I thought this book was very funny. None of the columns is terribly long, but all of them show the ridiculous side of modern life in the United States. I especially enjoyed Bryson's attempts to explain baseball. ( )

Ik ben een echte Bill Bryson fan. Zijn boeken hebben het soort humor waardoor je tijdens het lezen steeds zit te gniffelen (soms tot grote irritatie van mensen om je heen). Ik heb net zijn boek Aantekeningen uit een groot land gelezen, erg leuk! En interessant ook want Bill Bryson is een nieuwsgierig mannetje die onderwerpen tot de bodem uitzoekt.

Aantekeningen uit een groot land is een ideaal "effe lezen en dan effe wat anders doen" vakantieboek. Het bestaat namelijk uit circa 80 columns die hij schreef voor de weekendbijlage van een Britse krant. Bill Bryson is een Amerikaan die in de jaren zeventig op wereldreis is blijven hangen in Groot-Brittannië. Hij is getrouwd met een Engelse en werkte decennia als journalist bij diverse Britse kranten. Eind jaren negentig gaat hij met zijn gezin terug naar Amerika en schrijft voor het Britse publiek over wat hij daar allemaal meemaakt.

Hij is weliswaar zelf een geboren Amerikaan maar intussen half Brits en als relatieve buitenstaander kan hij zich zeer verbazen over de Amerikanen en de Amerikaanse maatschappij. Zijn columns gaan over van alles en nog wat. Bijvoorbeeld dat in Amerika niemand loopt: alles wordt met de auto gedaan en de gemiddelde Amerikaan gebruikt zijn benen voor maar 350 meter per dag. Verder dat het in Amerika stikt van de advocaten: in totaal 800.000 stuks. Dat zijn 300 advocaten per 100.000 inwoners en dat de "I sue you" cultuur helemaal doorslaat. Hoe groot en wild Amerika wel niet is: bijvoorbeeld de staat New Hampshire, waar hij woont, bestaat voor 85% uit bos. In die wildernis kunnen mensen gemakkelijk verdwalen en zelfs vliegtuigen neerstorten om nooit meer gevonden te worden. En zo gaat het door met interessante en bizarre voorbeelden van het leven in Amerika. Een echte aanrader!

Bryson back to his hilarious form of "Notes from..." Much less crude and much more funny. ( )

I have significantly enjoyed several of Bryson's books, this one was less reliably and a little less interesting. Part of the problem may have been time lag. This book is nearly ten years old now and some of his more perceptive comments about the US are now commonplace. Another difficulty is that I have extended family in the UK, which is why I expected to enjoy the book more, but that may have served to make it less interesting for me. Do not get me wrong, I did laugh out loud several times, and I was not bored. The three star rating says exactly what I feel: This was good enough but not better than good enough. Other LT reviewers agree with me that this is not his best effort. ( )

Bryson writes good stuff as always but this is a collection of his newspaper columns so I enjoyed it rather less than some of his other works which hang together better. The columns start to follow a set formula after a while - probably as you would expect - and I found the little quirky twist at the end REALLY started to annoy me! ( )

My husband and I listened to this book on cd while taking a road-trip from Chicago to the Smoky Mountains. It was very entertaining and had us laughing so hard at times we were crying. Hearing the author read the book in his dry candor, definitely enhanced the experience. ( )

so funny! ( )

Die Amis! Ein spezielles Folk! (darf ich das hier schreiben - ist doch eine US-Plattform...)

Bill Bryson hat das Thema genau auf den Punkt gebracht und dieses spezielle durch seine Worte super heraus kristallisiert!

Liegt sicher daran, dass die Englische Korrektheit und der Englische Humor teilweise nicht zum Lasse Fair Stil passt...

Sehr empfehlenswert! ( )

Bill Bryson, in his inimitable style, tells about returning to America after living in England for twenty years and learning about all the changes that have taken place in the US. ( )

Collection of essays on things American by journalist who returns to America with his family after many years in England, settles in New Hampshire, and comments on the absurd. ( )

An entertaining look at the United States. Backstory: Bill backpacked through Europe and decided to move to England in the early 70s. He married and had children, and decided to move back to the U.S. after a 20-year absence. In this book, he basically puts into perspective things that we never notice about our country, good and bad. Things that are unique to our culture: baseball on the radio, insects that glow, Thanksgiving and Fourth of July, the smell of a skunk, the satisfying wham of a screen door. How if the world was ending in two weeks, a typical American would respond by doing everything (s)he had never done, while a Briton would have a response akin to, "Typical. And did you see the weather forecast for next week?" (the weather probably would be terrible). How first-time drug offenders receive, on average, a 5-year sentence, while first-time violent offenders receive only 4-years (ridiculous). How a huge country forms huge beauracracies, which foster huge inefficiencies. How we are still one of the most least crowded countries on Earth, with an average of only 68 people per square mile, compared with 256 in France and over 600 in Britain (ha). This book is a compilation of columns written for a British audience, so it's divided into brief observations or commentaries. I've read a lot of his books, some humourous, and some just a stream of consciousness that isn't that engaging. But this one I like, and it has a lot to which people can relate. ( )

Hilarious, passionate, enticing, mind-boggling, and thought-provoking stuff! Love the short but thorough pieces in the novel. Bryson is a knockout travel writer and this book definitely shows the reader the ever-busy brain of that writer! ( )

I was skeptical of this book. The premise is Bryson has been away from American soil for twenty years (living in England) and the book is supposedly his running commentary on how different everything has become. Right off the bat I wanted to ask, "What? They didn't have ATM machines or public pay phones in England? Not even by the time Mr. Bryson left?" I have to admit, it never crossed my mind that England could be twenty years behind the U.S. in such things as technology and invention.
In actuality, Bryson's book was, in a word, delightful. I thoroughly enjoyed his opening essay about the differences between English and American postal services. However, for the most part the comparisons ended there. It was more about how nonsensical America could be with it's rules and regulations. It reminded me of Robert Fulghum with his humorous observations. ( )

A collection of articles Bryson wrote about American places and culture upon his return from living in the UK. Easily the weakest of Bryson's books, his humor and insight seem to have taken some time to catch up with the rest of him. ( )

I don't think Bryson has written a book that I haven't enjoyed. In fact some of them have reduced me to dribbling incoherence, all red-faced from fighting for breath after laughing uncontrollably for what seems likes hours. And this book contains some very funny lines and situations, but Bryson's humour seems somewhat constrained by the format of short columns and this collection suffers because of that. To be honest all of these types of books tend to be a slight disappointment, rather than simply printing these slightly tawdry collections of weekly columns surely it would be better to get the writer to turn the material into a more coherent whole? Anyway, that aside, I found Bryson's often bemused interactions with what he still sees as his homeland generally interesting and amusing. I'd still recommend just about any of his other books over this one however. ( )

Another great book from a very funny author. In one of his books his description of first seeing the Grand Canyon is one I have been trying to verbalise for a long time.

Back Cover Blurb:
This book collects together more than 18 months worth of Mail on Sunday columns which he wrote between October 1996 and May 1998 after he and his English wife and children returned to the US and settled in New England. The only thing that outshines his amazement - and sometimes, outright dismay - at the way American society has changed while he's been away, is his English-born family's instant embracing of transatlantic culture. ( )

I'm currently re-reading this Bryson gem, and enjoying it very much. One thing I am noticing is that some of the essays (originally written for a British newspaper in 1990s) are a bit dated. The book still features Bryson's trademark humor, although the disjointed nature of the essays is less satisfying to me than Bryson's one-subject, continuous books (such as "A Walk in the Woods" or "Notes From a Small Island"). ( )

Thisis a collection of two years of columns written by Bryson after returning to this country in 1995; columns first published in an English newspaper. He is often uproariously funny, and even though the book is about nine years old it still is quite current-sounding in its comments on things in this country. There is some obvious exaggeration, and some which one is not sure about, but it is a fun book to read, and the short chapters make it eminently readable. ( )

This is the second book by Bill Bryson that I've read recently, and I was relieved that this was a much improved offering over his Neither Here nor There.

Bryson returned to his home nation and, after a short time settling in, he started a regular column for a British newspaper. America was a very different place for Bryson after his many years away, and he uses this insight to provide a colourful descript of the state of the union in the late 90s, a time when Clinton was in full swing, and rampant commercialism hadn't quite reached the shores of the UK.

Holes a picked in the problems of America, not least of which include the drug war, the nation's attitude to capital punishment and the continuing decay into a mono-culture of Starbuck's and MacDonald's. On the other hand, Bryson also defends some of the finer points of the his hom, although his calls to action in a British newspaper column are a trifle misplaced.

The humour of this book is top quality, and it is an easy read which can be tackled a piece at a time (each column entry is only 3-4 pages long in the book), or just chomped through, if you want. ( )

Quick, funny essays about everyday life are harder to write than you might think. I marvel at them and take them apart the way you might take an old radio apart just to see if you can figure out how to put it back together. ( )

This book is comprised of a short column that Bill Bryson wrote for a British newspaper after he moved to Hanover, New Hampshire in the late 1990s. Though a few of the essays (e.g., those related to technology) are a bit dated, overall the columns were entertaining enough to keep me interested through a long plane flight. I was snickering often enough to make the people sitting next to me on the plane think I was extremely strange. Perfect for traveling as each essay is only a few pages long. ( )

I really like this book, and have let a few friends borrow it as well and they always get a good chuckle out of it, but that is pretty much expected with anything by B. Bryson. ( )

A collection of newspaper columns that Bryson wrote for a Bristish newspaper after moving from England to New Hampshire. These short pieces represent an insider/outsider view of American values, customs, and lifestyle. They cover a wide range of topics from trivial to deeply important, and from personal to universal. The best ones for me are those that try to explain those aspects of American culture that are so everyday and "normal" that we don't see them anymore: the tendency of Americans to drive everywhere, our eating habits, our ideas about shopping. Most are quite funny. Enjoyable reading for any student of American culture, whether from here or abroad. ( )

Des chroniques sur les Etats-Unis assez amusantes, même si en 10 ans, toutes n'ont pas bien vieilli.
A lire par petites touches... ( )

A nice, light read; easy to get into, easy to read in small stages. Very true observations of American culture, and (as usual) he makes some points I hadn't ever stopped to think about.

Bryson is one of my very favorite authors, and I enjoyed this book very much. All that said, this is not his very best book. Granted, this is due (almost entirely) to the difficulties of coming up with a column every week for two years...some of them work, some of them don't, and when they are read in just a few short sittings the reader gets the sense of repeated conent.

But if this is one of your first forays into Bryson, I hope you won't let this book dissuade you from reading his other excellent publications. ( )