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Notes from a Small Island
by
Bill Bryson
"Suddenly, in the space of a moment, I realized what it was that I loved about Britain-which is to say, all of it."
After nearly two decades spent on British soil, Bill Bryson-bestsellingauthor of The Mother Tongue and Made in America-decided to returnto the United States. ("I had recently read," Bryson writes, "that 3.7 million Americans believed that they had been abducte
...morePaperback, 324 pages
Published
May 1st 1997
by HarperCollins Publishers
(first published 1995)
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It took me forever to read this because I was constantly picking it up and putting it down, not because I wasn’t enjoying it, but because it’s one of those books where it works to read it in this way, and I read so many other books during the times I took breaks from reading this book.
Sometimes I just don’t like Bill Bryson as a man. There’s a smattering of things he writes that are cruel, crass, and otherwise makes him unappealing to me, and he sure drinks a lot of beer, but the nas...more
Sometimes I just don’t like Bill Bryson as a man. There’s a smattering of things he writes that are cruel, crass, and otherwise makes him unappealing to me, and he sure drinks a lot of beer, but the nas...more
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Bill Bryson likes hedgerows, yelling at people, the English language, complaining, pretending to be a hiker, the fifth Duke of Portland, W.J.C. Scott-Bentinck, and himself. He tries too hard to be clever, and although you're being introduced to some interesting mental pictures ("a mid-face snack dispenser" for instance), and it's positively obvious how much he loves the English language and the art of writing, the lengths to which he goes can be tiring. The long-winded, irritating ta...more
I happened upon this book by chance and read it because I enjoy Bill Bryson's writing style. His witty observations are not absent from this travelogue from his adopted home of the UK. The funny text and clever wording, however, do little to mask the fact that Bryson does not actually do very much on his journey. In almost every town, he takes walks, goes out to eat, gets quietly drunk, and bemoans modern architecture - in that order. Style can cover up for substance for only so long before it g...more
I studied for a summer in Bath, adore Wimbledon, and I am a huge fan of Shakespeare and most of literary canon which can be defined as British Lit, so I think I've always had a special place in my heart for the UK, particularly England.
Also, this was introduction to Bryson and I was enchanted with his witty and slightly snarky prose that teach and amuse simultaneously!
A favorite moment: hiking in a rainstorm and reaching the summit to find a cadre of Brits huddled toge...more
Also, this was introduction to Bryson and I was enchanted with his witty and slightly snarky prose that teach and amuse simultaneously!
A favorite moment: hiking in a rainstorm and reaching the summit to find a cadre of Brits huddled toge...more
My first exposure to Bill Bryson was "A Walk In The Woods" which is about his desire to leave modern America behind and go for a stroll along the Appalachian Trail. I love that book and found it to be hysterical and at other times very sensible in his commentary about the world around us.
"Notes From A Small Island" also reflects his desire to stroll through countrysides and insert some social commentary about the communities he encounters. But this time his loca...more
"Notes From A Small Island" also reflects his desire to stroll through countrysides and insert some social commentary about the communities he encounters. But this time his loca...more
Dish
rated it
·
review of another edition
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
expat Brits or those nostalgic for the 1990s
Shelves:
comfort-re-reads
It was hardly surprising to discover that the first book I finished in 2008 was one of my comfort re-reads. For these are the books I treasure, in the absolute certainty that whenever I feel bored, depressed, tired, lonely, miserable, or just over-whelmed by daily life I can pull them out and indulge in the healing power of the written word.
And Bill Bryson's “Notes from a Small Island” must be recorded as the ultimate comfort re-read for an expat Brit; providing on every page diver...more
And Bill Bryson's “Notes from a Small Island” must be recorded as the ultimate comfort re-read for an expat Brit; providing on every page diver...more
Downloaded from Audible.com
Narrator: Bill Bryson
Publisher: Bantam Doubleday Dell Audio, 1999
Length: 6 hours (abridged)
Publisher's Summary
After nearly 2 decades in Britain, Bill Bryson, the acclaimed author of such best sellers as The Mother Tongue, Made in America, and A Walk in the Woods, decided it was time to move back to the United States for a while. This was partly to let his wife and kids experience life in Bryson's homeland - and partly because h...more
Narrator: Bill Bryson
Publisher: Bantam Doubleday Dell Audio, 1999
Length: 6 hours (abridged)
Publisher's Summary
After nearly 2 decades in Britain, Bill Bryson, the acclaimed author of such best sellers as The Mother Tongue, Made in America, and A Walk in the Woods, decided it was time to move back to the United States for a while. This was partly to let his wife and kids experience life in Bryson's homeland - and partly because h...more
This is Bryson’s swan song to his adopted home of England, where he lived for over 10 years. Bryson decided, after he and his wife were leaving the UK to return to the States, to take one final trek around this “small island” and write about these farewell experiences. This was the first one of Bryson’s books that I read (I had heard of his bestselling books A Walk in the Woods and In A Sunburned Country about Appalachia and Australia respectively) and I chose this one to start with because of m...more
A tremendously humorous love letter from the author to his adopted country of England. Bryson takes a walking tour of England prior to returning to the U.S., and fondly skewers everything from the architecture to the food to the relentlessly polite and proper Brits themselves.
Having spent a fair amount of time in London, perhaps it spoke to me more deeply then someone not as familiar with the culture, but it is one of the few books I can recall that made me laugh out loud.
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Having spent a fair amount of time in London, perhaps it spoke to me more deeply then someone not as familiar with the culture, but it is one of the few books I can recall that made me laugh out loud.
...more
I only got about a third of the way through this book. I was giving Bill Bryson one more chance to impress me, but he didn't quite do it.
I would recommend this book for anyone who has lived in England, as many of the references in the book would escape someone who has not spent much time there. However, I was just never pulled in by his narrative.
I felt like Bryson writes with a perennial smirk on his face, laughing at his own cleverness as he pens various turns of ...more
I would recommend this book for anyone who has lived in England, as many of the references in the book would escape someone who has not spent much time there. However, I was just never pulled in by his narrative.
I felt like Bryson writes with a perennial smirk on his face, laughing at his own cleverness as he pens various turns of ...more
My manager in DC gave me this book before I left for London - and it was freakin hysterical to read. The author was basically reiterating all the thoughts I had while I was there, living amongst the Brits, diciphering the weird accents, and travelling around the countrysides on the weekends. Bryson has a comical and sarcastic tone throughout (like a true American) and he mainly complained the whole time he was there. But in the end, he was grateful (greatful?) to have had that experience, and I ...more
This book is so funny! I giggled all the way through. Being a Brit I just loved his experience of our guest houses, especially as the welcome at many of them hasn't changed one jot! He wrote the book C1995 so it is considerably out of date, but if you take that into consideration and want a really good laugh at the expense of the Brits and Americans then you'll love this one. I particularly enjoyed his struggle with the difference in our languages......as one who has experienced the difference d...more
I laughed so much while reading this that I squeaked, gasped, and could hardly breathe, much less speak. Bryson is an American who has lived in England for about many years. He is moving himself and his family back to America, however, and this book is the story of his farewell tour of England, Scotland, and Wales. His affection for the people and the places is unmistakable, and his "outsider's" perspective combined with a wry wit make for entertaining - and hilarious - reading.
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I like Bill Bryson quite a bit -- he's very informative and funny, even if sometimes you have to check to see if he's pulling your leg. This is about traveling through Britain circa mid-90's -- the good, the bad, the ugly. An American who married an Englishwoman, he'd lived in England a good many years at that point, and was doing a farewell tour before uprooting the family and going to live in America for a few years -- Hanover, New Hampshire, to be exact. Currently he's Chancellor at Durham...more
Walt
rated it
Recommends it for:
anyone interested in the more contemporary Great Britain.
Recommended to Walt by:
This was a bookclub suggestion.
I found myself thinking about the taxes paid by the most successful of writers like Bryson while reading this travelogue . Why would I wonder about that, you ask? Well, check out Making Expression Less Taxing on Amazon, you will get a clue.
Like several of Bryson's books in the library, this is a travel book written by him in anticipation of his moving back to the U.S. (where he grew up) from Great Britain (where he had lived for about twenty years with his British wife). (You've got ...more
Like several of Bryson's books in the library, this is a travel book written by him in anticipation of his moving back to the U.S. (where he grew up) from Great Britain (where he had lived for about twenty years with his British wife). (You've got ...more
this was the first Bill Bryson I read and it made me cause attention to myself as I was literally laughing out loud on the Tube in London! The bit that stays with me the most is the difference between how men and women queue... men are all prepared with the exact amount of change counted out, proffering it to the person... women look all surprised and fumble for their purse, then rummage around for the right amount of Money...
I think Bill Bryson is a sharp and witty observor of huma...more
I think Bill Bryson is a sharp and witty observor of huma...more
This wasn't dreadful, but I can't say I consistently enjoyed it. Bryson and I share many interests, such as bad architecture, weird place names, and traveling around the British coast during the off-season by way of unreliable public transport. I did find this book sometimes funny and sometimes insightful, and mostly I was amused to discover that the Exeter St. David's train station had the same collection of lame, unappealing tourist brochures in the mid-nineties as it does today. Some things n...more
Slightly disappointed by this one, but i think that's a matter of raised expectations. I remember quite liking I'm a Stranger Here Myself and since this one directly deals with England (my true home away from home; i keep thinking someday i'll move back to London) i figured that gave me a lock on getting warm fuzzies from this.
Problem is, while he spends a fair bit of time telling you what he loves about Britain, a lot of it is stuff that existed 20 years ago (when he first moved the...more
Problem is, while he spends a fair bit of time telling you what he loves about Britain, a lot of it is stuff that existed 20 years ago (when he first moved the...more
Curious that an American should be appointed Chairman for the Council for the Protection of Rural England, I read this with some trepidation! I have concluded that I empathise with much of what Mr. Bryson says (I too remember 1970s seaside "guest houses" with Ena Sharples-type landladies - but he forgot to mention the Izal toilet paper - younger readers are fortunate indeed not to have encountered either!) and the inedibility of British Rail ("Traveller's Fare" - what a misno...more
Maybe because I expected to like this too much or maybe because I was in a bad mood when I read it, but apart from a few funny moments, I really didn't enjoy this. Bryson's observations of people and places seem trite and sometimes mean-spirited, perhaps because he seemed to spend more time on trains and in hotel rooms than actually visiting anywhere or talking to anyone. I'm amazed that he spent 7 weeks traveling for this project -- it feels like he could have seen as much in 2.
I als...more
I als...more
I've noticed that many of the poor reviews for this book were from people who weren't English and/or hadn't been to England before, which doesn't actually surprise me to be honest. As I'm about as English as PG Tips and garden fetes, I understood all the references and in-jokes, but can easily see why they'd be annoying to someone who didn't know the country.
However, I think that self-deprecation is the key to British humour (yes, I've included Scotland, Wales and N. Ireland in this ...more
However, I think that self-deprecation is the key to British humour (yes, I've included Scotland, Wales and N. Ireland in this ...more
I read this book in France which gave me a certain detachment from that strange country to the north. Bill lived in Britain for 20 years, married an English woman and had English kids. The journey around the British isles that he describes here was undertaken before he returned to his native USA.
He walks, takes trains and buses and ferries and generally dawdles around England, Scotland, and Wales. It seems to a lonely and somewhat forlorn journey or maybe that’s just the execrable wea...more
He walks, takes trains and buses and ferries and generally dawdles around England, Scotland, and Wales. It seems to a lonely and somewhat forlorn journey or maybe that’s just the execrable wea...more
"After nearly two decades in Britain, Bill Bryson took the decision to move back to the States for a while, to let his kids experience life in another country, to give his wife the chance to shop until 10 p.m. seven nights a week, and, most of all, because he had read that 3.7 million Americans believed that they had been abducted by aliens at one time or another, and it was thus clear to him that his people needed him.
But before leaving his much-loved home in North Yorkshire, Bry...more
But before leaving his much-loved home in North Yorkshire, Bry...more
This book is a good example of why most people can't write travelogues to save their lives -- everything they usually get wrong, Bill Bryson gets it right. In "Notes from a Small Island," he captures the experience of Great Britain, his own unique journey through it, and his own personality equally well. He doesn't infuse the book with so much of himself that it becomes annoying, but just enough to give it character and an honest-to-goodness perspective.
Bryson writes with a...more
Bryson writes with a...more
The cover caught my eye in the bookstore. (Come on, admit it – everyone does judge a book by its cover!) When I smiled on page 2 and laughed out loud by page 9, I knew this was a book I would enjoy. I have decided that Sarah Vowell and Bill Bryson need to get together and write something. Either would make a fabulous travel guide and both seem equally passionate about their subjects. Notes recounts Bryson’s final “walkabout” his beloved UK after living in the country for 20 years and just b...more
I have been meaning to read something by Bill Bryson for a while now and I finally picked this up from the library. Being that I'm more familiar with England, I chose this one first, although his titles all sound so tempting.
Before writing this book, Bill Bryson had been living in England for a number of years when he decided to move back home to the U.S. However before he left he decided that he needed to take a farewell trip around Britain, which he then chronicled in Notes From A...more
Before writing this book, Bill Bryson had been living in England for a number of years when he decided to move back home to the U.S. However before he left he decided that he needed to take a farewell trip around Britain, which he then chronicled in Notes From A...more
Last summer I was reading one of Fabio Volo’s witty love stories,"IL GIORNO IN PIU' ", and I discovered that all around the world there are nice cafés called Starbucks where you can comfortably sit and just have coffee – especially long American coffee, big mugs of it – reading, writing, or just looking around for hours if you like. The atmosphere he described was so inviting I heartly wished to go to one of those cafeterias somewhere in the world some day. It came true and I found my...more
Kate gave this book to me the Christmas after I went to England with my mom. I believe I read about 10 pages and decided I didn't want to relive the dreariness of rain-soaked Brittain.
Last month, I plucked it off the shelf again, ready to look at it anew. While this book was a well-written and accurate depiction of Bryson's extensive traipse through England, I have to say... it was painful. I slogged through it in much the same fashion that Bryson makes his way through the foggy coun...more
Last month, I plucked it off the shelf again, ready to look at it anew. While this book was a well-written and accurate depiction of Bryson's extensive traipse through England, I have to say... it was painful. I slogged through it in much the same fashion that Bryson makes his way through the foggy coun...more
Brilliant! Insightful and very funny, Bryson nails the oddities of British culture. At times, he seems a little too impressed by his own cleverness, but he also has a knack for making me feel very nostalgic for my favorite bits of Britain. A must for anybody who is intimately familiar with British geography and culture.
"To this day, I remain impressed by the ability of Britons of all ages and social backgrounds to get genuinely excited by the prospect of a hot beverage." ~ ...more
"To this day, I remain impressed by the ability of Britons of all ages and social backgrounds to get genuinely excited by the prospect of a hot beverage." ~ ...more
Bryson's whistle stop tour around Britain is interesting as an insight into an outsiders view of my little island. At times mildly humorous, sometimes informative, there is just enough to keep you going.
Obviously he will attract criticism for summing up some places in a matter of lines, especially if his views differ from those of the reader, but I think travel writing is all about the authors interpretation. If it was about a country we hadn't experienced most of us Brits would be l...more
Obviously he will attract criticism for summing up some places in a matter of lines, especially if his views differ from those of the reader, but I think travel writing is all about the authors interpretation. If it was about a country we hadn't experienced most of us Brits would be l...more
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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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“I know this goes without saying, but Stonehenge really was the most incredible accomplishment. It took five hundred men just to pull each sarsen, plus a hundred more to dash around positioning the rollers. Just think about it for a minute. Can you imagine trying to talk six hundred people into helping you drag a fifty-ton stone eighteen miles across the countryside and muscle it into an upright position, and then saying, 'Right, lads! Another twenty like that, plus some lintels and maybe a couple of dozen nice bluestones from Wales, and we can party!' Whoever was the person behind Stonehenge was one dickens of a motivator, I'll tell you that.”
—
46 people liked it
“Suddenly, in the space of a moment, I realized what it was that I loved about Britain - which is to say, all of it. Every last bit of it, good and bad - Marmite, village fetes, country lanes, people saying 'mustn't grumble' and 'I'm terribly sorry but', people apologizing to me when I conk them with a nameless elbow, milk in bottles, beans on toast, haymaking in June, stinging nettles, seaside piers, Ordnance Survey maps, crumpets, hot-water bottles as a necessity, drizzly Sundays - every bit of it.
What a wondrous place this was - crazy as fuck, of course, but adorable to the tiniest degree. What other country, after all, could possibly have come up with place names like Tooting Bec and Farleigh Wallop, or a game like cricket that goes on for three days and never seems to start? Who else would think it not the least odd to make their judges wear little mops on their heads, compel the Speaker of the House of Commons to sit on something called the Woolsack, or take pride in a military hero whose dying wish was to be kissed by a fellow named Hardy? ('Please Hardy, full on the lips, with just a bit of tongue.') What other nation in the world could possibly have given us William Shakespeare, pork pies, Christopher Wren, Windsor Great Park, the Open University, Gardners' Question Time and the chocolate digestive biscuit? None, of course.
How easily we lose sight of all this. What an enigma Britain will seem to historians when they look back on the second half of the twentieth century. Here is a country that fought and won a noble war, dismantled a mighty empire in a generally benign and enlightened way, created a far-seeing welfare state - in short, did nearly everything right - and then spent the rest of the century looking on itself as a chronic failure. The fact is that this is still the best place in the world for most things - to post a letter, go for a walk, watch television, buy a book, venture out for a drink, go to a museum, use the bank, get lost, seek help, or stand on a hillside and take in a view.
All of this came to me in the space of a lingering moment. I've said it before and I'll say it again. I like it here. I like it more than I can tell you.”
—
14 people liked it
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What a wondrous place this was - crazy as fuck, of course, but adorable to the tiniest degree. What other country, after all, could possibly have come up with place names like Tooting Bec and Farleigh Wallop, or a game like cricket that goes on for three days and never seems to start? Who else would think it not the least odd to make their judges wear little mops on their heads, compel the Speaker of the House of Commons to sit on something called the Woolsack, or take pride in a military hero whose dying wish was to be kissed by a fellow named Hardy? ('Please Hardy, full on the lips, with just a bit of tongue.') What other nation in the world could possibly have given us William Shakespeare, pork pies, Christopher Wren, Windsor Great Park, the Open University, Gardners' Question Time and the chocolate digestive biscuit? None, of course.
How easily we lose sight of all this. What an enigma Britain will seem to historians when they look back on the second half of the twentieth century. Here is a country that fought and won a noble war, dismantled a mighty empire in a generally benign and enlightened way, created a far-seeing welfare state - in short, did nearly everything right - and then spent the rest of the century looking on itself as a chronic failure. The fact is that this is still the best place in the world for most things - to post a letter, go for a walk, watch television, buy a book, venture out for a drink, go to a museum, use the bank, get lost, seek help, or stand on a hillside and take in a view.
All of this came to me in the space of a lingering moment. I've said it before and I'll say it again. I like it here. I like it more than I can tell you.”
