forgot to send in the "do not send" notice in a book club. That said..... I'm soooo happy that I didn't and I "made" myself read this. OMG!!! I lost track of how many times I laughed until there were tears running down my cheeks and how many smiles and chuckles it rang out of me!
This is a book about Bryson's trips (I believe he combines a few trips to "...more

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May 26, 2008

Martine rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: history, non-fiction, travel-writing

I developed a taste for Bill Bryson last year when I read his Short History of Nearly Everything, an ambitious attempt to trace the history of life, the universe and everything in just 574 pages. While many of the scientific discoveries outlined in the book were a little beyond me, I thoroughly enjoyed Bryson's descriptions of the larger-than-life personalities behind the discoveries, which really brought the science described to life. So when I found out that he had also written a travelogue of...moreI developed a taste for Bill Bryson last year when I read his Short History of Nearly Everything, an ambitious attempt to trace the history of life, the universe and everything in just 574 pages. While many of the scientific discoveries outlined in the book were a little beyond me, I thoroughly enjoyed Bryson's descriptions of the larger-than-life personalities behind the discoveries, which really brought the science described to life. So when I found out that he had also written a travelogue of a journey across the country I may soon call home -- Australia -- I simply had to read it.

Australia, for those of you who have never been there, is one of the most colourful places on earth. It has a history so bizarre that it makes China's seem normal by comparison. It has insane expanses of the most arid desert imaginable, as well as some of the world's most beautiful beaches, where unfortunately you can't swim due to the prevalence of sharks, crocs, box jellyfish, stingrays and murderous rip currents. It houses beyond a shadow of a doubt the world's most interesting flora and fauna, including twelve-foot earthworms and living fossils. (And you thought kangaroos were exotic. Ha.) And if all that weren't interesting enough, the locals are slightly mad. They eat meat pies floating in pea soup, are crazy about cricket and consider shorts and knee-length socks proper attire for middle-aged bus drivers. In short, it's a unique place and I love it. I look forward to moving there in a few months' time.

Bill Bryson also loves Australia, and it shows. While he likes to remind his readers of the country's amazing collection of deathly animals (over and over again) and poke fun at the locals and their weird habits, his affection for the place shines through in every chapter, and it's quite infectious. By describing his own travels and those of early settlers, explorers and naturalists, he provides the reader with an appreciation for how vast and unwelcoming the country is, and how utterly unique. He provides background information on events of which few non-Australians will have heard (such as the fact that a nuclear bomb may have been detonated in the outback without anyone noticing, and that an Australian Prime Minister once vanished, never to be seen again), waxes lyrical on trees and animals so bizarre that you'll want to hop on the first plane to Australia to check them out for yourself (again, kangaroos are only the beginning), explains why you should go and see Ayers Rock even if you've already seen hundreds of photos of it, and intersperses all this useful information with a winning combination of self-deprecating humour, bizarre anecdotes, absurd dialogue and entertaining accounts of encounters with fellow travellers and locals. The resulting book is not only completely recognisable to anyone who has visited Australia, but hugely appealing to anyone who hasn't. I doubt anyone can read this book without wishing to book a flight to Oz immediately afterwards.

If I have any complaint about Down Under, it is that there is too little of it. While Bryson's writing is entertaining and informative, his choice of places to visit and describe seems rather random and limited. I wish he had done more travelling, gone further into the interior of the country and left all traces of luxury behind him for a while, so as to emulate the pioneers and explorers whose exploits he relates with such gusto. I also think the book would have benefited from slightly more rigorous editing, as parts of it seem rather hastily written. For all its small flaws, though, Down Under (released in the US as In a Sunburned Country) is a fascinating read which has whetted my appetite for more Bryson travelogues. And for a return to Oz, but that's another story.
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Jul 12, 2009

Choupette rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: australian, own-or-access, non-fiction, to-be-re-read

This was funny. It was really funny. I remember reading it in a public place and snorting - like, actually snorting like a pig - from trying to contain my laughter, and then looking around surreptitiously to see if anyone had noticed. This is unusual because I very rarely laugh out loud when reading a book. It has to reach whole new levels of hilarity to make me snort. In fact, this may well be the only snort-worthy book I've ever read. This guy really knows how to find the funny in a situation....moreThis was funny. It was really funny. I remember reading it in a public place and snorting - like, actually snorting like a pig - from trying to contain my laughter, and then looking around surreptitiously to see if anyone had noticed. This is unusual because I very rarely laugh out loud when reading a book. It has to reach whole new levels of hilarity to make me snort. In fact, this may well be the only snort-worthy book I've ever read. This guy really knows how to find the funny in a situation. I admire that.

It was also very interesting, filled with informative, weird, funny little anecdotes about the people he met and the things he learned. And some worrying things as well, especially about people's attitudes to Aboriginals. He went on at some length (it occasionally got tiring) about just how incredibly BIG Australia is, which to be honest was not something I had ever really thought about. The vast majority of Australia's population lives in the large coastal cities (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth etc.), and most of the rest is squashed into the relatively tiny strip of land around the southern coast, which has a lot to do with why the population is so small. The interior is arid, inhospitable and practically deserted: an endless desert with a big red rock in the middle. There are other countries that are bigger (about five, I think), but, I don't know, there's something about vast tracts of uninhabited/unexplored wastes that doesn't fit the image of Australia as a bustling, modern, prosperous western country that most of us have.

The massiveness of Australia isn't really something that city-dwellers like me have to face very often: in fact, it's easy to ignore until you try and leave the country. It only takes about three to four hours to fly to New Zealand from Melbourne, but if you want to get pretty much anywhere else except for a few Pacific islands you have to fly across the entire body of the country. It takes seven to eight hours to get to Singapore, most of which time is spent over the desert. If you want to get anywhere that's not Southern Asia it can easily take 24 hours. If you're as tall as me (which is tall for a woman, but not that tall), the prospect of that length of time spent in economy class with your knees jammed up against your chin is almost enough to convince you to stay put for the rest of your life. Possibly the thing that amazed me most when I went to France was that I could just get on a train (a train!) at St. Quentin and sit there for four hours and end up in Marseilles. In other words, I basically crossed the country! In FOUR HOURS. Even now, the idea is barely comprehensible.

Anyway, Bill Bryson did a good job with that. It's much easier to forget than it should be: Australia's size and isolation from Europe was a defining part of its history. In fact, I believe Geoffrey Blainey wrote an entire book on it (The Tyranny of Distance, which is lying about the house somewhere, shamefully unread). So Bryson waxed lyrical, somewhat repetitively at times, with stories about scientists finding a species of ant/beetle/marsupial/reptile that everyone had believed extinct for thousands of years and whose existence would have upended everything we thought we knew about everything, except that when the scientists went back they were completely unable to find them again because it turns out there are quite a lot of rocks in the desert that bear a slight resemblance to Aunt Mabel's head after she had her nasal reconstruction surgery. Or similar.

All good stuff. Despite this, however, the book was disappointing to me because nothing he said about the parts of Australia I am familiar with seemed resoundingly true. I was hoping for (nay, expecting) a few of those amazing sentences that just leap out at you as expressing something profoundly universal. Probably I was just subconsciously waiting for him to say something like "Melbourne is an amazing city, clearly superior to Sydney in ever way" (damn inferiority complex; I don't really have anything against Sydney), and when he didn't - because it is patently not true - I was disappointed.

Looking back now, I know that was a silly thing to hope for. Firstly, it's gotta be hard to generalise an entire country, especially one as diverse as Australia. Secondly, it's hard to see how I would recognise any such profundity even if there was some: I have spent four days in Sydney in the last ten years and have not been to any other state capital that I can remember. Thirdly, Bryson approached Australia as a visitor, more than a tourist but much less than a native, and the book was written from that perspective. Which is as it should be - anything else would be guaranteed to be insulting and wrong.(less)

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Mar 03, 2010

Hannah rated it

Shelves: non-fiction, humor, 2010-reads

A fun re-read from one of my favorite authors, Bill Bryson. Any book that Bryson pens is sure to lead to uncontrollable laughter, snorts, chortles or gaffaws, so plan your reading time accordingly. Not recommended reading material for mime class, funerals, or anywhere quiet, confined and where you will be surrounded by strangers - trust me on this. Even your own family members (*ehem* teenage daughters) might have a tendency to think you finally, irrevocably lost it and look warily at you as ...more

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Feb 11, 2008

Robert Beveridge rated it

Shelves: finished, owned-and-gave-away

Bill Bryson, In a Sunburned Country (Broadway, 2000)

I originally encountered the writing of Bill Bryson in a small article he wrote for National Geographic on the Orkney Islands a year or so ago. By the time I had finished the article, I was (and still am, to an extent) seriously considering relocating to the Orkney Islands. Well, I've now finished In a Sunburned Country, Bryson's travelogue of Australia-- and I never, ever want to go there.

Bryson gives us the world's forgott...moreBill Bryson, In a Sunburned Country (Broadway, 2000)

I originally encountered the writing of Bill Bryson in a small article he wrote for National Geographic on the Orkney Islands a year or so ago. By the time I had finished the article, I was (and still am, to an extent) seriously considering relocating to the Orkney Islands. Well, I've now finished In a Sunburned Country, Bryson's travelogue of Australia-- and I never, ever want to go there.

Bryson gives us the world's forgotten continent (really, how many of you who don't live there can name Australia's Prime Minister?), mixing personal experience, history, and bewilderment in roughly equal doses. While the history does bog down in places, I found myself-- especially in the book's first section-- glad that I was the only person in the room while reading it, since I might well have been committed involuntarily for laughing so hard in stretches. The most disturbing thing is that I was laughing about the sheer number of things in Australia which are capable of killing human beings. This is not a place you should go if you fear death. "The sea snakes are especially unnerving, not because they are aggressive, but because they are inquisitive. Stray into their territory and they'll come to check you out, all but rubbing against you in the manner of cats seeking affection. They are the most sweet-tempered creatures in existence. But cross them or alarm them and they can hit you with enough venom to kill three grown men." Not only will the unfriendly creatures kill you, the friendly ones will as well!

Those who have read more Bryson than I have hastened to say that this is a less humorous book than his others. I'm not sure I could stand the others, for I might die of asphyxia before reaching the end of chapter one. This is good stuff, funny most of the time, sobering on rare occasions, and always edifying. And don't be concerned if you forget three quarters of what's in here by the time you're finished, including the name of Australia's present prime minister (or the name of the silicon-tipped grass I've been wracking my brain for for a week now). According to Bryson, there's something about Australia that causes people to forget it exists, so as long as you remember there are seven continents on this planet, you're ahead of the game. *** (less)

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Jul 09, 2010

Tatiana rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: people who want to learn more about Australia

Recommended to Tatiana by: Hannahr

Shelves: non-fiction, 2010, foreign-lands

I almost forgot how much fun it is to read books about foreign countries and cultures. As soon as opened In a Sunburned Country, memories of reading travelogues about U.S. rushed back to me. Oh, how amazed I was those years ago to learn that apparently many Americans put their T-shirts on to swim in the pool and wear extra underwear underneath their swimming trucks (I am originally from one of those speedo countries) or that to go to a school dance you just have to have a boy-friend who is oblig...more

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Oct 27, 2008

Tara Calaby rated it

· review of another edition

Recommends it for: People wanting to visit Australia

Shelves: travel, humour, own, australia, bill-bryson

Some parts of this book are admittedly less interesting than others, but I will always love it for the fact that it records the true horror of our native species ;)

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Jan 03, 2009

April West rated it

This book is so funny, so well-written, and so interesting I couldn't stop reading it, even when I had to use a caver's headlamp and stuff my pillow into my mouth to keep from waking my family with my laughter. Bryson is a master writer, and hilarious. His tour of Australia is interesting, and he does not gloss over the "problem" of the relationship between European Australians and the Aborigines. Though I was occasionally put off by seemingly random sexist comments, I still enjoyed th...more

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Feb 23, 2010

Fred Maack rated it

Shelves: 2010-read, australia, travel

In A Sunburned Country is another great piece of travel non-fiction by Bill Bryson. I'd previously read "A Walk in the Woods" which I think is one of the greatest travel/adventure books I've read. I've also read "Notes From A Small Island" which was a bit disappointing in comparison to the greatness of "Woods" Sunburned Country is all about Australia. It's a fantastic book full of wit and wisdom. One of the things which Bryson does quite well is insert odd facts and...more

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Jan 02, 2009

Jeanette rated it

Recommends it for: Everyone who knows how to read

Shelves: travel-adventure, nonfiction, the-land-down-under, history, five-star-nonfiction, to-be-read-again

How do I love this book? Let me count the ways...Better yet, read it for yourself and you'll discover your own reasons to love it. I honestly cannot think of one person to whom I would not recommend this book. It's fascinating, funny, and fact-filled. I'd bet even native Aussies could learn a thing or five they didn't know about their country.

Australia is an even more interesting place than I thought. Let Bill Bryson give you an entertaining and educational tour. He researched ...more

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Aug 18, 2008

Bob rated it

Happy Bryson—book review
August 16, 2008 · No Comments

Finally finished Bill Bryson’s huge book on Australia—”In a Sunburned Country.” I started it months ago and read only a paragraph or so a day. Bryson is a happy writer and a jovial soul. I wonder that he’s not more rotund but then I haven’t seen a recent photo of him. He put the book together about ten years ago out of a number of trips he had taken to Australia.

The Chapter on Ayer’s Rock is remarkably good. G...moreHappy Bryson—book review
August 16, 2008 · No Comments

Finally finished Bill Bryson’s huge book on Australia—”In a Sunburned Country.” I started it months ago and read only a paragraph or so a day. Bryson is a happy writer and a jovial soul. I wonder that he’s not more rotund but then I haven’t seen a recent photo of him. He put the book together about ten years ago out of a number of trips he had taken to Australia.

The Chapter on Ayer’s Rock is remarkably good. Gives a great sense of how impressive it must be—or might be. And he does the same consistent job for all the other sights he sees, both ordinary and exceptional. The exceptional are mainly natural phenomena.

I’m so used to reading Paul Theroux that when I’m in a Bryson book I start to miss Theroux’s usual grumpiness. Bryson is so steadily pleased with everything and everyone. He fills us in on things in great detail, so you can’t fault the info flow. He has interesting encounters with people and places. So what’s to fault? Well, nothing. But if he asked me to accompany him on a jaunt somewhere I might not go or want to go. He’s too even-keeled, so content with things that at times you wonder whether he is very interesting, really.

He loves Australia and gives it great press in every possible way. Yet after reading the whole book I’m glad to have had the bit of history, the amazing tales of human folly and adventure, the suspicions confirmed about all my impressions—the vastness, the emptiness, the beauty, the dangers. But the book has not increased my interest in ever actually going to Australia. In fact just the opposite. I’ve never been that curious to go and now that I’ve done my duty with the book I can now check it off as a place I need never have any worry about not wanting to visit.

Somehow that is not a comment a publisher would want to put on the back cover of this really good book. But I had a similar reaction years ago in reading another of Bryson’s bestsellers—I do of course envy him his sales and his income—the book on the Appalachian trail. “In These Woods.” Is that the title? Bryson hikes the Trail and gets way much farther along than most, including many of my former students who have set out to do it. But he doesn’t do the whole trail. He shuts down somewhere in Maine before Kahtahdin. Bummer. Now Theroux would never have done that I think to myself. Theroux would have figured some way to have finished the darned thing or he would have put the manuscript back in a drawer and written another book.

It is unfair of me to compare Bill this way. But he lost one of my votes some years ago. He lived for a short while a bit west of here in Hanover, NH. He had lived in England for years and said in print somewhere he wanted to come back to the states to see what’s what. In truth he wanted to put his kids through American high school and get them into American colleges. One of my students who grew up in Hanover knew one of Bryson’s kids and met Bryson on an occasion or two. But again, in print, Bryson said he looked around the country to find a place to live and he had always wanted to live in a typical New England town (he grew up in Kansas & likes Australia because it reminds him so much of Kansas in the 50s), so he chose to live in Hanover, NH.

That’s where he lost my vote. Living in Hanover, NH as a “typical NE town” is a bit like choosing to live in Monaco because you’ve always hankered to sip espresso in a typical Mediterranean village.

I checked a number of times and was dumbfounded each time to realize that nowhere does Bryson mention, even mention, what just might be the finest book ever written about Australia, Bruce Chatwins "The Songlines."
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Jul 31, 2008

Tiffany rated it

Like most Americans, I have never really given much thought to Australia. It's an island where the seasons are backwards, there's a famous opera house, my ex husband's ex girlfriend is expating it up there, and there are loads of gorgeous men running around shirtless, drinking Fosters and saying "No worries, mate" in a delicious Crocodile Dundee sort of accent. Nothing too exciting, right?

Wrong! Australia is fascinating, and Bill Bryson has done an excellent job of tell...more

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Mar 14, 2008

Lauren rated it

Recommends it for: everyone, especially those planning to visit me in Australia!!

I re-read this one in preparation for my move to Australia, and, for the first time, realized that there was a good possibility that I could be eaten by a crocodile while working in the rivers here! The book also alerted me to the many other dangerous creatures and long-distance driving that have now become a normal part of my life. Oh, and he was dead on with his description of Canberra. Most boring city ever (though, surprisingly, there are good Ethiopian restaurants there. Yum!). Thanks, Bill...more

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May 24, 2007

Solomon rated it

This was a bit disappointing considering it being a rendition of a travelogue -- my favorite genre -- of my most favorite continent ever. Bryson, generally extremely adept at mixing humorous personal narrative with informative and insightful commentary on the subject of his travels, just didn't seem to appreciate Australia enough. Or perhaps Bryson's white, overweight, middle-aged stature was just not up for the job. More damaging was his superficial treatment of race relations concerning Aust...more

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Oct 17, 2011

Stacy rated it

Shelves: books-read-2011, nonfiction, travel

Like most avid readers, I have a large TBR pile. Most of this pile is pertinent to what I do in some way (writing and art), and much of it is training and study material I should complete yesterday. Quite by accident I strayed across Bill Bryson’s In a Sunburned Country (a rather morbid story I’ll not relate here), his book about his travels across Australia. It’s a book that’s had me almost completely sidetracked.

This is one of those books that’s best read when it falls into your lap...moreLike most avid readers, I have a large TBR pile. Most of this pile is pertinent to what I do in some way (writing and art), and much of it is training and study material I should complete yesterday. Quite by accident I strayed across Bill Bryson’s In a Sunburned Country (a rather morbid story I’ll not relate here), his book about his travels across Australia. It’s a book that’s had me almost completely sidetracked.

This is one of those books that’s best read when it falls into your lap as a break from other books. One day you’re slogging your way through a tome of ungodly proportions, wondering how in God’s name this book ever got published, when a book like IASC falls into your lap and you pounce on it with the enthusiasm of a bobcat devouring a goat. Soon you find you must shirk all of your daily duties until the book is finished. This, people, is not only the mark of a good book, it is the mark of a good travel book. Even better is one that makes you want to visit Australia—which is remarkable when you consider Australia has more imaginative and horrible ways to kill you than pretty much any other place on earth. It’s the second most inhospitable climate on earth (the first is Antarctica).

But all Antartica can do is kill you with its cold. Australia is home to fluffy caterpillars that can kill you, species of spiders that can kill you with just a pinprick of venom, and the world’s deadliest snake: the taipan. (Interesting fact: the taipan is fifty times more venomous than the world’s second deadliest snake, the cobra. You get bit by a taipan and it’s bye bye baby, goodbye.) (Little show tune humor there you’ll (hopefully) appreciate when you read the book.) Not to mention, there are sharks, poisonous jellyfish (“blueys”), and man-eating crocodiles. And desert. Lots and lots of unforgiving desert. While most Australians aren’t bothered by the rest of the lot, the crocodiles even scare them.

That said, Bryson makes Australia—a country, he notes, to which Americans pay little attention (Russell Crowe notwithstanding)—sound like the world’s friendliest and warmest place on planet Earth. Australians do sound like a very friendly and welcoming folk. That they managed to make a country at all is to their immense credit, though, according to Bryson, they’ll not thank you for mentioning that their country essentially started off as a penal colony. (The “criminals,” by the way, were not at all a bad lot; many were only there because of harsh sentences that were common for the lower classes in England at the time. If you stole five cucumbers, you could choose between your own hanging or … a move to Australia.)

There were many places in the book where Bryson made me burst out laughing. I tried to read a passage to a friend, but I could barely get it out because I was laughing too hard. And he’s not just good as a humorist, either. He’s great at the factual stuff. What otherwise might be dry and sleep-inducing comes alive in Bryson’s writing, and he kept me as riveted as any high-octane novelist. He truly is a delight to read, and I can’t wait to read more of his books. Highly recommended.
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Sep 19, 2011

Melissa rated it

Shelves: travel, humor

I wasn't as fond of this travel book by Bill Bryson. Granted I've only read one of his others, but at least it was more about the place he was traveling rather than reading like a fact book on the place.

This time Bryson is in Australia traveling across and up and down and around the great island continent. He visits such places as Ayer's Rock (Uluru), the Great Barrier Reef, and other famous locales. He also stays at some small towns and travels through the wide desert expanse by ca...more

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Sep 04, 2011

Linda rated it

The first time a read this book I enjoyed it. The second time I read it, a couple of years later after learning a great deal more about Australia from other sources, I loved it. Bill Bryson does not take you to the typical tourist stops. Rather he takes you to many places best avoided, but he explains why in the process. His focus is on odd happenings in history, and quirky people he meets along the way. He is always researching museums and reading local papers to ferret out more little know fa...more

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Aug 27, 2011

Susan rated it

Shelves: adult-nonfiction

My husband adores this book, has read it numerous times laughing hysterically throughout. Having recently finished Bryson's A Walk in the Woods which I enjoyed a great deal (loving his friend, Katz, especially), I was game. Like it I did but love it? No. While it has his usual easygoing wit - and a bit about dogs and a park left me laughing out loud, and of course his great gift for observation, I still felt a bit gypped considering the length of the book. It is a thorough book as far as tre...moreMy husband adores this book, has read it numerous times laughing hysterically throughout. Having recently finished Bryson's A Walk in the Woods which I enjoyed a great deal (loving his friend, Katz, especially), I was game. Like it I did but love it? No. While it has his usual easygoing wit - and a bit about dogs and a park left me laughing out loud, and of course his great gift for observation, I still felt a bit gypped considering the length of the book. It is a thorough book as far as trekking about but it was city to city essentially and I didn't get any feeling for out in the wild (indeed, did he even see much wildlife?). While he made an effort at least to devote some pages to them and to be sure (and fair) he is appalled by their treatment and the way they are ignored in their society and the violent history of how they were brutalized in an obvious attempt to wipe them out, there was still no effort to spend any time with the Aboriginal people - even their sacred mountain was kind of a drive by. When he keeps saying how kind and good and fair the Australians are as a society in general and yet the Aborigines portrayed in the book are so disturbingly excluded from the very same Australian society, it is a bit hard to take at face value.
Additionally, he cites explorers and adventurers but all men long gone - what about Robyn Davidson, a 30 year old woman who crossed 1700 miles of outback solo except for her camels and her dog - and was on the cover of National Geographic around 1980 and wrote a rather riveting book about her experience (Tracks)? He is a keen researcher so I assume he wanted to leave it more in the spirit of a buddy travel book as he was accompanied by several different male friends throughout, some good humor there, but it felt very guys visiting cities and looking for cold beers at times to me. He does always inspire in his travel books though to be always willing to take the side road, visit the odd building, wander about (on foot and in car)and see what you can see. I wish he had visited an outback ranch as well, as the feeling is that I am still waiting for part two. (less)

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Aug 06, 2011

Justin Sylvia rated it

Granted i have read Bill Bryson novels before...actually, to be precise...one, but i enjoyed this one as well. My only qualm about this is unlike A Walk in the Woods the author who happens to be the main character was without his friend/cohort Stephen Katz. I personally enjoyed the conversations that were held in the previous novel i read. it gave me a sense like i was with both bill & stephen as they ventured out into the world and through the vast trail that makes up the Appalachian trail. I p...more

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Jul 22, 2011

Rebecca rated it

Shelves: travel

I read this book like a millions years ago when I was just branching out into travel lit and read everything by Bryson. I must have sold my copy as I don't have it anymore, so since coming back from Australia, I have wanted to reread it. I don't remember it being very memorable and it was totally that. One thing that I sort of didn't like was Bryson wrote way too much about everything that can kill you in Australia and it's so not as bad as he writes. Yeah, Australia probably has like 8 out of t...more

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Jun 25, 2011

TBuck rated it

This book was recommended to me by my book club. I loved it especially the part where he poked fun of himself of being a terrible sleeper and his boogie boarding experience. I laughed so hard, it's so entertaining. Through out the book I felt like I was taking the trip with him because his descriptions of the places and environments where he had been and people he met, he described it so vividly. The highlight of the book for me is not only that it made me laugh, but it's a nice surprise to know...more

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Jun 22, 2011

Charmayne rated it

The problem with reading a travelogue while already living in an exotic country, is that it makes you a bit of an adventure junkie - always looking for the next "big fix" and thinking you've stumbled upon it as you turn each page. This was the case with Bill Bryson's _In a Sunburned Country_, though I'll happily admit that I don't see a problem with this addiction.
Bryson is on a mission to explore Australia, and he certainly does this by taking in multiple tourist sites during p...more

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May 29, 2011

Marleen rated it

· review of another edition

My second book by Bill Bryson this month. I read them because my book club will be discussing various titles by Bryson this Tuesday but I have to say it was no hardship reading these two books.
Bill Bryson has an original and funny way of looking at his surroundings and the people in it. A quality that is more apparent in this book then it was in "A Walk in the Woods". It is also clear that Bryson has a weak spot for Australia. His love for this country/continent that we in the res...more

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May 25, 2011

Neil Tillquist rated it

· review of another edition

If one were to arm Dave Berry with anecdotes of deadly "just-about everything," of unimaginably immense and baked-barren vistas of the outback, outlandish animal and plant life (like the simple lichen, which was discovered only 20 years ago, living unchanged for the last, oh let's see, 3.5 billion years), and encounters with those denizens down under, you've got a good sense of Bill Bryson's skillfully and hilariously crafted gem. Like the time Byrson attended a sold out rugby game ("...more

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Mar 11, 2011

Jimyanni rated it

As usual, Bill Bryson is a marvellous writer with a droll sense of humor and a dry wit, who tells a delightful story of his experiences travelling. Also as usual, he conveys the sense of the place he's visiting quite enchantingly while providing a rather large dollop of outside information about the place from his reading; he is quite thorough in his research. This time, his choice of location is Australia, a place that I knew was fascinating even before I began to read his book. Now, I'm aware ...more

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May 25, 2010

Elizabeth rated it

My first review is of a book that I read ages ago and it's about Australia, my current home! I am writing this review specifically for one of my two Good Reads friends, Mary. This is the book where I learned that the lake in the middle of Canberra was designed by an American, Burley-Griffin (I can't remember his first name). He is from Illinois and separated from Frank Lloyd Wright by only one degree (I'll explain that when I review my second book Loving Frank). Anyway, he was an American archit...more

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Feb 17, 2010

Scott rated it

For my money, about as good as travel writing gets. Bryson is like Dave Barry with actual facts. Here's how he describes riding in a car while severely jet lagged, soon after his arrival in Sydney: "I am not, I regret to say, a discreet and fetching sleeper. Most people when they nod off look as if they could do with a blanket; I look as if I could do with medical attention. I sleep as if injected with a powerful experimental muscle relaxant. My legs fall open in a grotesque come-hithe...more

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Dec 17, 2009

Maria Khalid rated it

I recommend this book to anyone traveling to Australia. I don't think it's worthwhile otherwise, unless you enjoy travel writing. But if that's the case, any of Bill Bryson's books might be good for you because he is a great travel writer.

I personally was not motivated to read all the way through this until I actually traveled to Australia and wanted to learn more about the continent. The cool thing about this book (and about Australia) is that there are a lot of unique interesting ...more

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Oct 09, 2009

Men D. rated it

· review of another edition

Constance and I both read this book on our trip to Australia; she didn’t finish hers in time so I had to spring for a new copy for myself. On the other hand, Bill Bryson is easily excited and on many pages sentences such as "Kingsford Smith was quite possibly the greatest aviator ever to lived," and "The funeral for the pilots of the Kookabura was quite possibly the greatest that Sydney had ever seen" and "This spot was quite possibly the remotest and hottest and driest ...moreConstance and I both read this book on our trip to Australia; she didn’t finish hers in time so I had to spring for a new copy for myself. On the other hand, Bill Bryson is easily excited and on many pages sentences such as "Kingsford Smith was quite possibly the greatest aviator ever to lived," and "The funeral for the pilots of the Kookabura was quite possibly the greatest that Sydney had ever seen" and "This spot was quite possibly the remotest and hottest and driest on the planet, or any planet, ever" and "These people were quite possibly the friendliest living organisms ever to have lived, in life or in anyone's imagination," etc. This formula - X is quite possibly the most Y ever - is the result of Bryson's sloppy, giddy, researchless prose. Things are "quite possibly" superlatives because he doesn't bother to check to see if they actually are. After a while, this tone of endless, groundless enthusiasm grows tiresome and untrustworthy, even though the quips and scenarios remain funny. There's no room in the voice to accommodate the more troubling bits of Australiana, like the slaughter of Aborigines or the widespread racism (and vapidness) of Aussies, even though Bryson makes a stab at covering these issues, he quarantines its unpleasantness and doesn't seem to recognize outside of these chapters that the cheerful friendliness of the white Australians he's meeting might be directed to him only because he fits the Aussie demographic.

Also, I paid $24 AUD for this book because books in Australia are fucking expensive, because they are unread villagers.

Then again, the book was funny and full of interesting stories such as this:

“Consider just one of those stories that did make it into the New York Times in 1997, though buried away in the odd-sock drawer of Section C. In January of that year, according to a report written in America by a Times reporter, scientists were seriously investigating the possibility that a mysterious seismic disturbance in the remote Australian outback almost four years earlier had been a nuclear explosion set off by members of the Japanese doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo.

“It happens that at 11:03 p.m. local time on the night of 28 May 1993, seismograph needles all over the Pacific region twitched and scribbled in response to a very large-scale disturbance near a place called Banjawarn Station in the Great Victoria Desert of Western Australia. Some long-distance lorry drivers and prospectors, virtually the only people in that lonely expanse, reported seeing a sudden flash in the sky and hearing or feeling the boom of a might but far-off explosion. One reported that a can of beer had danced off the table in his tent.

“The problem was that there was no obvious explanation. The seismograph traces didn’t fit the profile for an earthquake or mining explosion, and anyway the blast was 170 times more powerful than the most powerful mining explosion ever recorded in Western Australia. The shock was consistent with a large meteorite strike, but the impact would have blown a crater hundreds of feet in circumference, and no such crater could be found. The upshot is that scientists puzzled over the incident for a day or two, then filed it away as an unexplained curiosity, the sort of thing that presumably happens from time to time.

“Then in 1995, Aum Shinrikyo gained sudden notoriety when it released extravagant quantities of the nerve gas sarin into the Tokyo underground, killing twelve people. In the investigations that followed, it emerged that Aum’s substantial holdings included a 500,000-acre desert property in western Australia very near the site of the mystery event. There, authorities found a laboratory of unusual sophistication and focus, and evidence that cult members had been mining uranium. It separately emerged that Aum had recruited into its ranks two engineers from the former Soviet Union. The groups avowed aim was the destruction of the world, and it appears that the event in the desert may have been a dry run for blowing up Tokyo.

“You take my point, of course. This is a country that loses a Prime Minister and is so vast and empty that a band of amateur enthusiasts could conceivably set off the world’s first non-governmental atomic bomb and almost four years would pass before anyone noticed. Clearly this was a place worth getting to know.”
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Jul 27, 2009

Laura rated it

Shelves: grown-up-books

Everyone likes to learn about Australia! Okay, maybe not everyone, but as I am planning a visit there soon, I was truly excited to get my hands on this book (I “read” the audio version, a highly coveted, long hold queue item at my public library). I have read some Bryson before and enjoy the way that he makes travel narratives fun and educational, including just the right amounts of humorous anecdote with thought-provoking fact. One thing that is clear from In a Sunburned Country is that Brys...more

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About Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson was born in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1951. He settled in England in 1977, and worked in journalism until he became a full time writer. He lived for many years with his English wife and four children in North Yorkshire. He and his family then moved to New Hampshire in America for a few years, but they have now returned to live in the UK.
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“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. ...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 the players-more if they are moderately restless.” — 28 people liked it

“As the saying goes, it takes all kinds to make the world go around, though perhaps some shouldn't go quite so far around it as others.” — 19 people liked it

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