I'm a Stranger Here Myself

Text read: I'm a Stranger Here Myself by Bill Bryson

Number of pages: 288

Number of reading days: 38 (I took a lot of breaks...)

Why I read this book: After coming home from London, my father suggested that I read this book, as it deals with the author's experience of moving back to America after living in England for twenty odd years.

Thoughts:

This book was ridiculously hilarious and painfully truthful. While reading Stranger on the bus one day, I ended up crying from excessive silent laughter.

I haven't read much of Bryson's work but his writing style and humor have caught my interest; I may look into a few of his other books. I appreciated his insight into American culture, especially in comparison to British culture Not much else to add or analyze--just a nice little, not very serious read for my transition back to the States.

Favorite Passages & Quotes:

A Day at the Seaside -
"'It will be fun,' she (the author's wife) will insist.
'I don't think so,' I will reply. 'People find it disturbing when I take my shirt off in public. I find it disturbing.'
'No, it will be great. We'll get sand in our hair. We'll get sand in our shoes. We'll get sand in our sandwiches and then in our mouths. We'll get sunburned and windburned. And when we get tired of sitting, we can have a dip in water so cold it actually hurts. At the end of the day, we'll set off at the same time as thirty-seven thousand other people and get in such a traffic jam that we won't get home till midnight. I can make trenchant observations about your driving skills, and the children can pass the time in the back sticking each other with sharp objects. It will be such fun.'
The tragic thing is that because my wife is English, and therefore beyond the reach of reason where saltwater is concerned, she really will think it's fun. Frankly I have never understood the British attachment to the seaside."

On Losing a Son -
"So we went out onto the front lawn and here is where it gets sentimental. There was a kind of beauty about the experience so elemental and wonderful I cannot tell you--the way the evening sun fell across the lawn, the earnest eagerness of his young stance, the fact that we were doing this most quintessentially dad-and-son thing, the supreme contentment of just being together--and I couldn't believe that it would ever have occured to me that finishing an artile or writing a book or doing anything at all could be more important and rewarding than his."

Deck the Halls -
"It is at this point that you realize you have no idea where the Christmas tree stand is. So, sighing, you hike up to town to the hardware store to buy another, knowing that for the next three weeks all the Christmas tree stands you have ever purchases--twenty five in all, one for each Christmas of your adulthood--will spontaneously reappear, mostly by dropping onto your head from a high shelf when you are rooting in the bottom of a closet, but occasionally taking up positions in the middle of darkened rooms or near the top of the hall stairs. If you don't know it already, know it now: Christmas tree stands are the work of the devil and they want you dead."

Hail to the Chief -
"To be president of the United States and not accomplish anything is, after all, a kind of accomplishment in itself."

Life's Mysteries -
"Why do we thank someone from the bottom of our heart? Why not the middle of our heart? Why not, indeed, the whole heart? Why not the heart, lungs, brain, spleen, etc.?"

Shopping Madness -
"So here is my question. Why then is it that I cannot go shopping these days wihout wanting either to burst into tears or kill someone?"

Rules for Living - (Just a few of my favorites...)
6. Martha Stewart is, with immediate effect, illegal.

18. Photocopiers will clearly indicate where you supposed to put the piece of paper you want copied and will provide an immediate refund and spoken apology each time they produce a horizontal photocopy when a vertical one is desired. Any user of a photocopier who instructs the machine to produce a tablecloth-sized photocopy or one hundred copies of a single document, or anything like that, and who then does not reset the machine to its normal settings will be hunted down by the photocopier police and made to drink a cup of toner.

28. All Americans will appreciate irony. Britons will understand that two ice cubes in a drink is not nearly enough.

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For other books I'm reading this summer, see: Summer Reading List 2012