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| bill bryson funniest book: A Walk in the Woods Bill Bryson, 2010-09-08 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The classic chronicle of a “terribly misguided and terribly funny” (The Washington Post) hike of the Appalachian Trail, from the author of A Short History of Nearly Everything and The Body “The best way of escaping into nature.”—The New York Times 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, which stretches from Georgia to Maine. 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. For a start there’s the gloriously out-of-shape Stephen Katz, a buddy from Iowa along for the walk. But A Walk in the Woods is more than just a laugh-out-loud hike. 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 is a modern classic of travel literature. NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE |
| bill bryson funniest book: The Lost Continent Bill Bryson, 2012-09-25 I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to. And, as soon as Bill Bryson was old enough, he left. Des Moines couldn't hold him, but it did lure him back. After ten years in England he returned to the land of his youth, and drove almost 14,000 miles in search of a mythical small town called Amalgam, the kind of smiling village where the movies from his youth were set. Instead he drove through a series of horrific burgs, which he renamed Smellville, Fartville, Coleslaw, Coma, and Doldrum. At best his search led him to Anywhere, USA, a lookalike strip of gas stations, motels and hamburger outlets populated by obese and slow-witted hicks with a partiality for synthetic fibres. He discovered a continent that was doubly lost: lost to itself because he found it blighted by greed, pollution, mobile homes and television; lost to him because he had become a foreigner in his own country. |
| bill bryson funniest book: I'm a Stranger Here Myself Bill Bryson, 2008-05-13 A classic from the New York Times bestselling author of A Walk in the Woods and The Body. After living in Britain for two decades, Bill Bryson recently moved back to the United States with his English wife and four children (he had read somewhere that nearly 3 million Americans believed they had been abducted by aliens—as he later put it, it was clear my people needed me). They were greeted by a new and improved America that boasts microwave pancakes, twenty-four-hour dental-floss hotlines, and the staunch conviction that ice is not a luxury item. Delivering the brilliant comic musings that are a Bryson hallmark, I'm a Stranger Here Myself recounts his sometimes disconcerting reunion with the land of his birth. The result is a book filled with hysterical scenes of one man's attempt to reacquaint himself with his own country, but it is also an extended if at times bemused love letter to the homeland he has returned to after twenty years away. |
| bill bryson funniest book: Bill Bryson Scott P. Richert, 2011 No one is born a famous writer, beloved and read by millions of teens and adults. Readers of the books in Today's Writers and Their Works will learn the story behind each writer's story: for example, how Amy Tan became a best-selling author with her first novel, even though she felt she could not write well; how Haruki Murakami closed his sports bar to fulfill his dream of writing full-time; how Bill Bryson's move to England facilitated his wry point of view. In addition to telling the writer's story, each book includes an in-depth examination of the most widely read works of each author. for literature lovers, aspiring writers, and those who have reports to write, there is no better source of information. |
| bill bryson funniest book: Notes from a Small Island Bill Bryson, 2015-06-02 Before New York Times bestselling author Bill Bryson wrote The Road to Little Dribbling, he took this delightfully irreverent jaunt around the unparalleled floating nation of Great Britain, which has produced zebra crossings, Shakespeare, Twiggie Winkie’s Farm, and places with names like Farleigh Wallop and Titsey. |
| bill bryson funniest book: One Summer Bill Bryson, 2013-10-01 In the summer of 1927, America had a booming stock market, a president who worked just four hours a day (and slept much of the rest of the time), a semi-crazed sculptor with a mad plan to carve four giant heads into an inaccessible mountain called Rushmore, a devastating flood of the Mississippi, a sensational murder trial and a youthful aviator named Charles Lindbergh who started the summer wholly unknown and finished it as the most famous man on earth (so famous that Minnesota consider renaming itself after him). It was the summer that saw the birth of talking pictures, the invention of television, the peak of Al Capone’s reign of terror, the horrifying bombing of a school in Michigan by a madman, the ill-conceived decision that led the Great Depression, the thrillingly improbable return to greatness of a wheezing, over-the-hill baseball player named Babe Ruth and an almost impossible amount more. In this hugely entertaining book, Bill Bryson spins a story of brawling adventure, reckless optimism and delirious energy. With the trademark brio, wit and authority that have made him our favorite writer of narrative non-fiction, he rolls out an unforgettable cast of vivid and eccentric personalities to bring to life a forgotten summer when America came of age, took centre stage and changed the world forever. |
| bill bryson funniest book: At Home Bill Bryson, 2013-10-29 Bill Bryson has one of the liveliest, most inquisitive minds on the planet, and At Home is likely to become the most illuminating book on the way we lived then and live now--the why and the where and the how of it--ever written. Now, in this handsome new edition, his sparkling prose will be enhanced by some 200 carefully curated full-colour images from both the past and the present. Selected from a staggering array of sources to bring Bill's journey to vivid life, these pictures will make reading At Home an immersive experience. When you've finished this book, you will see your house--and your daily life--in a new and revelatory light. |
| bill bryson funniest book: The Complete Notes Bill Bryson, 2009 |
| bill bryson funniest book: The Road to Little Dribbling Bill Bryson, 2015-10-13 Bill Bryson returns to his internationally beloved topic, Britain, with his first travel book in fifteen years. In 1995, Bill Bryson went on a trip around Britain to celebrate the green and kindly island that had become his home. The hilarious book he wrote about that journey, Notes from a Small Island, became one of the most loved books of recent decades. Now, in this hotly anticipated new travel book, his first in fifteen years and sure to be greeted as the funniest book of the decade, Bryson sets out on a brand-new journey, on a route he dubs the Bryson Line, from Bognor Regis on the south coast to Cape Wrath on the northernmost tip of Scotland. Once again, he will guide us through all that's best and worst about Britain today--while doing that incredibly rare thing of making us laugh out loud in public. |
| bill bryson funniest book: Bill Bryson's African Diary Bill Bryson, 2010-03-02 Bill Bryson goes to Kenya at the invitation of CARE International, the charity dedicated to working with local communities to eradicate poverty around the world. Kenya, generally regarded as the cradle of humankind, is a land of stunning landscapes, famous game reserves, and a vibrant culture, but it also has many serious problems, including refugees, AIDS, drought and grinding poverty. It also provides plenty to worry a nervous traveller like Bill Bryson: hair-raising rides in light aircraft, tropical diseases, snakes, insects and large predators. Bryson casts his inimitable eye on a continent new to him, and the resultant diary, though short in length, contains all his trademark laugh-out-loud wit, wry observation and curious insight. All the author’s royalties from this book, as well as all profits, will go to CARE International. |
| bill bryson funniest book: The Digested Read John Crace, 2005-12 Literary ombudsman John Crace never met an important book he didn't like to deconstruct. From Salman Rushdie to John Grisham, Crace retells the big books in just 500 bitingly satirical words, pointing his pen at the clunky plots, stylistic tics and pretensions of Big Ideas, as he turns publishers' golden dream books into dross. |
| bill bryson funniest book: The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid Bill Bryson, 2007 Bill Brysonâe(tm)s first travel book opened with the immortal line, âe~I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to.âe(tm) In this deeply funny and personal memoir, he travels back in time to explore the ordinary kid he once was, in the curious world of 1950s Middle America. It was a happy time, when almost everything was good for you, including DDT, cigarettes and nuclear fallout. This is a book about one boyâe(tm)s growing up. But in Brysonâe(tm)s hands, it becomes everyoneâe(tm)s story, one that will speak volumes âe especially to anyone who has ever been young. |
| bill bryson funniest book: Double Whammy Carl Hiaasen, 1988-01-15 “Follow the adventures of a news-photographer-turned-private-eye as he seeks truth, justice, and an affair with his ex-wife” (The New York Times) in this hilarious caper from bestselling author Carl Hiaasen. R.J. Decker, star tenant of the local trailer park and neophyte private eye is fishing for a killer. Thanks to a sportsman’s scam that’s anything but sportsmanlike, there’s a body floating in Coon Bog, Florida—and a lot that’s rotten in the murky waters of big-stakes, large-mouth bass tournaments. Here Decker will team up with a half-blind, half-mad hermit with an appetite for road kill; dare to kiss his ex-wife while she’s in bed with her new husband; and face deadly TV evangelists, dangerously seductive women, and a pistol-toting redneck with a pit bull on his arm. And here his own life becomes part of the stakes. For while the “double whammy” is the lure, first prize is for the most ingenious murder. |
| bill bryson funniest book: The Conversations at Curlow Creek David Malouf, 1998 |
| bill bryson funniest book: Dear Bill Bryson Ben Aitken, 2022-02-03 FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE ACCLAIMED THE GRAN TOUR AND THE MARMALADE DIARIES An irreverent homage to the '95 travel classic. 'It would be wrong to view this book as just a highly accomplished homage to a personal hero. Aitken's politics, as much as his humour, are firmly in the spotlight, and Dear Bill Bryson achieves more than its title (possibly even its author) intended.' Manchester Review In 2013, travel writer Ben Aitken decided to follow in the footsteps of his hero - literally - and started a journey around the UK, tracing the trip taken by Bill Bryson in his classic tribute to the British Isles, Notes from a Small Island. Staying at the same hotels, ordering the same food, and even spending the same amount of time in the bath, Aitken's homage - updated and with a new preface for 2022 - is filled with wit, insight and humour. |
| bill bryson funniest book: Made in America Bill Bryson, 1996-03-01 Bill Bryson, who gave glorious voice to The Mother Tongue, now celebrates her magnificent offspring in the book that reveals once and for all how a dusty western hamlet with neither woods nor holly came to be known as Hollywood...and exactly why Mr. Yankee Doodle call his befeathered cap Macaroni. |
| bill bryson funniest book: The Ascent of Rum Doodle W. E. Bowman, 2001 This is W.E. Bowman's account of the leader of an expedition up Rum Doodle, a 40,000-and-a-half-foot peak in the Himalayas. This classic spoof of mountaineering draws on the real-life expedition of Nandi Devi by Bill Tilman. |
| bill bryson funniest book: Shakespeare Bill Bryson, 2007-10-23 William Shakespeare, the most celebrated poet in the English language, left behind nearly a million words of text, but his biography has long been a thicket of wild supposition arranged around scant facts. With a steady hand and his trademark wit, Bill Bryson sorts through this colorful muddle to reveal the man himself. Bryson documents the efforts of earlier scholars, from today's most respected academics to eccentrics like Delia Bacon, an American who developed a firm but unsubstantiated conviction that her namesake, Francis Bacon, was the true author of Shakespeare's plays. Emulating the style of his famous travelogues, Bryson records episodes in his research, including a visit to a bunkerlike room in Washington, D.C., where the world's largest collection of First Folios is housed. Bryson celebrates Shakespeare as a writer of unimaginable talent and enormous inventiveness, a coiner of phrases (vanish into thin air, foregone conclusion, one fell swoop) that even today have common currency. His Shakespeare is like no one else's—the beneficiary of Bryson's genial nature, his engaging skepticism, and a gift for storytelling unrivaled in our time. |
| bill bryson funniest book: Kasher in the Rye Moshe Kasher, 2012-03-28 “The finest, most moving and powerful memoir I have ever read.”—MAYIM BIALIK Rising young comedian Moshe Kasher is lucky to be alive. He started using drugs when he was just 12. At that point, he had already been in psychoanlysis for 8 years. By the time he was 15, he had been in and out of several mental institutions, drifting from therapy to rehab to arrest to...you get the picture. But Kasher in the Rye is not an eye opener to the horrors of addiction. It's a hilarious memoir about the absurdity of it all. When he was a young boy, Kasher's mother took him on a vacation to the West Coast. Well it was more like an abduction. Only not officially. She stole them away from their father and they moved to Oakland , California. That's where the real fun begins, in the war zone of Oakland Public Schools. He was more than just out of control-his mother walked him around on a leash, which he chewed through and ran away. Brutally honest and laugh-out-loud funny, Kasher's first literary endeavor finds humor in even the most horrifying situations. |
| bill bryson funniest book: The Ascent of Rum Doodle W. E. Bowman, 2002 First published in 1956, The Ascent of Rum Doodle quickly became a mountaineering classic. As an outrageously funny spoof about the ascent of a peak in the Himalayas, many thought it was inspired by the 1953 conquest of Everest. But Bowman had drawn on the flavor and tone of earlier adventures, of Bill Tilman and his 1937 account of the Nandi Devi expedition. The book's central and unforgettable character, Binder, is one of the finest creations in comic literature. |
| bill bryson funniest book: The Kingdom by the Sea Paul Theroux, 2006 It was 1982, the summer of the Falkland Islands War, and the birth of the royal heir, Prince William--and the ideal time, Theroux found, to surprise the British into talking about themselves. The result is a candid, funny, perceptive, and opinionated travelogue of his journey and his findings. |
| bill bryson funniest book: Bizarre World Bill Bryson, 1995 This is a collection of tall tales, absurd stories, and crazy true-life anecdotes. Bill Bryson is also the author of The Lost Continent, Made in America, and Neither Here Nor There. |
| bill bryson funniest book: Icons of England Bill Bryson, 2010-04-07 This celebration of the English countryside does not only focus on the rolling green landscapes and magnificent monuments that set England apart from the rest of the world. Many of the contributors bring their own special touch, presenting a refreshingly eclectic variety of personal icons, from pub signs to seaside piers, from cattle grids to canal boats, and from village cricket to nimbies. First published as a lavish colour coffeetable book, this new expanded paperback edition has double the original number of contributions from many celebrities including Bill Bryson, Michael Palin, Eric Clapton, Bryan Ferry, Sebastian Faulks, Kate Adie, Kevin Spacey, Gavin Pretor-Pinney, Richard Mabey , Simon Jenkins, John Sergeant, Benjamin Zephaniah, Joan Bakewell, Antony Beevor, Libby Purves, Jonathan Dimbleby, and many more: and a new preface by HRH Prince Charles. |
| bill bryson funniest book: Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw Will Ferguson, 2006 A funny and fascinating tour through Canada's history and landscape which will appeal to fans of travel and adventure writing |
| bill bryson funniest book: One Summer Ruby Mildred Ayres, 1930 |
| bill bryson funniest book: Looking for Darwin Lloyd Spencer Davis, 2007-01-01 An award-winning zoologist travels in Charles Darwin's footsteps, and in search of the meaning of life. In one of the most inhospitable places on Earth, zoologist Lloyd Spencer Davis comes face to face with an enraged leopard seal. Towering ice cliffs, a ferocious creature of the deep, and the extreme Antarctic environment all turn Davis's world view on its head. 'What the hell am I doing here?' This question sets Davis on a quest for insight and meaning in a world that still pitches theories of evolution against belief in a Creator; the science of natural selection against a faith that asserts our world was crafted by Intelligent Design. With a self-deprecating grin packed along with his cabin baggage - even when his passport isn't - Davis decides to follow the travels of the eminent nineteenth-century naturalist, Charles Darwin: the man who did more to change our understanding of this planet than any other biologist. Looking for Darwin gives us a personal and intimate insight into Darwin and what drove the man. It is also an attempt to resolve that initially panicked - and then far-reaching - question, that first hit Davis on the big ice. With a wealth of research and vivid imagery - along with a disarming honesty - Lloyd Spencer Davis takes the reader on an unforgettable world tour. |
| bill bryson funniest book: Maybe This Time Jennifer Crusie, 2010-08-31 “This is a story of faith: in human nature, in love, in romance, in connections that cannot be broken . . . [an] original and funny romantic thriller.” —New York Journal of Books Andie Miller wants to marry her fiancé and leave behind everything in her past, especially her ex-husband, North Archer, but he asks one final favor of her before they go their separate ways forever. A very distant cousin of his has died and left North as the guardian of two orphans who have driven out three nannies already, and things are getting worse. He needs a very special person to take care of the situation and he knows Andie can handle anything. Carter and Alice, aren’t your average delinquents, and the creepy old house where they live is being run by the worst housekeeper since Mrs. Danvers. What’s worse, Andie’s fiancé thinks this is all a plan by North to get Andie back, and he may be right. Andie’s dreams have been haunted by North since she arrived at the old house. And that’s not the only haunting. What follows is a hilarious adventure in exorcism, including a self-doubting parapsychologist, an annoyed medium, her Tarot-card reading mother, an avenging ex-mother-in-law, and, of course, her jealous fiancé. And just when she thinks things couldn’t get more complicated, North shows up on the doorstep making her wonder if maybe this time things could be different between them. If Andie can just get rid of all the guests and ghosts, she’s pretty sure she can save the kids, and herself, from the past. But fate might just have another thing in mind . . . |
| bill bryson funniest book: McCarthy's Bar Pete McCarthy, 2014-03-18 A British author explores western Ireland—one eponymous pub at a time—in this “unfailingly sharp, good-humored, and offbeat” travelogue (Kirkus Reviews). Despite the many exotic places Peter McCarthy has visited, he finds that nowhere else can match the particular magic of Ireland, his mother’s homeland. In McCarthy’s Bar, his journey begins in Cork and continues along the west coast to Donegal in the north. Traveling through spectacular landscapes, but at all times obeying the rule, “never pass a bar that has your name on it,” he encounters McCarthy’s bars up and down the land, meeting fascinating people before pleading to be let out at four o’clock in the morning. Through adventures with English hippies who have colonized a desolate mountain; roots-seeking, buffet-devouring American tourists; priests for whom the word “father” has a loaded meaning; enthusiastic Germans who “here since many years holidays are making;” and his fellow barefoot pilgrims on an island called Purgatory, Peter pursues the secrets of Ireland’s global popularity and his own confused Irish-Anglo identity. Written by someone who is at once an insider and an outsider, McCarthy’s Bar is a wonderfully funny and affectionate portrait of a rapidly changing country. |
| bill bryson funniest book: Destiny Disrupted Tamim Ansary, 2009-04-28 The Western narrative of world history largely omits a whole civilization. Destiny Disrupted tells the history of the world from the Islamic point of view, and restores the centrality of the Muslim perspective, ignored for a thousand years. A must-read for anyone who wants to learn more about the history of the Islamic world. - San Francisco Chronicle In Destiny Disrupted, Tamim Ansary tells the rich story of world history with the evolution of the Muslim community at the center. His story moves from the lifetime of Mohammed through a succession of far-flung empires, to the tangle of modern conflicts that culminated in the events of 9/11. He introduces the key people, events, ideas, legends, religious disputes, and turning points of world history, imparting not only what happened but how it is understood from the Muslim perspective. He clarifies why two great civilizations—Western and Muslim—grew up oblivious to each other, what happened when they intersected, and how the Islamic world was affected by its slow recognition that Europe—a place it long perceived as primitive—had somehow hijacked destiny. With storytelling brio, humor, and evenhanded sympathy to all sides of the story, Ansary illuminates a fascinating parallel to the narrative usually heard in the West. Destiny Disrupted offers a vital perspective on world conflicts many now find so puzzling. |
| bill bryson funniest book: A History of the World in 6 Glasses Tom Standage, 2009-05-26 New York Times Bestseller From beer to Coca-Cola, the six drinks that have helped shape human history. Throughout human history, certain drinks have done much more than just quench thirst. As Tom Standage relates with authority and charm, six of them have had a surprisingly pervasive influence on the course of history, becoming the defining drink during a pivotal historical period. A History of the World in 6 Glasses tells the story of humanity from the Stone Age to the 21st century through the lens of beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and cola. Beer was first made in the Fertile Crescent and by 3000 B.C.E. was so important to Mesopotamia and Egypt that it was used to pay wages. In ancient Greece wine became the main export of her vast seaborne trade, helping spread Greek culture abroad. Spirits such as brandy and rum fueled the Age of Exploration, fortifying seamen on long voyages and oiling the pernicious slave trade. Although coffee originated in the Arab world, it stoked revolutionary thought in Europe during the Age of Reason, when coffeehouses became centers of intellectual exchange. And hundreds of years after the Chinese began drinking tea, it became especially popular in Britain, with far-reaching effects on British foreign policy. Finally, though carbonated drinks were invented in 18th-century Europe they became a 20th-century phenomenon, and Coca-Cola in particular is the leading symbol of globalization. For Tom Standage, each drink is a kind of technology, a catalyst for advancing culture by which he demonstrates the intricate interplay of different civilizations. You may never look at your favorite drink the same way again. |
| bill bryson funniest book: Getting Stoned with Savages J. Maarten Troost, 2006-06-13 From the bestselling author of The Sex Lives of Cannibals, the laugh-out-loud true story of his years on the islands of Vanuatu and Fiji, among cannibals, volcanoes . . . and the world’s best narcotics. With The Sex Lives of Cannibals, Maarten Troost established himself as one of the most engaging and original travel writers around. Getting Stoned with Savages again reveals his wry wit and infectious joy of discovery in a side-splittingly funny account of life in the farthest reaches of the world. After two grueling years on the island of Tarawa, battling feral dogs, machete-wielding neighbors, and a lack of beer on a daily basis, Maarten Troost was in no hurry to return to the South Pacific. But as time went on, he realized he felt remarkably out of place among the trappings of twenty-first-century America. When he found himself holding down a job—one that might possibly lead to a career—he knew it was time for he and his wife, Sylvia, to repack their bags and set off for parts unknown. Getting Stoned with Savages tells the hilarious story of Troost’s time on Vanuatu—a rugged cluster of islands where the natives gorge themselves on kava and are still known to “eat the man.” Falling into one amusing misadventure after another, Troost struggles against typhoons, earthquakes, and giant centipedes and soon finds himself swept up in the laid-back, clothing-optional lifestyle of the islanders. When Sylvia gets pregnant, they decamp for slightly-more-civilized Fiji, a fallen paradise where the local chiefs can be found watching rugby in the house next door. And as they contend with new parenthood in a country rife with prostitutes and government coups, their son begins to take quite naturally to island living—in complete contrast to his dad. |
| bill bryson funniest book: Notes From a Big Country Bill Bryson, 2012-05-15 When an old friend asked him to write a weekly dispatch from New Hampshire for the Mail on Sunday's Night and Day magazine, Bill Bryson firmly turned him down. So firm was he, in fact, that gathered here are nineteen months' worth of his popular columns about the strangest of phenomena -- the American way of life.Whether discussing the dazzling efficiency of the garbage disposal unit, the mind-boggling plethora of methods by which to shop, the exoticism of having your groceries bagged for you, or the jaw-slackening direness of American TV, Bill Bryson brings his inimitable brand of bemused wit to bear on the world's richest and craziest country. |
| bill bryson funniest book: The Body Bill Bryson, 2019-10-03 #1 Bestseller in both hardback and paperback: SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2020 ROYAL SOCIETY INSIGHT INVESTMENT SCIENCE BOOK PRIZE _______ 'A directory of wonders.' - The Guardian 'Jaw-dropping.' - The Times 'Classic, wry, gleeful Bryson...an entertaining and absolutely fact-rammed book.' - The Sunday Times 'It is a feat of narrative skill to bake so many facts into an entertaining and nutritious book.' - The Daily Telegraph _______ 'We spend our whole lives in one body and yet most of us have practically no idea how it works and what goes on inside it. The idea of the book is simply to try to understand the extraordinary contraption that is us.' Bill Bryson sets off to explore the human body, how it functions and its remarkable ability to heal itself. Full of extraordinary facts and astonishing stories The Body: A Guide for Occupants is a brilliant, often very funny attempt to understand the miracle of our physical and neurological make up. A wonderful successor to A Short History of Nearly Everything, this new book is an instant classic. It will have you marvelling at the form you occupy, and celebrating the genius of your existence, time and time again. 'What I learned is that we are infinitely more complex and wondrous, and often more mysterious, than I had ever suspected. There really is no story more amazing than the story of us.' Bill Bryson |
| bill bryson funniest book: A Really Short History of Nearly Everything Bill Bryson, 2020-10-29 Ever wondered how we got from nothing to something? Or thought about how we can weigh the earth? Or wanted to reach the edge of the universe? Uncover the mysteries of time, space and life on earth in this extraordinary book - a journey from the centre of the planet to the dawn of the dinosaurs, and everything in between. And discover our own incredible journey, from single cell to civilisation, including the brilliant (and sometimes very bizarre) scientists who helped us find out the how and why. |
| bill bryson funniest book: Made in America Bill Bryson, 2016-09-08 'Funny, wise, learned and compulsive' - GQ Bill Bryson turns away from travelling the highways and byways of middle America, so hilariously depicted in his bestselling The Lost Continent, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid and Notes from a Big Country, for a fast, exhilarating ride along the Route 66 of American language and popular culture. In Made in America, Bryson tells the story of how American arose out of the English language, and along the way, de-mythologizes his native land - explaining how a dusty desert hamlet with neither woods nor holly became Hollywood, how the Wild West wasn't won, why Americans say 'lootenant' and 'Toosday', how they were eating junk food long before the word itself was cooked up - as well as exposing the true origins of the words G-string, blockbuster, poker and snafu. 'A tremendously sassy work, full of zip, pizzazz and all those other great American qualities' Will Self, Independent on Sunday |
| bill bryson funniest book: Machine Man Max Barry, 2013-05-02 A wickedly observed, disturbing, darkly funny and surprisingly moving parable for a new tech-obsessed age by the acclaimed author of Jennifer Government. Scientist Charles Neumann loses a leg in an industrial accident. It’s not a tragedy. It’s an opportunity. Charlie always thought his body could be better. He begins to explore a few ideas. To build parts. Better parts. Prostheticist Lola Shanks loves a good artificial limb. In Charlie, she sees a man on his way to becoming artificial everything. But others see a madman.Or a product.Or a weapon . . . A story for this age of pervasive technology, Machine Man is a darkly funny unravelling of one man’s quest for ultimate self-improvement. |
| bill bryson funniest book: The Stench of Honolulu Jack Handey, 2014-07-01 The legendary Deep Thoughts and New Yorker humorist Jack Handey is back with his very first novel-a hilarious, absurd, far-flung adventure tale. THE STENCH OF HONOLOLU Are you a fan of books in which famous tourist destinations are repurposed as unlivable hellholes for no particular reason' Read on! Jack Handey's exotic tale is full of laugh-out-loud twists and unforgettable characters whose names escape me right now. A reliably unreliable narrator and his friend, who is some other guy, need to get out of town. They have a taste for adventure, so they pay a visit to a relic of bygone days-a travel agent-and discover an old treasure map. She might have been a witch, by the way. Our heroes soon embark on a quest for the Golden Monkey, which takes them into the mysterious and stinky foreign land of Honolulu. There, they meet untold dangers, confront strange natives, kill and eat Turtle People, kill some other things and people, eat another thing, and discover the ruins of ancient civilizations. As our narrator says, The ruins were impressive. But like so many civilizations, they forgot the rule that might have saved them: Don't let vines grow all over you. |
| bill bryson funniest book: Return of the Sea Otter Todd McLeish, 2018-03-20 Captivating. . . . a full portrait of this adorable and ecologically important animal. —Publishers Weekly A science journalist travels the Pacific Coast in search of sea otters in this entertaining and inspiring book on the importance and history of this charismatic endangered species Sea otters—the adorable, furry marine mammals often seen floating on their backs holding hands—reveal the health of the coastal ecosystem along the Pacific Ocean. Once hunted for their prized fur in the 18th and 19th centuries, these animals nearly went extinct. Only now, nearly a century after hunting ceased, are populations showing stable growth in some places. Sea otters are a keystone species in coastal areas, feeding on sea urchins, clams, crab, and other crustaceans. When they are present, kelp beds are thick and healthy, providing homes for an array of sea life. When otters disappear, sea urchins take over, and the kelp disappears along with all the creatures that live in the beds. Now, thanks to their protected status, sea otters are making a comeback in California, Washington, and Alaska. In this hopeful book, science writer Todd McLeish embarks on an epic journey along the Pacific Coast—traveling from California to Alaska—to track the status, health, habits, personality, and viability of sea otters, and reveals how conservationists brought them back from the brink of extinction. |
| bill bryson funniest book: Stories From the Vinyl Cafe Stuart McLean, 2009-09-29 Like an old friend who's turned up in town, Stuart McLean returns with Stories from the Vinyl Cafe, his bestselling collection of tales based on his enormously popular Vinyl Cafe radio program. The collection features Canada's much-loved fictional family: Dave, Morley, Stephanie and Sam. Stories from the Vinyl Cafe also introduces a host of other wonderfully imagined characters, such as Margaret Dwyer, a suburban housewife who startles herself by shoplifting a pepperoni sausage, and Flora Perriton, who is consumed with thoughts of lost opportunities when an old friend passes away. Then there's Ed, who-overcome by the death of his favourite rock star-embarks on a pilgrimage to New York City to meet the singer's widow. As always, the stories in this rewarding and irreverent collection prove that Stuart McLean is indeed a national treasure. |
| bill bryson funniest book: Ghosts of Spain Giles Tremlett, 2007 The Spanish are reputed to be amongst Europe's most voluble people. So why have they kept silent about the terrors of the Spanish Civil War and the rule of dictator Generaliacute;simo Francisco Franco? The appearance - sixty years after that war ended - of mass graves containing victims of Franco's death squads has finally broken what Spaniards call 'the pact of forgetting'. At this charged moment, Giles Tremlett embarked on a journey around Spain - and through Spanish history. Tremlett's journey was also an attempt to make sense of his personal experience of the Spanish. Why do they dislike authority figures, but are cowed by a doctor's white coat? How had women embraced feminism without men noticing? What binds gypsies, jails and flamenco? Why do the Spanish go to plastic surgeons, donate their organs, visit brothels or take cocaine more than other Europeans? |
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