2001 paperback. Not as informative as I'd hoped. Mr. Bryson writes primarily for comic effect, which is fine, but not what I was looking for. Too many insignificant hotel scenes for example. Gives a superficial sense of life in England, Wales & Scotland.

***

Bookray:

1. Soongsis2 in Singapore
2. Herrundmeyer in Germany
3. loveamystery in British Columbia, Canada
4. sqdancer in Alberta, Canada
5. tiatia in Virginia, USA
6. Luintaurien in Nebraska, USA
7. etc...

Sent to Soongsis 2 today.

Received it in the mail today. Will stick a BCID label on this book. Hope you're OK with that, Rico-Verde. Cheers!

Updates: 30 June 2005
The title of the book should be "Notes on How-Modern-Architecutre-Ruins-UK Towns & Cities" given the attention Bryson devotes to this topic in the book. Generally though, it was a good read with the usual Bryson humour and sarcasm thrown in quite liberally throughout the book.

I have Herrundmeyer's address already and should be able to get this book out by end of next week.

Updates: 8 July 2005
Dropped off the book today at the post office... sent it via airmail. Cheers!

Got this in today's mail. Thanks! TBR ASAP.

This is a book that should be read on a cold and rainy day, with a pot of steaming tea and some biscuits nearby. "Unfortunately", the weather is fine (around 30°C, or 86°F), so I opted for getting an ice-cream cornet at the best ice-cream parlour in town and settled down on the banks of the river Neckar.

All in all, it is written in a humourous way, yet lacks a bit of the additional insight one would expect from someone who spent 20 years in England, were it not for the little anecdotes he throws in for extra measure. Those are mostly unrelated to his journey, though.

That said, it is mostly entertaining, especially when Bryson employs sarcasm.

As a side note: Someone seems to have done some serious work with this book and underlined and marked several words. These are marked "O" in the margins. If they are supposed to be orthographically wrong (which I can negate at least for the name of the German town of Karlsruhe) or simply marked as "Oh, that's an interesting word I must look up in the dictionary", I cannot say. It is mildly confusing, though.

RELEASE NOTES:

In the mail to Canada

The "o"s are mine. It's my habit to mark words I want to look up that way. Hope it doesn't bother anyone too much.

This arrived in the mail today and I am looking forward to reading it. Thank you herrundmeyer for sending it all the way to Canada.

This is an interesting book. Some of it was boring to me as I didn't have a map beside me to follow where he was going. Some of the places sounded very dreary, but then winter is not the best season to travel in England. What came through to me was that he really loved the English and was going to miss his adopted home. So many parts of the book were uproariously laugh out loud funny. Thank you Rico-Verde for sharing this book.

RELEASE NOTES:

Mailed today to sqdancer by surface mail. Enjoy!

Arrived safe and sound.

I will agree that by the end of the book, the complaints about architectural preservation were getting a bit old. Kind of like when your co-worker tells that *hilarious* potty training story for the nineth time. Overall, I did enjoy it.

Sent via surface on Friday afternoon.

Arrived today by post. Got home much too late to start reading it. Work and you guessed it...mailing out BC books. I'll journal more when I have a chance to jump in.

Not enough substance or wit. I plowed through the end to see if I would find more. This time when I read Bryson I left feeling that a self-centered, some what out of control man whined for too many pages. Too much negativity without much work on his part to alleviate it. His taste for spending too much time on mundane things like children picking their noses did not add to the book for me. Good thing I've liked his other. Still I'm glad I got a chance to read it. I enjoyed his discriptions of Edinbourough & Glasglow especially, having spent time there.
Will pm for next addy.

A belated journal for it's trip to Nebraska.

Got it today. Will read and pass on ASAP. Thank you.

RELEASE NOTES:

available in the OBCZ area

I caught this book in a CARE package that my mom sent to me. I am a Peace Corps volunteer in Ethiopia. I think that she probably caught the book in Falls City, NE. I enjoyed the book (although the previous comments are correct about a lot of architectural commentary) and now want to take a leisurely tour around Great Britain. I will probably pass it along to another volunteer here.

CAUGHT IN GONDAR N. GONDAR ETHIOPA

I thought that I had forgotten my login and ID but it worked on my first try, after I submitted this as "anonymous".

I caught this book in a CARE package that my mom sent to me. I am a Peace Corps volunteer in Ethiopia. I think that she probably caught the book in Falls City, NE. I enjoyed the book (although the previous comments are correct about a lot of architectural commentary) and now want to take a leisurely tour around Great Britain. I will probably pass it along to another volunteer here.