Why I admire Bill Bryson
funny, I didn’t even know he was a travel writer…this just instantly added a few more entries into my “books to read someday” list…sigh...
Anyway, the only book I’ve read (well, technically I listened to – I recently bought the illustrated copy, but haven’t read it in its entirity, only selected passages) by Bill is A Short History of Nearly Everything. As a naturalist of no religious affiliation (but raised in the christian school of thought), I found in this book my bible. It lays on my bedside table, just like the “good book”, always ready to provide me with last minute, right-before-sleep-time, words of wisdom and insight into the works of…Nature. As the actual Bible, it starts with Genesis and ends with Apocalypse. And it is really funny! Somehow, he manages also to dig out offbeat facts about many pivotal figures of science, their bizarre behaviours, strange rivalries, and the quirky paths to their discoveries. It’s almost like reading a celebrity gossip magazine about…science. And Bill gets his facts straight, and from the horse’s mouth. He goes to real amazing minds of science, and is able to translate all the technical lingo into plain funny, easy to digest pieces of information quite suitable for cocktail party talk – so, did you know that the amount of water of your average cloud actually fits in a bathtub? well, if that doesn’t work as a good pick up line, you can always go with -so, do you work out?
Cheers Bill! and I’ll re-listen again and again!
