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October 05
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New comment on Felicia's review of
The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
(see all 2 comments)
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August 31
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Lorenzo
gave
 
to:
The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America (Paperback)
by Bill Bryson
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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recommended for: Cynics who dislike the US
read in September, 2007
Lorenzo said:
"Bad.While Bryson can be funny at times, I quickly grew tired of him and eventually he just annoyed me with this one. I would have stopped in the middle, but for my book club's sake, I plodded through, skimming some sections toward the end. This isn't...more
Bad.While Bryson can be funny at times, I quickly grew tired of him and eventually he just annoyed me with this one. I would have stopped in the middle, but for my book club's sake, I plodded through, skimming some sections toward the end. This isn't real travel writing. Bryson was a longtime expat in England who returned to the US apparently so he could cynically criticize just about everyone and everything he saw here. I got the feeling that he had pitched the book idea to his publisher and gotten his advance money before thinking better of the idea when it was already too late. It sounds like this "journey" was a labor of hate.
I also lived in England for a couple of years before returning to the US. But when I returned, I saw this country with fresh eyes and now feel better able to appreciate both its strengths and its faults. Bryson sounds like he just came back to show us how much better HE is than us. His wit just doesn't sound like it comes from someone who ultimately cares about his subjects. It just sounds like a schoolboy ripping on anyone who's different from him. His other books may be better but definitely give this one a pass....less
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August 26
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Lorenzo made a comment on Felicia's profile:
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August 22
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Lorenzo
gave
to:
1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus (Paperback)
by Charles C. Mann
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my rating:
Added to my books!
add my review
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recommended for: you
read in August, 2008
Lorenzo said:
"For the lay person, this book sheds new light on the complexities of culture and civilization in the pre-contact Americas. It may help to envision pre-Columbian meso-America more in line with the way a westerner might view ancient China - a somewhat ...more
For the lay person, this book sheds new light on the complexities of culture and civilization in the pre-contact Americas. It may help to envision pre-Columbian meso-America more in line with the way a westerner might view ancient China - a somewhat incomprehensible but vastly complex civilization about which most of us know very little. If it weren't for the biological accident of susceptibility to old world disease, might we today be competing in the Teotihuacan Olympic games? ...less
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June 24
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New comment on Erin's review of
The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America
reply to this comment
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Lorenzo
read and liked
Erin's
review of The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America:
"This was a good metro book, but it didn't live up to my expectations. This is the first Bill Bryson I've ever read, and I love travelogues, so I assumed I would love his writing. But, really, he's kind of an ass, and sometimes he's just mean . . . an...more
This was a good metro book, but it didn't live up to my expectations. This is the first Bill Bryson I've ever read, and I love travelogues, so I assumed I would love his writing. But, really, he's kind of an ass, and sometimes he's just mean . . . and not in a good way. It got better as it went along, but there were a lot of points when I just wanted to say, "well if Britain is so great, why don't you move back there and just shut up!?"
I've heard that this isn't one of Bryson's best (I think it was one of his first books), so I'm not going to write him off completely (yet). ...less
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New comment on Ciara's review of
The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America
(see all 3 comments)
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New comment on Leftbanker's review of
The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America
(see all 4 comments)
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Lorenzo
read and liked
Leftbanker's
review of The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America:
"The Lost Continental: A Look at Bill Bryson
I should preface this essay by saying that if everyone didn’t like this Bill Bryson book as much as I didn’t, he would be about the wealthiest author on the planet. At least I bought it. I hav...more
The Lost Continental: A Look at Bill Bryson
I should preface this essay by saying that if everyone didn’t like this Bill Bryson book as much as I didn’t, he would be about the wealthiest author on the planet. At least I bought it. I have several of his books and have read all of them. Bill Bryson can be assured that with detractors like me, he doesn’t need fans.
A dyspeptic man in his middle thirties, whose constant bad mood seems more like someone in their mid seventies, drives around the U.S. and complains about absolutely everything he sees, smells, hears, and eats. If this sounds like your idea of a good time, read Bill Bryson’s The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America (Abacus, 1990).
He constantly mocks small towns in America by referring to them by such names as Dog Water, Dunceville, Urinal, Spigot, and Hooterville—and this is in the first five pages. Don’t worry about him running out of clever names for hick towns; Bryson has a million of them and he uses every single one.
The only things about which Bryon has a favorable view are natural wonders and the homes of rich people. He marvels at the obscenely-posh residences of ultra-wealthy, early 20th century industrialists on Mackinac Island which were built before income taxes and most labor laws. He would probably be thrilled with pre-revolutionary France or Czarist Russia. One of his very few favorable reviews of American cities was of the ski town of Stowe, Vermont which caters almost exclusively to the rich.
When he is traveling through the southwest he complains about the Mexican music on the radio. He seems more content to resort to chauvinism than to come to some sort of understanding about the culture he is visiting. In my opinion, it’s always more interesting to praise something that you understand than to mock something that you don’t. I would have taken the time to translate a few of the songs and tell readers what they are about. In fact, I have done this and Mexican ranchera music is all about stories of love, heartbreak, and often violence which describe the cowboy culture of Mexico’s northern territories. Bryson implies that the people who listen to this music are just too stupid to realize that it is only one tune played over and over.
He gripes about a weatherman on TV who seems rather gleeful at the prospect of a coming snow storm yet Bryson seems to relish in the idea of not liking anything that he experiences in his journey. His entire trip is like a storm he passes through. Just once I wanted him to roll into some town that he liked and get into an interesting conversation with one of its residents.
Here are examples of the cheeriness with which Bryson opens a few of his chapters:
“I drove on and on across South Dakota. God, what a flat and empty state.”
“What is the difference between Nevada and a toilet? You can flush a toilet.” (One reviewer called Bryson "witty.")
“I was headed for Nebraska. Now there’s a sentence you don’t want to have to say too often if you can possibly help it.”
“In 1958, my grandmother got cancer of the colon and came to our house to die.” This last event must have brought untold joy to the young writer.
Tell us more, Bill. His narrative is more tiresome than any Kansas wheat field he may have passed on his road trip through hell. Most Americans seem to be either fat, or stupid, or both in the eyes of Bryson. I can only assume that Bryson himself is some sort or genius body builder. Just one time I wanted him to talk to a local resident over a beer or a cup of coffee. I wanted him to describe his partner in conversation as other than fat or stupid. Not even one time do we hear about a place from somebody who lives there. We could just as easily have read the guidebooks as Bryson did and he could have stayed home and saved himself thousands of miles of misery....less
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