Quicklet on Bill Bryson's I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away

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ABOUT THE BOOK

Bill Brysons Im a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away is an hilarious, pointed, and sometimes poignant collection of the columns he wrote for the British magazine, Night & Day. Bryson wrote these pieces in the mid- to late-nineties after he had returned to the United States from Great Britain where he had been living for the previous twenty years. Since the publication in 2000 of Im a Stranger Here Myself, Bryson has become one of the best-selling authors of the English-speaking world, and according to his official UK page, he is the best-selling author of non-fiction in Great Britain.

MEET THE AUTHOR

Davanna Cimino is a professional writer. He holds a law degree and is also a copy editor. He writes screenplays and poetry. He has three sons, and a Brittany named Jubal.

EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK

In Im a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away, Bill Bryson explores themes as various as the pleasures of living in a small town; Americans obsession with prescription and over-the-counter drugs and the sometimes bizarre television ads for these drugs; injuries inflicted by common household items (for example, bedding); the war on drugs; and the prison population.

Bryson points out, in the chapter, Drug Culture, that It is an odd thing about us. We spend huge efforts exhorting ourselves to Say No to Drugs, then go to the drugstore and buy them by the armloads. Although he details the trivial (why is there a hotline number on dental floss containers? in On the Hotline), Bryson often makes social commentary, which, though trenchant, does not provoke ire; he delivers his observations with wit, and a sense of shared fallibility.

Bryson tells of his quest for the lost nirvana of the America of his youth in the chapter, Room Service. He remembers, as a boy, stopping with his family on long road trips at small, cottagey, family-owned motels. In an effort to recapture that lost past, he cajoles his wife and kids into stopping at the Sleepy Hollow Motel during one of their road trips. The family desert him for the more modern, cleaner Comfort Inn across the street.

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CHAPTER OUTLINE

Quicklet on Bill Bryson's I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away

+ Introduction

+ About Bill Bryson

+ Curmudgeonly Nostalgia

+ Dry of Wit, Velvet of Glove, and Pointed of Observation

+ …and much more