Anna Savage's Reviews > Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe

This book is terrible. I listened to it on CD, and the writing was so predictable that I found myself completing each sentence before it was spoken. That was, in fact, the only way I managed to keep my attention on the book rather than contemplating the fascinating landscape of Indiana visible out my window. But the book wasn't just boring, it was also embarrassingly bad. I was a huge Bill Bryson fan in high school. I decided to hike the Appalachian Trial after reading A Walk in the Woods. But I think if I went back and read that book, I would find it just as obnoxious, boring, and lame. Anyone with more than 15 years of life experience would have to. His jokes are in bad taste, which would be ok if they were funny, but they are not. He is so self-deprecating as to make it obvious that he actually has a huge ego that he's trying to conceal so the audience will like him. I wish I had never listened to his book, because my opinion of him is forever tainted. Also, who writes a travel book that describes the meals, repeatedly, with "I dined lightly," or "I dined heavily," and the buildings with "It was lovely," or "It was disappointing"? Wow. That really makes me want to go to...nowhere.