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| Author: Bill Bryson
Publisher: Black Swan
Category: Book
Buy Used: $1.99
New (3) Used (20) from $1.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  56 reviews
Sales Rank: 54566
Format: Import
Media: Paperback
Edition: New Ed
Pages: 416
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 4.8 x 1.1
ISBN: 0552772542
EAN: 9780552772549
ASIN: 0552772542
Publication Date: 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
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| Customer Reviews:
 Billy Remembers When... August 13, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
It is a constant theme in Bill Bryson's books - he always points out what is (or in this case, was) good and enjoyable about his life's experiences. His exaggerations are done for comedic effect, but also to illustrate a point. I always leave the confines of his pages feeling like I have been transported to a different place or different time. Have we become so consumed with what we have, what we want, and how to get them that we have lost many of the enjoyments in life, or is it that being an adult just isn't as much fun as being a kid?
I'll have Bill know that because of him I won't be doing my part to contribute to our consumer-driven economy. I'm putting off enlarging and vastly improving the size and quality of my TV. More money for books, I suppose...
Absolutely hilarious and interesting read for young and old July 24, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Too funny! I was born in the 60's, but this book has given me a thorough understanding of life in the 50's - all the innocence and fun. So interesting, but mainly, laugh out loud funny! Fun for young adults and older folks, this book will appeal to any age who wants at least a couple of laughs PER PAGE! Definitely worth reading, in fact, I have ordered his other books as a result. Impressive writer.
The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir July 14, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
A laugh out loud look at a boy growing up in Iowa in the 1950s. A wonderful nostalgic look at life through a boy's eyes. For anyone who grew up in the fifties this is the ticket for a trip down memory lane. This is a wonderful get well gift as laughter aids in healing and relieving pain. I challenge anyone to read this and not laugh out loud. This is Bill Bryson at his best and who could ask for more.
 Des Moines' own local hero in defense of a boy's right to be dirty July 11, 2008
21 out of 31 found this review helpful
Approximately normal, but at times excessively disgusting, Bryson gives us the frog's perspective to Halberstam's magnificent bird's eye view of the Fifties.
Bryson's specific kind of humour, the exaggeration to absurdity of nearly everything, can be very funny, but also trying. Boys will be boys, so they do odd things, but when you exaggerate them, they go a bit out of their normal frame. Some of his stories are plain yukki. (eating buttered popcorn in a cinema while peeling something soft away from underneath the chair? crawling underneath the toilet partitions to lock all doors from the inside? watching the man with the hole in his throat while he eats and speaks? etc ad nauseam, literally)
So the fun is there but not always.
Apart from that, my main reason to read the book is the fact that Bryson grew up with a dad who was a sports reporter, and in Bryson's surely not exaggerated recollection the greatest American baseball reporter ever. Now that I have resigned from my less than promising career as a reviewer at Amazon.de to focus fully on Amazon.com, I realized that I have no clue why you guys like baseball so much.
After Bryson, I still don't have a clue, but I learned one thing: it must help to have grown up with it. I guess I will never make it even to the outer circles of the half-initiated.
 not bill's best July 9, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
I have sent Bill Bryson's books to a number of friends & relatives. Truly, he cracks me up.
This was a bit of a disappointment. I was in Nevada, Iowa (age 5), @ the same time he was in Des Moines. We come from the same place.
It was never the best of times, in Iowa.
I left the book with a friend who's a sports writer. She didn't know about Bryson's dad, also a sports writer, a good one, & was intrigued.
Bill Bryson makes me snort my drink out my nose most of the time. This book did tell me who his companion was in A Walk In The Woods was.
A Walk In The Woods was TOO, too funny.
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