Customer Reviews:
 LOVE this book! June 29, 2008
This is a wonderful read.....nostalgic, funny, sentimental, but never sappy. If you are NOT a fan of the "big box chains," then this is a book for you.
Those fabulous 50's June 13, 2008
12 out of 12 found this review helpful
A father who's a top sports columnist. Wax teeth, the Butter Boys, infatuation with atomic energy, and a booming post-war economy. Is it any wonder that Bill Bryson (the second) turned out the way he did? Reading this crazy essay is a walk down memory lane for baby boomers. Who could forget crawling under a school desk to ward off the effects of a nuclear attack by communists? Or the rise of rock and roll? Bryson recalls and describes it all in his typical dry, wry, and deadpan way. I did not laugh my way all the way through it - that only happened maybe once in each chapter - but I never stopped smiling. Great fun.
 Funny - But Unfocused and Dashed Off June 4, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
At this point, I've read most (but not quite all) of Bryson's narrative works, and this is probably his weakest. In interviews, he's admitted that writing his previous book, (AA Short History of Nearly Everything) was rather taxing, and he was looking for something relatively easy to tackle after that. The result is that this meandering childhood memoir/ode to the halcyon days of 1950s America feels rather loose and dashed off in comparison to his other books. There's still good writing, good humor (albeit a bit more forced than usual), and good anecdotes, but instead of a solid framework or narrative arc, he relies on a lot of cut-and-paste cultural history to serve as the binding glue.
Bryson grew up in a comfortably prosperous family in Des Moines, Iowa, and clearly enjoys this extended trip down memory lane. Whether or not the reader has as much fun probably depends on their approach to the book. For one thing, you have to realize that Bryson depends a great deal on exaggeration and comedic license to amp up the humor in his recollections -- to the point where it's not clear what really happened and what is just a good yarn. Also, since this is Bryson as a kid, a lot of the humor derives from rather juvenile sources.
Another thing to realize is that Bryson's 1950's middle-American childhood is pretty unremarkable and uneventful (something he readily admits in the foreword). We are treated to well-worn touchstones such as the arrival of the first TV on the block, the promise and threat of the atomic age, the banning of comic books, the lure of the movie theater, the rise of teenagers, etc. The problem is that many, if not most, American readers will have heard most of this stuff before. Another problem is that the chronology is somewhat confused. For example, he goes into detail on how his beloved comic books were sanitizedby industry's adoption of the self-censoring Comic Book Code, but that actually happened in 1954, when Bryson was 2 years old! Indeed, most of the hijinks he relates take place in the 1960s, but one would be hard pressed to realize this with all the 1950s background material.
Don't get me wrong, there are a number of memorable anecdotes that will bring chuckles and outright laughs to the reader. My own favorites included the match wars he and his friends would wage in a dark basement, and a rather spectacular beer heist. But the whole enterprise feels rather phoned-in and more like a flaccid first draft than a finished book. Nostalgia seekers and Bryson fans will probably find it worth checking out (especially for the appearances of his traveling pal Stephen Katz), but others will find it somewhat pointless.
Iowa's greatest export since "Dutch" Reagan! June 4, 2008
I feel an affinity with Bill Bryson. Both of us entered the world in late 1951, neither of us can understand the British TV industry's fascination with "Cagney & Lacey", we were both thrilled by "This Is Cinerama", we really don't get why old ladies will squirrel away a few canned peas, and we both met our wives while working the night shift in a Victorian asylum in the outskirts of London, which later burned. OK, so maybe I met my wife by picking her up on the street in Seattle, but still, the similarities are uncanny, eh? However, have you ever noticed he really seems to get off on being able to look down on the tops of peoples' heads? Whether on the upper deck on an English bus, or the upper floor of his hometown department store, he really seems to dig that a lot! I could care less.
Anyway, "The Life and Times Of The Thunderbolt Kid" is Bryson at his best: qualifyingly affectionate, irreverent, and evocative of a kinder, gentler middle-class American upbringing. Reading this transports me to little towns called Midvale, or Springville, or Edmonds, or Smallville. It's "Leave It To Beaver", but in color, and without Larry Mondello, or Dad changing his make of car when the sponsor changed. It also strongly brings back the late Jean Shepard's wonderful writings about the semi-mythical Homan, Indiana, overpopularized by the great movie "Christmas Story". I've no doubt Bill Bryson was told many times(as I was), "You'll put your eye out, kid!"
While I never imagined myself any kind of a superhero type like The Thunderbolt Kid, able to vaporise foes in the wink of an eye(I identified more with Sgts. Rock & Saunders, being overjoyed to mow them down with a Tommy Gun, a Fanner 50, or a Johnny-7 OMA, the one man army gun), I can easily see how tough it must be to be certain that you are living with people who are not your real family. Kind of like poor Kal-El, when he falls to Earth, and he's going to be stuck with people like the Kents in Smallville until he can split for the bright lights of Gotham City(or in Bryson's case, Virginia Water, rural Yorkshire, Durham, or Hanover, NH. But I still don't understand how Clark left Lana Lang behind: she was ten times hotter than Lois Lane!).
Like all good writers, Bryson has the gift of transporting his reader to a place, and a time that may be far away, and making the reader want to be, or go, there(or sometimes making the reader absolutely ecstatic that they ain't!). He's done it to me any number of times since I first read(actually heard)"Notes From A Small Island", although I'll refrain from spending too much time with Katz, or sleeping on a bench in Dover, with a pair of Y-fronts over my head. By the way, Katz, his(and now our) friend, who we met in "A Walk In The Woods" and "Neither Here Nor There" appears in "Thunderbolt Kid", and we get some insight into how he became who(or what)he is.....sort of like Lex Luthor, or Eric Cartman.
To paraphrase Bryson's comment about Salisbury's Wiltshire Museum: "I urge you to go there(read this)immediately. Take my car(borrow my copy)."
Brain Candy May 9, 2008
Every so often, a book comes along that is so good, you don't want to reach the end. "Thunderbolt Kid" is just such a book. I found myself having to pause regularly to allow my sides to stop aching from laughter, and I read about half of the book out loud to my wife because I HAD to share it. You don't read this book; it just happens inside your head. The trees that died to print this classic must be quite proud of their demise.
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