100 Books to Read Poster No. 20

 Hurray! one fifth of the way through. It has to be said that I am getting through the books more quickly since a) the Ph D got finished and b) lockdown. 

Once again the graphic, in so far as it is supposed to relate to the title of the book,  rather defeats me. I mean you look at that picture and start trying to think of a famous-ish book called 'Message in a Bottle' don't you? 

But it is Bill Bryson's Notes from a Small Island, a description of a round (parts of ) the UK trip which he took just before he and his family decamped to live for several years is the US. 

Where to start? I listened to this rather than read it, because it and another poster title appeared in an Audible two for one sale just as my monthly credit dropped in in September. I left a rather snotty review of it on Audible, mostly relating to the shortcomings of the narrator who seems to think that people from all the Celtic nations of the British Isles speak in a fey tone with a generic accent hovering somewhere in the middle of the Irish Sea. This is very far from being the truth. Why do we even need to still be saying this in 2020? 

This was not however my only gripe. Time was when I devoured any new book by Bill Bryson, since I was sure that I would learn a lot and laugh a lot at the same time. In later years I have stopped buying his books or watching him on TV because I thought he had turned into a Miserable Old Git. But listening to this I discover I was wrong. Bryson has always been a Miserable Old Git and previously I either did not recognise this as the fact that it is, or I cared less than I do now. 

Honestly, does he ever stop moaning? He can moan about anything; people, accents, trains, roads, hotels, the weather, shops, modern life in general, you name it, Bryson has moaned about it.  

In view of the above, and given that if I want moans I can do my own, no-one is going to be surprised to learn that I have designated this a miss.