I don't usually read non-fiction books, my preference being for the fantasy genre. However, I was browsing through one of those airport stores that sells books and ran into this book for about the 10th time and couldn't resist. See, I have a random interest in the Appalachian Trail. I keep thinking about how much I want to hike it someday and even started writing a book where the main character starts off hiking the trail before I scrapped it. I kept seeing this book at Barnes and Noble, where I managed to keep walking away from it, but seeing it at the airport was just one time too many. I had to buy it. I'm really glad I did, too!
What the back of the book says:
Back in America after twenty years in Britain, Bill Bryson decided to reacquaint himself with his native country by walking the 2,100-mile Appalachian Trail. The AT offers an astonishing landscape of silent forests and sparkling lakes - and to a writer with the comic genius of Bill Bryson, it also provides endless opportunities to witness the majestic silliness of his fellow human beings. Bryson's acute eye is a wise witness to this beautiful but fragile trail, and as he tells its fascinating history, he makes a moving plea for the conservation of America's last great wilderness. An adventure, a comedy, and a celebration, A Walk in the Woods has become a modern classic of travel literature.
What I have to say:
I loved this book. As one critic described it, it is "choke-on-your-coffee funny". The tale follows Bill Bryson and his former travel companion Katz as they hike the Appalachian Trail starting at Springer Mountain in Georgia in 1996. The pair experience cold weather and blizzards and other hikers as they traveled north. Interspersed with Bryson's tale are his tidbits of the development of the AT and it's conservation. These bits were actually really interesting. I've taken classes on environmental science and heard a little bit about the awfulness of the Forestry Service, but didn't realize just how terrible they really are. Bryson also takes on the National Parks, who he charges with not only ruining parts of the national parks (he cites the Balds in the Appalachian Mountains, circles of grassy fields on top of the mountains that used to be used for grazing livestock, for this) but also ruining the wildlife by neglect. I don't say I blame the National Parks for bringing over the tree blights that destroyed the chestnuts, elms, and dogwoods, but it is sad to think that they didn't try to do anything about it. Bryson tells these tales and more throughout the book, making his plea for conservation, for more to be done. Meanwhile, he and Katz are having many misadventures, from chucking away necessary supplies and running into expensive tourist-trap towns (Gatlinburg, that's you). Bryson seems to obsess endlessly on the dangers of the AT; bears, snakes, diseases, and murderers. The last, Bryson soberingly tells us, happened during his year on the trail. It's a haunting experience for the reader, and he relates it well.
I would highly recommend this book. It is well written, very entertaining, and thought-provoking. You get behind Bryson and Katz, cheering them on through the trail while learning quite a lot. My book cover informs me that this is now a major motion picture starring Robert Redford and Nick Nolte, which means I will have to check that out eventually. I'd recommend this for adults, outdoor enthusiasts, and people passionate about the environment.
More about the author:
Bill Bryson's bestselling travel books include The Lost Continent, Neither Here Nor There and Notes from a Small Island, which in a national poll was voted the book that best represents Britain. His acclaimed book on the history of science, A Short History of Nearly Everything, won the Royal Society's Aventis Prize as well as the Descartes Prize, the European Union's highest literary award.
Bryson has written books on language, on Shakespeare, and on his own childhood in the hilarious memoir of The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. His last critically lauded bestsellers were on history - At Home: a Short History of Private Life, and One Summer: America 1927.
Another travel book, A Walk in the Woods, has now become a major film starring Robert Redford, Nick Nolte and Emma Thompson. Bryson's new book, The Road to Little Dribbling: More Notes from a Small Island comes out in Autumn 2015.
Bill Bryson was born in the American Mid-West, and is now living back in the UK. A former Chancellor of Durham University, he was President of Campaign to Protect Rural England for five years, and is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society.
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