stretches feel like a complaining social media feed, but highly educational, and makes you want to visit Australia, except maybe avoid the water
3 stars
I enjoyed my first Bill Bryson book, whatever it was, and did't get far in the second as it seemed mean and snarky, making fun of Iowa and waitresses. He's from Iowa but perhaps two decades in England have rubbed off (a reference to a cleaner who was an "Oriental woman" sounds very British or very last century American. This book continues the snark tradition (and I'm getting the impression it is in the grand tradition of travel writing, as I recently found the same kind of serving staff ridicule in Travels with Charley by that Steinbeck who is otherwise the champion of the working class), feeling like a rather long yelp review complaining about the service of the establishment, in this case Australia. It is somewhat humorous, with a disproportonate number of gonad jokes, and highly educational (I'm setting the bar low, as I hardly know anything about Australia, …
I enjoyed my first Bill Bryson book, whatever it was, and did't get far in the second as it seemed mean and snarky, making fun of Iowa and waitresses. He's from Iowa but perhaps two decades in England have rubbed off (a reference to a cleaner who was an "Oriental woman" sounds very British or very last century American. This book continues the snark tradition (and I'm getting the impression it is in the grand tradition of travel writing, as I recently found the same kind of serving staff ridicule in Travels with Charley by that Steinbeck who is otherwise the champion of the working class), feeling like a rather long yelp review complaining about the service of the establishment, in this case Australia. It is somewhat humorous, with a disproportonate number of gonad jokes, and highly educational (I'm setting the bar low, as I hardly know anything about Australia, the general American ignorance of being one of the points of the book), and depressing kudos for bringing up issues like the treatment of Aborigines and the astonishingly clearly named White Australia policy. Amusingly, ironically, the book ends with irritation at sportswriters, apparently even less respectable than travel writers, who spent the Sydney Olympics complaining about how they couldn't get a decent bagel or cup of coffee (sounds like they're all New Yorkers, and in fairness they make those same complaints everywhere else in the US). So in the end, notwithstanding vacuous hotel clerks and ridiculously toxic fauna, Bryson loves Australia.
