Bryson, Bryson He's My Man!

Well, not technically but people... Bill Bryson is "the tits" as the English would say!! My love for him started long ago. He was born in Iowa and moved to England when he was 22. He stayed there for 20 odd years and then returned to New Hampshire. He is the FUNNIEST travel writer EVER!! His first book, The Lost Continent, is all about his return to the America of his youth only to find that they had both grown up. He then wrote about returning to places he had visited in Europe (Neither Here Nor There), his time in England (Notes From a Small Country), the time he spent in Africa and Australia.... All of them hilarious and chock full of information! His book on walking the Appalachian Trail (A Walk In The Woods) made me want to buy a back pack and go! And that's saying a lot people!!

He has also written some terribly helpful books about language and phrasing and troublesome words and the terribly handy, A Short History Of Nearly Everything. His newest book is all about Shakespeare and how ridiculously little we know about him. Even if thou dost know nothing about Will, it is an amazing study about a man who is seen as the most influential dramatist ever and one we know next to nothing about. I love Bill Bryson!! (He also does the audio tour that is available at the Roman Baths in Bath- in case anyone is taking a road trip this weekend!) Read ANYTHING by him!! I guarantee you will be laughing out loud in your home, at Starbucks or on the subway!!

"So it needs to be said that nearly all of the anti-Shakespeare sentiment - actually all of it, every
bit - involves manipulative scholarship or sweeping misstatements of fact. Shakespeare 'never owned a book', a writer for the New York Times gravely informed readers in one doubting article in 2002. The statement cannot actually be refuted, for we know nothing about his incidental possessions. But the writer might just as well have suggested that Shakespeare never owned a pair of shoes or pants. For all the evidence tells us, he spent his life naked from the waist down, as well as bookless...."

from Shakespeare by my man, Bill Bryson