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At Home
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Review
'By now, Bryson is certainly famous enough to have got away with a far less bulging compendium... not just hugely readable but a genuine pageturner...None of these things, needless to say, are as easy as Bryson in his ever-genial way makes them seem.' -- Telegraph
`A work of constant delight and discovery. Bryson's wit is both dry and charmingly goofy. His great skill is to make daily life simultaneously strange and familiar, and in so doing, help us to recognise ourselves. At Home is a treasure: don't leave home without it.' --Judith Flanders, Sunday Telegraph
`Enchanting...a book about reinventing the ordinary, and finding the extraordinary in the humdrum business of living...Bryson tackled science in his brilliant A Short History of Nearly Everything. This new book could as easily be categorised as 'a short history of nearly everything else'...extraordinarily entertaining.' --The Times
'The method is to amass a dazzling number of facts and findings from disparate sources...riveting...arguing with Bryson is part of the enjoyment of reading him, and accompanying him across swathes of layered history.' --Victoria Glendinning, Spectator
`By rummaging down the back of the nation's sofa, Bryson has come up with a light-hearted and endlessly fascinating story...What you want from him is his wry humour and ability to raise a quizzical eyebrow at the sheer oddness of the human race.'
-- Mail on Sunday
`A work of constant delight and discovery. Bryson's wit is both dry and charmingly goofy. His great skill is to make daily life simultaneously strange and familiar, and in so doing, help us to recognise ourselves. At Home is a treasure: don't leave home without it.' --Judith Flanders, Sunday Telegraph
`Enchanting...a book about reinventing the ordinary, and finding the extraordinary in the humdrum business of living...Bryson tackled science in his brilliant A Short History of Nearly Everything. This new book could as easily be categorised as 'a short history of nearly everything else'...extraordinarily entertaining.' --The Times
'The method is to amass a dazzling number of facts and findings from disparate sources...riveting...arguing with Bryson is part of the enjoyment of reading him, and accompanying him across swathes of layered history.' --Victoria Glendinning, Spectator
`By rummaging down the back of the nation's sofa, Bryson has come up with a light-hearted and endlessly fascinating story...What you want from him is his wry humour and ability to raise a quizzical eyebrow at the sheer oddness of the human race.'
-- Mail on Sunday
Book Description
The irresistible book by Bill Bryson which does for the history of the way we live what A Short History of Nearly Everything did for science.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
226 of 231 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
You may experience a sense of deja vu,
By J. Brooke "Dr John the Day Tripper" (Reading, Berks, United Kingdom) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: At Home: A short history of private life (Hardcover)
One of the great things about Bill Bryson's books is his ability to grab your attention and draw you in to find out what odd fact he's going to come up with next. So I hadn't even got through the introduction when he came up with the gem about why all churches in Norfolk appear to have sunk into the churchyard (they haven't; it's the churchyard that has risen 3 ft or more because of the number of bodies buried there, which if you do the maths of how many people live in a parish, how many die each year, and how long the churchyards have been there is not so remarkable. And keep on reading to find out just how many bodies were buried in urban cemeteries in the Victorian era - quite astounding). He is also a great debunker of accepted truths - for instance, there's a lot of interesting comment about the widely accepted view that most food, especially bread, was adulterated with all sorts of disgusting and probably toxic substances. Bryson refers to somebody who tried baking bread with all these supposed adulterants, and showed that what was produced was actually inedible, with the exception of alum, which, he points out, if used in small quantities actually improves bread, and is also used nowadays as an additive to many products.
So once again I read this through with great enjoyment and picked up lots of little nuggets of the odd and the interesting. Having said that, however, I did find that I had a sense of deja vu about this book; many of the anecdotes it contains seem to have been recycled from some of his other books (I think that I can recognise quite a lot of them from "Made in America" for example, where they were hung about a framework of American language, rather than around the structure of his wanderings from room to room of his house in Norfolk). And there is rather a lot of anecdotage about very large houses in America which seemed to not have a great deal to do with history as seen through the lens of humble domesticity, which is what I thought the theme of the book was intended to be. Anyway, given the man's prodigious output (this is getting on for the same size a "A Short History of Everything") it wouldn't be surprising if he recycled some material. But these are minor bits of carping, really, and if you are a more casual reader of Bryson probably won't affect you. It's an entertaining and informative book and well worth the reading.
89 of 95 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Sorry,
By
This review is from: At Home: A short history of private life (Hardcover)
Bill Bryson is a big favourite in this house. Our bookcases are festooned with his works. I have learned much about my own country, about his country, about Shakespeare, and more.
I have laughed a lot, I have pondered a lot and I have admired this man a lot. I have to be honest about this book. I did learn some fascinating facts, but the rambling, all-over-the-place nature of the book was tiring. I do not remember laughing, either. The ultimate test is ..will I re-read? After all, I go back to his other stuff for a treat at intervals, even though have read it before. Truthfully, I do not think I will get the urge to pick up this up again in the future. Sorry. (But I WILL buy his next book.)
138 of 149 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Bryson back on form,
By
This review is from: At Home: A short history of private life (Hardcover)
Having found his name attached to a number of diverse products this is Bryson's first "proper" book since the short history of nearly everything. Well he has made a fine attempt to fill in some of the gaps and has produced a fine, if eclectic, book. The premise of using fixtures and fittings around the home as a means of opening a discourse on a myriad topics is a novel one and one he pulls off as only he can. Sure there is a scattergun approach to this, how could there not be, but using the home as the focus of the many topics up for discussion here keeps the narrative on track and means that you are drawn from subject to subject without a jarring note.
This is not what one could call a "learned" tome, it would never be described as a deep read, but is all the better for it as it is such an absorbing read. It is such a simple idea I only wish I had thought of it first - or could write a hundredth as well as Mr Bryson. Quite remarkable really.
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