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What Members Thought
Ah! Happiness is reading three wonderful books in a row! I am on a roll!! I'm not sure if I've ever been able to say this before: this book is (quite literally, and frequently) laugh out loud funny!!! And I'm learning stuff! about Australia!
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It was fun, but I gave up, it became boring and repetitive and I just have too many other books waiting to be read. ...more
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It was fun, but I gave up, it became boring and repetitive and I just have too many other books waiting to be read. ...more
Very informative travel read, with a few laugh-out-loud parts(including any part of the book that talked about cricket).
'Eighty percent of all that lives in Australia, plant and animal, exists nowhere else. More than this, it exists in an abundance that seems incompatible with the harshness of the environment. Australia is the driest, flattest, hottest, most desiccated, infertile, and climatically aggressive of all the inhabited continents'
'In the course of the Endeavour's three-year voyage, he ...more
'Eighty percent of all that lives in Australia, plant and animal, exists nowhere else. More than this, it exists in an abundance that seems incompatible with the harshness of the environment. Australia is the driest, flattest, hottest, most desiccated, infertile, and climatically aggressive of all the inhabited continents'
'In the course of the Endeavour's three-year voyage, he ...more
This is the first book by Bill Bryson I'd read and it wasn't really what I was expecting... I'd heard so much about his books and writing with him being so popular and most of what he releases being much-read and talked about. Although I did enjoy his writing I didn't find it as humourous as I was expecting nor did I find this book as engaging as I had thought it would be. Perhaps it's because reading it as an Australian I've already heard all of the wacky facts and intersting stories he pulls o
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Liked this more than the last Bryson I read, A Walk in the Woods, in direct proportion to how much I'd like to visit Australia over hiking the Appalachian Trail.
Good as usual; not a fast or gripping read, but still enjoyable. Were it my book, the city-to-wilderness content ratio would probably have been tipped in the opposite direction, but ah well.
I found the sections discussing Aborigines the most interesting (and horrifying), but wish he'd done more of it. (Also that he hadn't talked at one ...more
Good as usual; not a fast or gripping read, but still enjoyable. Were it my book, the city-to-wilderness content ratio would probably have been tipped in the opposite direction, but ah well.
I found the sections discussing Aborigines the most interesting (and horrifying), but wish he'd done more of it. (Also that he hadn't talked at one ...more
This is one of my favorite books of all times. Bill Bryson is a genius with humor, and making the bizarre become hilarious. And Australia is the perfect foil to his writing style, since it is so bizarre in so many ways. His experiences there are incredibly interesting and funny, yet in a slyly educational way. You'll get to the end of the book, still wiping tears from your eyes, and realize you learned quite a bit about a country you may not have paid much attention to before. and then you'll go
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Bryson strikes me so funny and shares so many wacky and obscure anecdotes and facts about where he travels that I just love to read his stuff. In this book he takes us to Australia...which seems to be the most dangerous place on earth, inhabited by deadly spiders, jellyfish and ten of the world's most poisonous snakes. I have no plans to visit the land down under, but I sure enjoyed this book.
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This book was hilarious. I read it before my honeymoon to Australia - great intro to the country in a very funny way!
Sep 06, 2007
Nicole
marked it as to-read
Dec 20, 2009
Samantha
added it
Apr 27, 2013
Ann
marked it as to-read
May 11, 2016
Shauna
marked it as to-read
May 24, 2020
Andrea
marked it as to-read
