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 that I didn't even know the half of it. As in "The Lost Continent", a book of his travels around the continental United States, he details the places that have excellent amenities while still retaining their unique charm, those that have perfectly adequate (possibly even fabulously lavish) amenities, but are totally generic, and those that have (in his experience) lousy amenities. The difference between this book and that is that in Australia, he seems willing to overlook the shortcomings of the places with lesser amenities, because he is so enthralled with the country as a whole. That attitude makes this book far more readable than that one; it's much more fun when the writer seems to be enjoying himself, even in the midst of what could have been unpleasant experiences.