At Home (Bill Bryson)

I've heard good things about Bill Bryson books, but had yet to read one.  At Home was my first experience.  Billed as a "short history of private life," the work begins in the old country house where Bryson lived at the time- in the English countryside of Norfolk.  In the beginning, he marvels at some of the peculiarities of the house, and basically decides to write a book on our homes and everything in them, and how they've changed throughout the years.  At least, that's what I thought he was writing about.

Each chapter has the title of a room of the house- 'kitchen,' 'bedroom,' etc.- and so it's reasonable to assume that a given chapter would cover the history of the room in its title.  It seldom does.  Bryson rambles, digresses, and is all over the place.  There's no question that the facts, stories, and anecdotes he shares are fascinating- but they so seldom relate to the topic at hand.  It's as though, as he was researching, he'd stumble upon something interesting, and throw it in.  Some chapters (like the 'attic') don't even mention the attic at all.  So the thing that bugged me- a lot- as I read this was simply the fact that it was false advertising. You learn a lot about certain estate homes, and some pieces of architectural history or room design, but you don't get a systematic overview of the home and things in it.

In the end, I think Bill Bryson would be a wonderful guy to converse with at a party, and he's a fabulous fountain of fascinating facts.  If his other books wander as much as this, though, I'll be skipping them.

Rating: C