Before returning to the States after living 20 years in England, Bill Bryson toured Britain and recorded his observations in this book. Clearly fond of the country, Bryson praises its history, its people, its natural and man-made beauty. However, he is not blind to his adopted country's flaws, and carries on about architectural travesties and overpriced tourist traps. A fun vicarious journey for this reader, who has never visited Britain. Not being familiar with the country, I would have liked more in the way of maps or pictures to help orient myself as I traveled through the pages with Bryson.

Mailed to a fellow BookCrosser - enjoy!

Thanks for the RABCK! Looks like an interesting book. Look forward to reading it.

I remember reading somewhere that some reviewers questioned Bryson's love of England when all he seemed to do was complaining. Well, after reading the book, I am most assured he loves England. Why else would he suffer one after another dingy hotels, mediocre meals and muddy treks in pouring rain? I would have packed and gone home on Day Three at most.

The book does have a small map in the front, but most places he visited are unnamed, somewhere along the trail between two cities big enough to deserve a name. A more detailed one certainly doesn't hurt.

I would prefer for Bryson to visit fewer places, and spend more time and pages on each, so that in the end all the towns and villages would not melt into one indistinguishable lump of English countryside.

Sending to perryfran as part of the "Packing my suitcase!" relay.

Received in a bookrelay today from azuki. Thanks!!

I've read a few other books by Bryson and have enjoyed them all...this one was no exception. In this book, Bryson decides on one last tour of Britain before returning to the U.S. He had spent nearly two decades on British soil and wanted one last look at the island he had come to love. This book was written in 1995 and Bryson did return to the States after living in Britain since 1977 with his wife who he met there in 1973. (Bryson returned to Britain in 2003 and currently lives there).

Anyway, Notes from a Small Island is full of Bryson's sometimes over-the-top wit as well as descriptions and histories of the places he traveled. Bryson is not only a great travel writer and humorist but is also a great historian (one of my favorite books of his is A Short History of Nearly Everything). He does sometimes seem to be angry and lashes out at some of his inconveniences in small English villages but he is usually quite amusing in doing so. For example, he relates his experiences with a fussy innkeeper who tells him the correct methods for turning on the lights, flushing the commode, etc. Before leaving the establishment, Bryson relates: That evening, I forgot to turn off the water heater after a quick and stealthy bath and compounded the error by leaving strands of hair in the plughole. The next morning came the final humiliation. Mrs. Gubbins marched me wordlessly to the toilet and showed me a little turd that had not flushed away. We agreed that I should leave after breakfast!

Throughout the book are other colorful encounters as Bryson makes his way from Dover all the way North to Dunnet Head in Scotland, the most Northern point of the island. Along the way, he travels mostly by rail and/or by foot. One spot he tried to visit was Welbeck Abbey, the ancient home of the Dukes of Portland. He was especially interested in William Cavendish-Scott-Bentinck, 5th Duke of Portland, noted for his eccentricities. He was a recluse who preferred to live in seclusion and had an elaborate underground maze excavated under his estate at Welbeck Abbey. (I need to read more about him!)



Bryson manages to hit many interesting and not so interesting places in his travels including Dover, Exeter, London, Liverpool, Blackpool, Leeds, Durham, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Inverness, and many others. I found myself googling many of these sites to find their locations and more about them. Although there is a small map in the front of the book, I think the book would have benefited by including a much larger and detailed map showing more precisely Bryson's travels. But overall, I did enjoy this and would recommend it. I still have a few other books by Bryson on my shelf that I hope to get to soonish.

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I've had this book on my TBR shelf for ten years. Finally read it as part of the Oldest TBR Reading & Release Challenge 2016. Making available for now.

Adding to thegoaliegirl's travel narrative bookbox.

I'm claiming this venerable and well-traveled book from the travel bookbox even though I've already read it. The red phone booth on the cover made me think of the perfect release spot for this one!

This was a lovely, sometimes poignant overview of Bryson's travels around (and life in) the UK; his typical humor/curmudgeonly-bitching is in fine form here. Sometimes he seems a bit overly testy about other people's peccadilloes, but since he's always willing to admit his own faults as well, it's OK with me. [I do think he might, someday, consider actually planning ahead for a road trip - but I guess that would take all the fun out of it, right? {grin}]

I liked this one a bit better than "The Lost Continent" [his travels through small-town America] and not quite as well as "In a Sunburned Country" [Australia] - not sure how much of that is his developing writing skills or his changing attitudes over time, but he seemed less charitable and more irritable in "Lost Continent" for some reason.

Some favorite bits from "Small Island":

The procedure for determining whether you've got the right train:

"Even though you have heard the conductor tell the person ahead of you that this is the Barnstaple train, you still have to say, 'Excuse me, is this the Barnstaple train?' When he acknowledges that the large linear object 3 feet to your right is indeed the Barnstaple train, you have to point to it and say, 'This one?' Then when you board the train you must additionally ask the carriage generally, 'Excuse me, is this the Barnstaple train?' to which most people will say that they think it is, except for one man with a lot of parcels who will get a panicked look and hurriedly gather up his things and get off.

"You should always take his seat since you will generally find that he has left behind a folded newspaper and an uneaten bar of chocolate, and possibly a nice pair of sheepskin gloves."

Later on, Bryson is forced to rent a car for part of his journey, and bemoans cars in general and this one in particular:

"This car had the usual array of switches and toggles, each illustrated with a symbol designed to confound.... How can anyone be expected to work out that a rectangle that looks like a television set with poor reception indicates the rear window heater? In the middle of this dashboard were two circular dials of equal size. One clearly indicated speed, but the other totally mystified me. It had two pointers on it, one of which advanced very slowly and the other of which didn't appear to move at all. I looked at it for ages before it finally dawned on me - this is true - that it was a clock."

And later still, discussing the loss of more and more of the ancient hedgerows that define so much of the English landscape: "[The hedgerows] are a central part of what makes England England. Without them, it would just be Indiana with steeples." Hee!

[There's a TV Tropes page on Bryson and his work, with some entertaining tidbits.]

I plan to leave this book in the striking red old-school telephone booth near where Candia Rd. enters the Massabesic traffic circle, at around 2 or so. (The phone booth looks just like the one on the cover of the book!) Hope the finder enjoys it!

[See other recent releases in NH here.]

*** Released for the 2017 Keep Them Moving release challenge. ***

*** Released for the 2017 4 Elements release challenge. ***