In this book Bryson describes his hike through the Appalachian Trail with his friend Stephen Katz. However, once one has started to read the book, it is difficult to put it down.Ī Walk in the Woods is a different type of book. There is no continuation between the chapters, so it is a great book to read for a short time when you have a few minutes to spare. Each one is designed to entertain you for as long as the article lasts. The chapters in this book were once articles in a magazine, so they are short and precise. Bryson describes his return to America after 30 years in England with a sense of nostalgia, but he always points out why America is a great place to live. The style of the book itself is very lighthearted.

He describes his adventures that would usually seem dull, but Bryson writes with such a wit that you can not help but find his enterprises humorous, no matter what he writes about. I'm a Stranger Here Myself is a collection of articles that Bryson wrote while living in America that he sent to his British publisher. One could not read a chapter of the book without some sort of giggle, that may soon evolve into a hysterical laugh. “Good old anyone with a pulse.” Together they bumble off into the bush near the start line in Georgia, their pockets full of Snickers bars.How can one's trek through the woods and America be so interesting? Bill Bryson, author of I'm a Stranger Here Myself and A Walk in the Woods, somehow weaves together stories from his life, interesting facts, and humor into two extremely different, but interesting books. “It seemed such an extraordinary notion - the idea that I could set off from home and walk.”īut he’s desperate not to go alone, so enter Stephen Katz, his charmingly bewildered friend who once devoted himself to ensuring that Iowa had a thriving drug market. The idea comes to him when he spots a segment of the trail near his New Hampshire house. The book is, at its heart, a tale of a sedentary man dreaming of becoming a mountain man, of being able to, in Bryson’s words, “gaze at a far horizon through eyes of chipped granite and say with a slow, manly sniff, ‘Yeah, I’ve shit in the woods’ ”. Revered for its difficulty - 10 per cent of walkers drop out in the first week, and it can take anywhere between 41 days and 46 years to complete - it’s appealing for the same reason people sign up for Ironman triathlons. “It wanders across fourteen states,” Bryson writes, “through comely hills whose very names - Blue Ridge Smokies, Green Mountains - seem an invitation to amble”. The Appalachian Trail is “the granddaddy of long hikes”, running 2,100 miles along America’s eastern seaboard from Georgia to Maine.

A walk through the woods bill bryson