Backpacked - Catherine Ryan Howard

    2011; 278 pages.  Full Title: Backpacked: A Reluctant Trip Across Central America.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres : Travel; Central America; Non-Fiction.  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

 

    Backpacking.  An alternative way to visit get the “real feel” of an area you’re visiting for the first time.

 

    Throw everything you need into a giant fabric pack that's made to be carried around on your back.  And not some pansy-wansy Boy Scout-sized knapsack.  It has to hold everything you’d normally stow in one or more suitcases, because you’ll be dispensing with that amenity.

 

    This isn't the same as "roughing it".  You don't have to sleep on the ground out in the forest or cook your own meals over a rustic campfire.  Youth hostels, inns, and hotels are all acceptable, as are cafés, restaurants, and even fast-food joints, depending on your budget.  You can even party-hearty and partake of alcoholic beverages, all in the name of socializing with the locals.  Doesn’t this all sound like a heckuva lot of fun?

 

    Nope, not to me.  But I’d love to read a book about someone else who’s done it.

 

What’s To Like...

    Backpacked chronicles Catherine Ryan Howard’s 2008 travels throughout Central America in 2008 with her friend Sheelagh.  By her count, over a nine-week period they visited five countries, saw twenty-two different places, stayed in seventeen different rooms, taken ten different modes of transport, dipped their toes in four different bodies of water, and all without wearing a scrap of make-up.

 

    Both the author and Sheelagh are Irish, hence the book is written in English, not American.  So temperatures are given in degrees Centigrade, speeds are in kilometres-per-hour, at times you can’t be arsed, and if you come down with diarrhoea, you'll be forced to use the loo.

 

    Backpacked is a travelogue, so it's written in the first-person point-of-view of the author.  The 278 pages are divided into seventeen chapters (plus a prologue and an epilogue), all of similar length, and further grouped into five sections which correspond to the Central American nations the two wayfarers visit: Guatemala (chs. 1-9), Honduras (chs. 10-13), Nicaragua (chs. 14-15), Costa Rica (ch. 16), and Panama (ch. 17).

 

    I liked the “balance” between the adventures and misadventures that Catherine Ryan Howard experiences.  Some of the people she crosses paths with are obnoxious, others are a treat to meet.  Some situations she finds herself in are downright dangerous, others induce complete relaxation.  Some of the places where she stays are ratty, others are picturesque.  Sometimes there’s a cool breeze, other times the weather is unbearably hot and humid.

 

    The author’s opinion about outdoor activity matches up closely with my own (see the first excerpt below), so does the fact that she’s both a bookaholic and an introvert.  It was fun to learn about chicken buses (see the second excerpt below) and tuk-tuks, and I’d really love to be able to see the white haze of the Milky Way at least once while stargazing.  I’d never heard of the word “frienaissance” and didn’t have a clue who Liz Lemon was, so had to look up both of those terms.

 

    The book closes with a neat Epilogue, detailing how this trip led to a career turn in Catherine Ryan Howard’s life, and where Sheelagh ended up the following year.  If you’ve ever had any aspirations to be a self-published indie author (full disclosure: I don’t), you'll probably find the epilogue to be motivational.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.0/5 based on 258 ratings and 247 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.68/5 based on 774 ratings and 87 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    I hate anything that involves jumping, diving, falling, climbing or the need for a life jacket, and I only run if it’s away.  The sum total of my environmental efforts is watching An Inconvenient Truth – on board a less than half-empty 747 somewhere over the Atlantic, I kid you not.  I think being stoned all the time makes you… well, stoned all the time, or looking like a glassy-eyed, giggling idiot to me.  I don’t much like random strangers, which is to say that I’m not convinced that befriending the drunken guy in the corner and letting him talk to me for an hour about how we should all “believe in the trees” is the best possible use of my time.  (loc. 222)

 

    A chicken bus is, typically, a former US school bus – if you’re not American, those are the yellow buses you see in movies and on TV – that has been aesthetically reinvigorated with a colourful, occasionally psychedelic paint job and then released into the closest thing the country has to a public transport system.  Although they’ll deliver you to your destination for practically nothing - $1 or less – you’ll probably spend your journey with your face in someone else’s armpit and a chicken on your lap.  (loc. 2191)

 

Kindle Details…

    Alas, Backpacked is no longer available for the Kindle, which is also true of the author's other non-fiction books.  An Amazon reviewer in December 2017 also noted this, so I gather it is not a recent development.  Catherine Ryan Howard does offer five e-novels at Amazon, for the very reasonable cost of $0.99 apiece.  They appear to be mostly in the suspense-thriller genre.  You can pick up the paperback version of Backpacked at Amazon for a whopping $303.68 (*).  I assume that’s an entrepreneurial way of saying the book’s out-of-print.

 

    (*): Update: between writing that section and posting this review, the price for the paperback has dropped to $19.99.  Apparently, whoever’s been holding on to two copies of the paperback has decided to get real.

 

You can’t win an argument against an idiot because they don’t have to stick to the facts and you do.  (loc. 2977)

    I couldn't find much to quibble about in Backpacked.  It’s an incredibly “clean” book; I counted just eleven cusswords in the whole book.  Catherine and Sheelagh occasionally partake of a glass of wine or other alcohol, and they both smoke Marlboro Lights, but I don’t think little Tommy and Suzie are going to take up take up either vice due to reading this book.

 

    There is the usual amount of “spellchecker errors” found in self-published books.  Typos like peaked/peeked, Columbian/Colombian, wonder/wander, and two that made me chuckle: inequity/iniquity and tinkle/tinker.

 

    That’s about it for the nitpicking.  Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed Backpacked, particularly since the previous travelogue I read was annoyingly negative (that review is here).  I can’t say this book made me want to go out and buy my own backpack, but I was left wondering whether there are any cruises around Central American available.  Maybe down the Caribbean side, through the Panama Canal, and up the Pacific side.  That would be awesome.

 

    8 Stars.  It's not for me to tell any author how to market their books, but methinks it's time to offer this book, and its “prequel”, Mousetrapped: A Year and A Bit in Orlando, Florida, in e-book format.

Riding The Iron Rooster - Paul Theroux

    1988; 481 pages.  Full Title: Riding the Iron Rooster: By Train Through China.  New Author? : Yes.  Genres : Travel; China; Railroad Travel; Non-Fiction.  Laurels: 1989 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award (winner).  Overall Rating : 5½*/10.

 

    China.  1986.  Mao Zedong died ten years earlier, and Deng Xiaoping now heads the country.  Under his guidance, the dreaded Cultural Revolution has died out, and the subsequent  economic reforms and the opening of Chinese markets have led to dozens of Western corporations vying to form joint ventures there.

 

    Enter the American author, Paul Theroux, with the aim of traveling around in China and writing a book about it.  That's no small feat, since China is freaking huge.  You can freeze in the north, with winter temperatures dropping to as low as -40°C.  You can swelter in the south along the tense border with Vietnam.  Western China is incredibly dry and barren, and eastern China is incredibly crowded.

 

    To boot, Paul Theroux isn’t satisfied with being a sightseer and going on a bunch of tours with other westerners.  He wants to see the “real” China – the out of the way places, and talk with the “real” citizens.  But traveling by car would take forever, and you can’t get to most of the remote places by plane.  That leaves one other option, but fortunately it is probably Theroux’s favorite means of transportation.

 

    Traveling by train.

 

What’s To Like...

    Paul Theroux loves trains so much that instead of flying to China to start his odyssey, he takes a train clear across Europe and Asia (England to France to Germany to Poland to Russia to Mongolia) to get there.  The first chapter in Riding The Iron Rooster is devoted to that journey, highlighted by the fact that the Chernobyl nuclear disaster occurred while he was traversing Russia, meaning he possibly got zapped by the escaping radiation.

 

    There are 21 more chapters, most of them covering the various train trips he took during his yearlong stay in China.  I noted at least 28 cities that he visited, including hitting two of them, Canton and Shanghai, twice.  The book’s title refers to a grueling 4½-day (one way) train trip from Beijing to Urumchi, a city in the middle of nowhere in the deserts of western China.

 

    I delighted in Paul Theroux's vocabulary choices.  Some of my favorite (English) words are given in the next section, but Theroux also shares lots of Mandarin Chinese words and phrases in pinyin (without the tonal marks, but we’ll cut him some slack on that).  There’s even one Tibetan phrase.  You’ll find lots of the useful travelogue information about the quality (or lack thereof) of the food, accommodations, touristy trinkets, weather, local populace, and transportation in the various cities, hotels, and railcars wherein the author stayed.

 

    You get a fair amount of history (the sad plight of Pu Yi, the last Chinese emperor), trivia (“Ulan Bator” means “Red Hero”), handy railroading tips (they change the bedding very early and very forcefully in sleeper cars), interesting folk remedies (medicinal urine), and the slew of books that Paul Theroux read while getting from place to place, including one titled The Golden Lotus, a 500-year-old Chinese book of erotica that makes 50 Shades of Grey look tame.  I learned what the universal phrase “Shansh marnie” means, and in light of our present Covid pandemic, was sobered by the fact that the Yunnan and Qinghai sections of northern China were just recovering from a serious outbreak of the bubonic plague when the Theroux was visiting there.

 

    My favorite trip was the visit to the Harbin Ice-Sculpting Festival, which took my (figuratively) and the author’s (literally, since it was -30°C) breath away.  The list of Chinese inventions amazed me.  I was tickled that “heffalumps” get mentioned twice, and had to wiki Sam McGee to understand that reference.  It was neat to see “Om mani padme hum” mentioned; it's my favorite Tibetan Buddhist mantra, although I learned it with an aspirated “hrih” added to it.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Fossick (v.) : to rummage; to search through (Aussieism).

Others: Importune (v.), Tumuli (n., plural), Twee (adj.), Stodge (n.), Solecism (n.), Meretricious (adj.), Spiv (n.), Recrudescence (n.), Comprador (n.).

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.5/5 based on 183 ratings.

    Goodreads: 4.03/5 based on 8,574 ratings and 343 reviews

 

“Things That Sound Wrong, But Aren’t…

    “I have my mother’s sister in a box.”  (loc. 4135)

 

Excerpts...

    The following day I sneaked downstairs, skipped breakfast, and was on my way out the front door of the hotel when Mr. Fang hurried towards me, making a noise.  It was a kind of laughter.  By now I was able to differentiate between the various Chinese laughs.  There were about twenty.  None of them had the slightest suggestion of humor.  Some were nervous, some were respectful, many were warnings.  The loud honking one was a sort of Chinese anxiety attack.  Another, a brisk titter, meant something had gone badly wrong.  Mr. Fang’s laugh this morning resembled the bark of a seal.  It meant Hold on there! and it stopped me in my tracks.  (loc. 2778)

 

    In Canada people joke and gloat about the cold.  In Harbin and in Heilongliang in general no one mentioned it except outsiders, who never stopped talking about it.  I bought a thermometer so that I would not bore people by asking them the temperature, but the damn thing only registered to the freezing point – zero centigrade.  The first time I put it outside the red liquid in the tube plunged into the bulb and shriveled into a tiny bead.  So I had to ask.  It was midmorning: minus twenty-nine centigrade in the sparkling sunshine.  By nighttime it would be ten degrees colder than that.  (loc. 5130)

 

It is wrong to see a country in a bad mood: you begin to blame the country for your mood and to draw the wrong conclusions.  (loc. 4667)

    Sadly, there’s a lot to quibble about in Riding The Iron Rooster.  From least important to most:

 

    There are more than a dozen typos, although most of them looked like scanner errors, so maybe they’re only in the e-book version.  I don’t expect the author to catch these, but the proofreaders should be fired.

 

    There’s a very handy 2-page map at the start of the e-book, with a very annoying page margin down the middle that blotted out critical parts of the map.  Surely a better one could’ve been found.  There’s a smattering of footnotes that are quite enlightening, but seem to be only used in chapters 8, 12, and 16.  There is a small amount of cussing, and discussion of some weird things like penile reattachments.  There’s also a steamy excerpt from The Golden Lotus, but hey, you've already been warned about that.

 

    Twice we have to endure the author telling us about his dreams, and he seems to have a thing having Ronald and Nancy Reagan in them.  He also insists on using the anglicized spellings of Chinese proper nouns, the most glaring being choosing “Peking” over “Beijing”.  But this was 1986, and maybe "Peking" was the preferred linguistic choice for western writers back then.

 

    Finally, and most egregious, the author seems to have a predetermined crappy attitude about China, its government, its food, its weather and almost all of its citizens, and it shows throughout the book.  1986 was a relatively joyous time for the Chinese: Mao Zesong and the horrors of the Cultural Revolution were things of the past.  The people who Theroux meets and talks with are happy and outgoing, yet he’s fixated on making them recount and relive those awful days of internal terrorism from ten years earlier.

 

    The Chinese government eventually gets wind of the Theroux’s sentiments and assign a chaperone to accompany him in his travels.  They are polite and full of information, but Theroux delights in ditching them every chance he gets and quizzing everyone about one topic only: how bad they had it during the Cultural Revolution.

 

    In the final chapter Theroux journeys to Tibet, and unsurprisingly he’s completely enamored by everything Tibetan.  They may not bathe, but he doesn’t mind.  They may yearn for independence and for the Dalai Lama to return, and he heartily supports that.  The weather may be just as cold as in Harbin (except that the here altitude here is above 7,000 feet and it’s hard to breathe), but he rejoices in the brisk conditions.  If only all the Chinese would pack up and leave Tibet, Theroux would be completely happy.

 

    5½ Stars.  For the record, I totally sympathize with the Chinese government and their decision to assign a chaperone to monitor Theroux's travels and interviews.

A Voyage Long and Strange - Tony Horwitz

   2008; 437 pages.  Full Title : A Voyage Long and Strange: On The Trail Of Vikings, Conquistadors, Lost Colonists, and Other Adventurers in Early America.  New Author? : Yes.  Genre : Non-Fiction; U.S. History; Travelogue.  Overall Rating : 9*/10.

    “Hey, tell me everything you remember about the earliest days of Europeans exploring what is now the United States.”

   “Okay, ‘Columbus sailed the ocean blue, in fourteen hundred ninety-two’.  Oh yeah, then the Pilgrims or somebody landed on Plymouth Rock.  Around 1620, as I recall.”

    “Very good.  But there’s a 128-year gap in between those two dates.  What was going on during that century-and-a-quarter after Columbus and before the Pilgrims?”

    “I dunno.  Cortez and Pizarro, maybe.  But that was down in Mexico and South America.  Say, what was going on up here in North America during that time?”

    That’s what this book is all about.

What’s To Like...

    A Voyage Long And Strange chronicles Tony Horwitz’s  efforts to answer the question posed above.  Its 13 chapters are divided into three logical and by-and-large chronological sections: Discovery, Conquest, and Settlement, plus a great Prologue that details the Norsemen (there was more than one) stumbling onto Newfoundland a half a millennium before Columbus, but not staying.

    Tony Horwitz will inevitably remind you of Bill Bryson: both recount travels they have taken, with wit and information that will keep your interest in high gear.  But Horwitz mostly drives while Bryson mostly walks, and Horwitz focuses more on History, whereas Bryson seems more into Local Culture.  I enjoy both authors, and being a History buff, I really liked riding along with Horwitz here as he sought to travel the same paths of explorers, conquistadors, and settlers.

    You’ll learn lots of fascinating bits of trivia along the way.  For instance, Plymouth was not the first English colony here (Fort St. George was); the Pilgrims were not the first to settle in Massachusetts (Cuttyhunk was, in 1602); and Ponce de Leon wasn’t looking for the Fountain of Youth (he was searching for gold, like every other conquistador).

    The sections alternate between Historical accounts about the brave and the foolish who came in search of gold and glory; and Horwitz’s Personal accounts, as he tries to “feel what they felt”, adjust to local culture, and sift through the tourist-drawing myths and legends that have sprung up since then.  You’ll chuckle as he experiences a sweat lodge, endures the tropical weather in the Dominican Republic, and gasp as he tackles the mighty Mississippi River in a rickety canoe.

    The text is sprinkled with some very kewl maps and pictures.  You’ll meet lots of park rangers, museum guides, tourist shop owners, and Historical Society reenactors.  They all have stories to tell.  A couple cuss words do occasionally arise in Horwitz’s conversations with these folk, but I thought it set the tone quite aptly.

Kewlest New Word ...

Skraelings (n., pl..) : Inuits, or other indigenous inhabitants of Greenland or Vinland (a Vikingism)-

Others : Prolix (adj.); Benighted (adj.); Orotund (adj.)

Excerpts...

    “Ate some street food.  Not sure I should have.”

    Caonabo looked alarmed.  “What was it called?”

    “Don’t know.  Chimichanga, or something.”

    “Chicharrones?”

    “That’s it.  Chewy and greasy.”

    Caonabo shook his head.  “This is very bad.”  Chicharrones, he said, were deep-fried pork skins with gristly flesh and fat attached, flavored with road fumes and flies.  Though popular with the Dominicans, the dish was famously lethal to foreigners.  “Eat just a little bit and you regret it for the rest of your life, which isn’t long,” Caonabo said.

    “I ate two plates.”  (loc. 1907)

    I wasn’t sure I followed his argument.  “So you’re saying we should honor myth rather than fact?” I asked.

    “Precisely.”  The reverend smiled benignly, as I imagined he might at a bewildered parishioner.  “Myth is more important than history.  History is arbitrary, a collection of facts.  Myth we choose, we create, we perpetuate.”

    He spooned up the last of his succotash.  “The story here may not be correct, but it transcends truth.  It’s like religion – beyond facts.  Myth trumps fact, always does, always has, always will.”  (loc. 6569)

Kindle Details...

    A Voyage Long And Strange currently sells for $9.99 at Amazon, although Santa Claus brought it to me as a gift last Christmas.  Santa’s remarkably up-to-date, technology-wise.  Tony Horwitz has a number of other books of the same genre, all in the range of $9.99-$12.99, including Blue Latitudes, which Santa also brought me this past Christmas.

 “Estamos jodidos.”  (“We’re f*cked.”  (loc. 1307)

    I was pleasantly surprised that I knew of most of the main characters that roamed around American in 1492-1620.  Coronado, De Soto, John Smith, etc.  But there were also a bunch that I’d never heard of – Bjarni, Onate, Narvaez, Jean Ribault, Pedro Menendez, and Bartholomew Gosnold, to namedrop a few of them.  And there was a whole section of the French vs. the Spanish duking it out to the death, from the Carolinas and Florida, respectively, that was totally new to me.

    I also thoroughly liked the way Tony Horwitz wraps up A Voyage Long and Strange,  wherein he weighs the pluses and minuses of telling the true facts about these early explorers (warts and all) versus promoting the legends and mystique that have cropped up long afterward.  While he (and I) naturally lean towards historical accuracy, he nevertheless admits he can see some merit in the fanciful tales.

    9 Stars.  Tony Horwitz came highly recommended by one of my bosses who is also a History buff, and I was in no way disappointed by this, my introduction to his books.  Subtract ½ star if you’re not particularly keen of Bill Bryson books, but still like to read Historical Non-Fiction.

In A Sunburned Country - Bill Bryson

   2000; 304 pages.  New Author? : No.  Genre : Non-Fiction; Anecdotal Humor; Travel.  Overall Rating : 9½*/10.

    Australia.  The land that time forgot.  Also the land that the rest of the world forgets about.  Most people’s knowledge of Australia begins and ends with kangaroos, koala bears, boomerangs, and maybe a weird-looking opera house.  Can you name their Prime Minister?  Their ruling party?  Any of the Australian states?

    But Australia is a fascinating, exciting place.  There are so many plants, animals, and geological formations that are found there and nowhere else.  So in the late 1990’s, Bill Bryson made several trips there, to get to know the country and to write a book about it.  In A Sunburned Country chronicles his adventures Down Under.

What’s To Like...

     The book is divided into three sections – one for each of Bryson’s three visits.  The first was a train ride across Australia, from Sydney to Perth.  The second trip was by car, and covered all the major cities in Australia’s southeast quadrant.  The third trip, also by car, ventured into Australia’s smaller cities, and the interior.  There is a map at the front of the book.  Bookmark it (Kindle) or dog-ear it (book); you’ll be referring to it frequently.

    Bill Bryson’s activities in any given city can be habitual.  Find the parks and walk through them.  Find the museums and walk through them.  Find the used bookstores and browse through them.  Find the pubs and restaurants and eat, drink, and be merry.  Find the hotel and enjoy or endure the amenities.  This could get tediously repetitive in the hands of a lesser writer, but Bryson's storytelling is superb, and I never was bored with any of his tales.

    There are also numerous and humorous “asides” as Bryson becomes immersed in the local culture.  You’ll be mystified by the game of cricket; amused by the rabbit infestation; and amazed by just how many ways the fauna, flora, land, and sea can kill you in Australia.

    But Bryson also tackles more serious topics.  It may be amusing to envision the predator-less rabbits running wild across the outback, but the devastation they and other imported plants and animals did to the indigenous landscape is both irreversible and borderline criminal.  The small amount of forested area is rapidly being depleted (Australia is the world's #1 exporter of wood chips).  And even more critical is the way the aborigines were, and are, treated.  Heady stuff; not very funny, but Bryson’s insights of such issues are quite thought-provoking.

Kewlest New Word. . .

Antipodean (adj.)  :  the parts of the earth diametrically opposite – often used of Australia and New Zealand contrasted to the Western Hemisphere.  More generally, (anything that is) exactly opposite or contrary.

Excerpts...

    On my first visit, some years ago, I passed the time on the long flight reading a history of Australian politics in the twentieth century, wherein I encountered the startling fact that in 1967 the prime minister, Harold Holt, was strolling along a beach in Victoria when he plunged into the surf and vanished.  No trace of the poor man was ever seen again.  This seemed doubly astounding to me – first that Australia could just lose a prime minister (I mean, come on) and second that news of this had never reached me.  (pg. 3)

    “Dining room’s closed, mate,” said one of the two guys at the bar.  “Chef’s crook.”

    Crook means ill.

    “Must’ve ate some of his own cooking,” came a voice from the pokies alcove, and we all had a grin over that.

    “What else is there in town?” I asked.

    “Depends,” said the man, scratching his throat thoughtfully.  He leaned toward me slightly.  “You like good food?”

    I nodded.  Of course I did.

    “Nothin’, then.”  He went back to his beer.  (pg. 182)

 “I tell you, Barry, he was farting sparks!”  (pg.  92)

    The wit in In A Sunburned Country is topnotch; the narrative is totally entertaining; and the book can also stand on its own as a Tour Guide for anyone contemplating a vacation in Oz.  It is also obvious that Bill Bryson researched the subject matter thoroughly.  My only advice would be to read it in bits, to keep it from feeling repetitive.  There are only so many ways to describe the summer heat in the desert outback.

    I read very little non-fiction (maybe one book a year), because the books are often dry and boring.  So it was refreshing to read something from this genre that entertained from start to finish, while still giving me a much better picture of Australia.  I still can’t tell you who the Prime Minister is, but I am now able to tell you at least a half-dozen ways to easily meet your demise there.

    9½ Stars.  Highly recommended.

Notes from a Small Island - Bill Bryson

1995; 324 pages.  New Author? : No.  Genre : Anecdotal Travels.  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

    Bill Bryson was born and bred in the USA, but moved to England after high school and spent most of the next 20 years there.  When he decided to move back here, he took a 7-week "farewell tour" of the UK.  He toured the length and breadth of the isle, almost all of it by public transportation or on foot.

    He visited large cities and small towns; famous landmarks and nondescript pubs and hotels.  And in the end, he treats us to 30 articles about his stops along the way.  Each is about 10 pages long, and they're all much more poignant than any travel guide could hope to be.

What's To Like...
    Bryson's musings about his adventures (and misadventures) are amusing and entertainingly honest.  He struggles with the inconsistencies of British mass transportation, gets rained on a lot (especially while walking), gets schnockered a couple times (gawd bless British suds), and partakes of a lot of ethnic cuisine.

    Bryson pulls few punches.  Sometimes the food, libations, and/or service is good; sometimes it's terrible.  Soemtimes the people he meets are rude to him for no reason; sometimes he's rude to them for no reason. There's a kewl glossary of Britishisms in the back of book, and any book that mentions Chertsey (pg. 64) gets a thumbs-up.  Bryson's insight is apparently accurate; in a 2003 BBC Radio 4 poll, the book was voted "that which best sums up British identity and the state of the nation".

Kewlest New Word...
Parlous : full of danger or uncertainty; precarious.

Excerpts...
    Some people simply should not be allowed to fall asleep on a train, or, having fallen asleep, should be discreetly covered with a tarpaulin, and I'm afraid I'm one of them.  I awoke, some indeterminate time later, with a rutting snort and a brief, wild flail and lifted my head from my chest to find myself mired in a cobweb of drool from beard to belt buckle, and with three people gazing at me in a curiously dispassionate manner.  At least I was spared the usual experience of waking to find myself stared at open-mouthed by a group of small children who would flee with shrieks at the discovery that the dribbling hulk was alive.  (pg. 282)

    Suddenly, in the space of a moment, I realized what it was that I loved about Britain - which is to say, all of it.  Every last bit of it, good and bad - old churches, country lanes, people saying "Mustn't grumble" and "I'm terribly sorry but," people apologizing to me when I conk them with a careless elbow, milk in bottles, beans on toast, haymaking in June, seaside piers, Ordnance Survey maps, tea and crumpets, summer showers and foggy winter evenings - every bit of it.  (pg. 316)

"Hae ye nae hook ma dooky?"  (pg. 307)
    Don't try to read Notes from a Small Island in one or two sessions.  As Bryson himself notes, after a while, all the quaint little villages and big, sprawling cities start to look the same.

    To boot, Bill Bryson is often in a grumpy mood - about the frequency of the rain (ya think, Bill?); about modernization (things change;  get over it); about the drabness of his locale ("Bradford's role in life is to make every place else in the world look better in comparison.."), etc.  About halfway through the book, I took to reading only one or two chapters a day, and suddenly the book got a lot more interesting.

    NfaSI is not my favorite Bill Bryson book.  But he's a gifted writer, and this does bring back fond memories of my trips to England.  Plus a so-so Bryson book is still pretty good.  8 Stars.