#16 Thunderbolt Kid

Bill Bryson was the Thunderbolt Kid, not a real comic book character, but it does show to some extent the influence of comic books on the boys of his generation, or in Iowa, or in fact just him. Even then, I think this book is much less about Bryson than it is about the culture in which he was immersed: 50s middle America. It's a lot like the Shakespeare book in that way.

I enjoyed it because even though I'm much younger than he is, I grew up in a semi-rural area that grew much more suburban and "American mall" as I aged. So even though we started out having McDonald's, you still had to get your shoes from one of two stores in the nearby small city, and they knew us when we went in for new school shoes because they had fitted my grandmother and mother before us. Or knowing when Kessler Farm really was a farm and not a municipal soccer field before it became a K-Mart.

Still, we can't get too nostalgic about the old days. I shudder to think of the choices or lack thereof women had in semirural New Hampshire in the 50s, 60s, and even 70s. I'm not sure Bryson is as critical as he could be, either. But being critical isn't that funny, is it? (Of course, his mom worked.)

1. The Palace Under the Alps (1985)
2. The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America (1989)
3. The Mother Tongue (1990)
4. Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe (1991)
5. Made in America (1994)
6. Notes from a Small Island (1995)
7. A Walk in the Woods (1998)
8. I’m a Stranger Here Myself (1998)
9. In a Sunburned Country (2000)
10. Bryson’s Dictionary of Troublesome Words (2002)
11. Bill Bryson’s African Diary (2002)
12. A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003)
13. The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir (2006)
14. Shakerspeare (Eminent Lives) (2007)

#16 Bryson in Africa

I'm behind here. I finished Bill Bryson's African Diary a week ago. It's a very short book--64 pages. At the invitation of CARE, Bryson visits some of their African project. All proceeds from the book go to the organization, and here I am taking it out of the library. It is not quite as laugh-a-minute as some of his other books, but how can we expect it to be so? There is a very funny bit on flying in bush planes. (I'm with him there--but I was in the first world making that flight.)

There's a photo in the book that confirms the need for an organization that the dude and I thought up: bringing soccer balls to poor kids the world over. Probably, there is already an organization doing this; maybe we should just give them money.

I've started both Palace Under the Alps and Neither Here nor There and they make for good companion reading since the former is a guidebook to interesting little-known and less-visited sites in Europe and the latter is his European travel journal. (Yes, I read guidebooks cover to cover, and I'll even read them if they are 25 years out of date.)