Subtitle: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail
Author: Bill Bryson
What does it say about itself: "Not long after I moved with my family to a small town in New Hampshire, I happend upon a path that vanished into a wood on the edge of town."
So begins Bill Bryson's hilarious book A Walk in the Woods. Following his return to America after twenty years in Britain, Bryson decided to reacquaint himself with his native country by walking the 2,100-mile Appalachian Trail, which stretches from Spring Mountain in Georgia to Mount Katahdin in Maine. The AT, as it's affectionately known to thousands of hikers, 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 test his own powers of ineptitude, and to witness the majectic stillness of his fellow human beings.
My thoughts: Every so often a reader returns to an author that they had loved but never returned to. In the interest of full disclosure I would like to mention here that I didn't actually read this book per se, I listened to it on CD on a long drive, as read by the author. This is the manner in which I first discovered Mr. Bryson and memoirs in general. As best I can remember the first memoir I ever encountered in the realm of pleasure reading was Bryson's The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. Bryson has a great wit and wonderful storytelling style that lends itself to his preferred mode of writing. Bryson is best known as a travel writer, and has written a handful of books about rediscovering America after returning to the states from Britain. Bryson grew up in Iowa, his childhood recounted in his memoir noted above, and moved to Britain as a young man. Travel writing is not technically memoir, however many travel books can be seen as memoir in that they focus on short, specific periods of time and discuss the changes in the self caused by the adventure.
This example is quite enjoyable, as the book jacket states Bryson weaves a hilarious story of hiking portions of the Appellation Trail (of course I would giggle to myself every time "hiking the appellation trail" was said, due to recent political scandals causing the phrase to become a euphemism). As someone from the decidedly western part of the country I never considered the Appellation mountains to be rather impressive or daunting, as the mountains in my area are higher and much more imposing on the sky line. Bryson's adventure is quite compelling, moving through the troubles of being completely unprepared for the physical demands of the AT to the comfort and realization of being a hiker and bonding with the trail as a whole. In general this is quite the composition of love to the trail, and anyone interested in travel writing or the AT should check out this little gem.
Grades
Quality of writing: 4
Entertaining: 4 (had some slow sections)
Compelling: 4
total: 12/15 - B
up next: A double feature! Waiter Rant - Steve Dublanica and Waiting - Debra Ginsberg
