 |
|
 |
|
A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail
(Hardcover, 1998)
Other Editions...
Author: Bill Bryson
Bill Bryson, known in England as "the funniest travel writer alive," returns to the States and walks...
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
LIST PRICE
$29.95
Save 83%
|
|
 |
|
|
|
Format: Hardcover
ISBN-10: 0786215135
ISBN-13: 9780786215133
Aug 1998
Publisher: Thorndike Pr
469 pages
Large Print
Thorndike Press Large Print Basic Series
Language: English |
|
|
|
|
|
Details
Synopsis
Bill Bryson, known in England as "the funniest travel writer alive," returns to the States and walks the Appalachian Trail, starting in Hanover, New Hampshire.
| Details | | Series: | Thorndike Press Large Print Basic Series |
| Size | | Length: | 469 pages | | Height: | 8.8 in | | Width: | 6.0 in | | Thickness: | 1.0 in | | Weight: | 20.8 oz |
Publisher's Notes
First Line: "Not long after I moved with my family to a small town in New Hampshire I happened upon a path that vanished into a wood on the edge of town."
Industry Reviews
"It's not all yuks--though it is hard not to grin idiotically through all 288 pages--for Bryson is a talented portraitist of place."
Kirkus Reviews (03/01/1998)
Everywhere Bryson goes, women seem to be ugly. . . . These sexist caricatures may be metonymies for the ugliness of American culture, which is Bryson's perennial subject, but his vigilant insistence on other people's inferiority can be cloying. . . . Even his buddy Katz ('ideas are not Katz's strongest suit') makes a useful comic butt. . . . Bryson's disaffection with America is the flip side of his love affair with Europe. . . . Cultural warfare aside, Bryson writes well about the reality of the forest: an environment which is pleasant to imagine but uncongenial in practice. . . . Grisly takes of true crime and bear attacks combine with details of ecological disaster to give the book a sober side but Bryson is, of course, never less than readable. Though [this] is not as funny as his books are often alleged to be, it still has plenty of Bryson's distinctive verbal charisma.
Annotation copyright H.W. Wilson Company.
DeCandido
Returning to the U.S. after 20 years in England, Iowa native Bryson decided to reconnect with his mother country by hiking the length of the 2100-mile Appalachian Trail. Awed by merely the camping section of his local sporting goods store, he nevertheless plunges into the wilderness and emerges with a consistently comical account of a neophyte woodsman learning hard lessons about self-reliance. Bryson (The Lost Continent) carries himself in an irresistibly bewildered manner, accepting each new calamity with wonder and hilarity. He reviews the characters of the AT (as the trail is called), from a pack of incompetent Boy Scouts to a perpetually lost geezer named Chicken John. Most amusing is his cranky, crude and inestimable companion, Katz, a reformed substance abuser who once had single-handedly "become, in effect, Iowa's drug culture." The uneasy but always entertaining relationship between Bryson and Katz keeps their walk interesting, even during the flat stretches. Bryson completes the trail as planned, and he records the misadventure with insight and elegance. He is a popular author in Britain and his impeccably graceful and witty style deserves a large American audience as well. (May)
Lopate
|
|
|
|
All rights reserved.
