I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away,Books,Free Shipping,076790382X,

	I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away by Bill Bryson
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Product Details Binding Paperback Dewey Decimal Number 973.92 EAN 9780767903820 ISBN 076790382X Manufacturer Broadway Number Of Items 1 Number Of Pages 304 Publication Date June 06, 2000 Publisher Broadway Release Date June 06, 2000 Availability Usually ships in 24 hours Product Description 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. In the world of contemporary travel writing, Bill Bryson, the bestselling author of A Walk in the Woods, often emerges as a major contender for King of Crankiness. Granted, he complains well and humorously, but between every line of his travel books you can almost hear the tinny echo: 'I wanna go home, I miss my wife.' Happily, I'm a Stranger Here Myself unleashes a new Bryson, more contemplative and less likely to toss daggers. After two decades in England, he's relocated to Hanover, New Hampshire. In this collection (drawn from dispatches for London's Night & Day magazine), he's writing from home, in close proximity to wife and family. We find a happy marriage between humor and reflection as he assesses life both in New England and in the contemporary United States. With the telescopic perspective of one who's stepped out of the American mainstream and come back after 20 years, Bryson aptly holds the mirror up to U.S. culture, capturing its absurdities--such as hotlines for dental floss, the cult of the lawsuit, and strange American injuries such as those sustained from pillows and beds. 'In the time it takes you to read this,' he writes, 'four of my fellow citizens will somehow manage to be wounded by their bedding.' The book also reflects the sweet side of small-town USA, with columns about post-office parties, dining at diners, and Thanksgiving--when the only goal is to 'get your stomach into the approximate shape of a beach ball' and be grateful. And grateful we are that the previously peripatetic Bryson has returned to the U.S., turning his eye to this land--while living at home and near his wife. Under her benevolent influence, he entertains through thoughtful insights, not sarcastic stabs. --Melissa Rossi Ex-expatriate Bryson, who chronicled one effort at American reentry in his bestselling A Walk in the Woods, collects another: the whimsical columns on America he wrote weekly, while living in New Hampshire in the mid-to-late 1990s, for a British Sunday newspaper. Although he happily describes himself as dazzled by American ease, friendliness and abundance, Bryson has no trouble finding comic targets, among them fast food, computer efficiency and, ironically, American friendliness and putative convenience. As he edges into Dave Barry-style hyperbole, Bryson sometimes strains for yuks, but he's deft when he compares the two cultures, as in their different treatment of Christmas, pointing out how the British 'pack all their festive excesses' into that single holiday. Bryson also nudges into domestic territory with regular references to his own British wife, the resolutely sensible Mrs. B. In a few columns, Bryson adopts a sentimental tone, writing about his family and his new hometown of Hanover. In others, he's more sober, criticizing anti-immigration activists, environmental depredation and drug laws (though he draws out the humor in these as well). Not all the columns hit their mark, and they are best read in small groupings, but this collection should sell well enough, although not likely to the heights of A Walk in the Woods. Agent, Jed Mattes. Author tour; BDD audio. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. Getting reacquainted with America. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. Bryson is the author of the best-selling A Walk in the Woods (1998), about his hike along the long stretch of the Appalachian Trail. Before that, he lived in Britain for 20 years with his English wife and their four children, working there for the Sunday Times and other publications. After his return to his native U.S., he was asked to write a weekly column for the British Night & Day magazine about his adventures and observations as he underwent the process of repatriation. These columns, written over a two-year period (1996^-98), are now gathered in book form. His subject matter is the idiosyncrasies of contemporary American life, and according to Bryson, speaking from the vantage point of having been away for a long time, we certainly have loads of peculiarities in our national 'personality.' This is humor writing at its sharpest, and his saving grace is that he does more laughing with us than at us. When he has problems with his computer and calls for help, he moans, 'This, you see, is why I don't call my computer help line very often. We haven't been talking four seconds and already I can feel a riptide of ignorance and shame pulling me out into the icy depths of Humiliation Bay.' Drug laws and the virtues of garbage disposal are only two of the many facets of American life that Bryson has fun with. Brad Hooper Waggish observations on everyday life in the US from bestselling Bryson (A Walk in the Woods, 1998, etc.), a guy who can find the humor in a bag of hammers and, often enough, the lesson too. Returning stateside after decades in Britain, Bryson was tapped to pen a weekly column for the British Mail on Sunday about life in America. What he offered was not a vast systematic picture, but rather quick sketches to reveal what unnerved and exhilarated him upon his return, what appalled him and what made him happy. And that is just what he delivers with these two-to-four-page broadsides, the revelatory minutiae that distinguish the US from all other countries. Take running shoes: ``If my son can have his choice of a seemingly limitless range of scrupulously engineered, biomechanically efficient footwear, why does my computer keyboard suck?'' He wants to know why a letter in the name of a certain toy company is reversed``Surely not in the hope or expectation that it will enhance our admiration?''or whether the executives in that company carry business cards saying ``Dick Me.'' There are snorting jabs at the post office and car mechanics and hardware salesmen and, in particular and at length, his own moronic behavior (like ``wrapping a rubber band around my index finger to see if I can make it explode'' to test his body's tolerance of extremes). While this collection of almost six dozen pieces has a broad streak of guffaw-aloud humor, there are also occasional, spot-on critiquesas of the patent absurdity, ``the zealous vindictiveness'' of the US governments war on drugsand a lone, touching item on sending his eldest son off to college that is so unexpected and disarming it comes like a blow to the solar plexus. Truly and beguilingly, if you are a jaded resident of the USA, Bryson can rekindle your wonder and delight in the life and land around you. ($75,000 ad/promo; author tour; radio satellite tour) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. 'Painfully funny and genuinely insightful...Bryson has never been wittier or more endearing.' --San Francisco Chronicle 'Wonderfully droll...Bryson is unparalleled in his ability to cut a culture off at the knees in a way that is so humorous and so affectionate that those being ridiculed are laughing too hard to take offense.' --The Wall Street Journal 'Bill Bryson makes writing look too easy.' --USA Today 'A cross between de Tocqueville and Dave Barry, Bryson writes about today's America in a way that's both trenchantly observant and pound-on-the-floor, snort-root-beer-out-of-your-nose funny.' --San Francisco Examiner 'Bill Bryson could write an essay about dryer lint or fever reducers and still make us laugh out loud.' --Chicago Sun-Times -- Review 'Painfully funny and genuinely insightful...Bryson has never been wittier or more endearing.' --San Francisco Chronicle 'Wonderfully droll...Bryson is unparalleled in his ability to cut a culture off at the knees in a way that is so humorous and so affectionate that those being ridiculed are laughing too hard to take offense.' --The Wall Street Journal 'Bill Bryson makes writing look too easy.' --USA Today 'A cross between de Tocqueville and Dave Barry, Bryson writes about today's America in a way that's both trenchantly observant and pound-on-the-floor, snort-root-beer-out-of-your-nose funny.' --San Francisco Examiner 'Bill Bryson could write an essay about dryer lint or fever reducers and still make us laugh out loud.' --Chicago Sun-Times 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. 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. Praise For A Walk In The Woods: '[Bryson is] great company from the start...equal parts Garrison Keillor, Michael Kinsley and...Dave Barry.' --The New York Times Book Review '[A] terribly misguided and terribly funny tale of adventure....The yarn is choke-on-your-coffee funny.' --Washington Post 'A Walk In The Woods is an almost perfect travel book.' --Boston Globe 'Nobody has written anything like this book. It's funny--so funny I was laughing out loud and reading passages to anyone who would listen.' --Providence Journal-Bulletin 'Bill Bryson could write an essay about dryer lint or fever reducers and still make us laugh out loud.' --Chicago Sun-Times Customers who bought this item also bought Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe In a Sunburned Country The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America A Short History of Nearly Everything Notes from a Small Island Customer Reviews for: I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away Rating - Bryson's views on America A collection of essays on Bryson's experiences and views of America, sometimes annoyingly pretentious and pedantic (especially in the beginning), but more often clever, funny, and perfectly balanced between critical and appreciative of American culture. For me, part of the thrill is that Bryson is a local writer. Great, though slightly dated, but beautiful and humorous and original collection chronicling nature, American commercialism, American communities, ... Read More Rating - The travel essay master If you've lived outside the US, come from another country or ever wondered what people from other places think of Americans and the US on our home turf then this is a book you have to read. If this was written by a foreigner I might have taken some offense to parts of it. Bryson is an American and these are his humorous takes on what he saw when he re-entered his own country to live here again after time spent in Europe. A fun read (and if you see yourself ... Read More Rating - One of his best I thought this was one of Bryson's best......short weekly column type stories on one subject. They were humorous, to the point, and folksy. He does (as he says himself) complain a bit too much, but if there's only one side to the story, it sounds like marketing material instead of a commentary. Enjoyed this one. Rating - It's great to laugh at yourself if you are living in America This is the 2nd book I have read by Bill Bryson. I enjoyed it! I admire someone who can take normal life in America and write with such humor. I found myself giggling every few paragraphs. Such talent this writer has. Basically this book is filled with essays that are organized by chapters. He writes about all kinds of things about America, after moving to New Hampshire after living in Britain for 20 years. He writes about baseball, shopping, lawyers, ... Read More see more reviews See all books by author Bill Bryson

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