Book review of “Neither Here Nor There”
I just finished reading Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe by Bill Bryson. I love the book. Bill Bryson makes me laugh out loud, and makes me think, which is a good combination.
The wife was reading another Bryson book, “Mother Tongue” (or “English and How It Got That Way”) while I was reading “Neither Here Nor There.” We spent this last week of evenings lying in bed next to each other, giggling and reading various passages out loud to each other.
Here are three quotes from “Neither Here Nor There” that I especially like:
“Isn’t it strange how wealth is always wasted on the rich?”
“I sat on the toilet, watching the (rusty) water run, thinking about what an odd thing tourism is. You fly off to a strange land, eagerly abandoning the comforts of home, and then expend vast quantities of time and money in a futile effort to recapture the comforts that you wouldn’t have lost if you hadn’t left home in the first place.”
“This was 1990, the year that communism died in Europe, and it seemed strange to me that in all the words that were written about the fall of the Iron Curtain, nobody lamented that it was the end of a noble experiment. I know that communism never worked, and I would have disliked living under it myself, but nonetheless it seemed there was a kind of sadness in the thought that the only economic system that appeared to work was the one based on self-interest and greed.”
I highly recommend ANYTHING by Bryson, especially this book. I really dug this one, because it’s a travelogue of many places I’ve been myself. I never thought I’d like a “travel writer” book, but this kinda transcends all that.
I give it nine thumbs up.
– Michael W. Dean