I am hooked to Bill Bryson books nowadays. I started off with A short history of nearly everything, but switched to Notes from a big country after couple of chapters. Not because it was a boring read, but mainly because I could not read that big book comfortably enough. At the same time, I wanted to read more from him.
His travel books are great fun. I must confess that it's been long since I had laughed out loud while reading book. He has a very peculiar style of putting things on paper, as he has experienced them himself. One needs to read his books to understand how exciting "travel writing" could be. He sure knows how make boring travel notes exceptionally funny.
But that's not all about him. A short history of nearly everything is a general science book. He took up writing this book when his son asked him something which he didn't know. He has done quite a research to put all those science facts together in that book. And he has managed to keep it enough interesting too.
I completely agree with him when he says that the science text book authors had been very dry and kept all the good and interesting stuff to themselves while writing the science text books. In fact, I think our lack of scientific curiosity is mainly due to our boring science text books.
I loved the way he has written about big bang. Now that I have completed his travel book, I can't wait to get back to the other book.
I wonder how much fun it would be to learn sciences at school, if text books are written by likes of Bill Bryson.
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After the success of Short History of Nearly Everything, he came up with an illustrated edition which has lot of pictures, illustrations and graphics - an even better read than the original. This is a book that every child should read - it'll prove to be better then their school science books!
And then I read his travel book on Australia. I was literally laughing my head off!!! :)
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