We rank Bill Bryson’s best books to help new readers discover America’s funniest travel writer
There’s a part in Notes from a Small Island where Bill Bryson describes a painful train journey to Milton Keynes in the UK. He is sat facing a woman and her 10-year-old son, who keeps picking his nose, kicking Bryson’s shins and staring at him with his “piggy eyes”.
Bryson tries to ignore the child but is irritated by his smug stare and “busy finger”. When the train finally pulls into Milton Keynes, Bryson takes great pleasure in getting his rucksack from the overhead rack and dragging it across the boy’s head.
The anecdote is funny as he tells it, but we dare say it wouldn’t make it to publication today for fear of ruffling modern sensibilities.
Bryson has indeed upset a small number of readers, but we have always enjoyed his inimitable wit. He may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but if you’ve never read his work, we urge you to try it. To help you decide where to start, we share below Bill Bryson’s best books ranked.
Bill Bryson’s best books – ranked
We have used a mixture of reader reviews and editorial views to rank Bill Bryson’s best books.
1. Notes from a Small Island
Year: 1995
Buy: Amazon, Waterstones
In 1995, before leaving his adopted home of North Yorkshire to move back to the US, Bill Bryson took one last trip around Britain in a sort of valedictory tour of the green and pleasant land that he had called home for so long.
His aim was to take stock of the nation’s public face and private parts (as it were), and to chart what precisely it was he loved so much about a country that had produced Marmite, place names like Farleigh Wallop, Titsey and Shellow Bowells, and Gardeners’ Question Time.
Notes from a Small Island went on to sell over two million copies and remains one of Bill Bryson’s best books.
2. Down Under
Year: 2000
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It is the driest, flattest, hottest, most desiccated, infertile and climatically aggressive of all the inhabited continents and still Australia teems with life – a large portion of it quite deadly. In fact, Australia has more things that can kill you in a very nasty way than anywhere else.
Ignoring such dangers – and yet curiously obsessed by them – Bryson journeys to Australia and finds a nation that is cheerful, quick-witted and unfailingly obliging.
3. A Walk in the Woods
Year: 1997
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In the company of his friend Stephen Katz, Bryson sets off to hike the Appalachian Trail, the longest continuous footpath in the world.
Ahead lies almost 2,200 miles of remote mountain wilderness filled with bears, moose, bobcats, rattlesnakes, poisonous plants, disease-bearing tics, the occasional chuckling murderer and – perhaps most alarming of all – people whose favourite pastime is discussing the relative merits of the external-frame backpack.
Facing savage weather, merciless insects, unreliable maps and a fickle companion whose profoundest wish is to go to a motel and watch The X-Files, Bryson gamely struggles through the wilderness to achieve a lifetime’s ambition: not to die outdoors.
4. Notes from a Big Country
Year: 1999
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After nearly two decades in England, Bryson returns to the US with his wife and family – a place he left in youth.
Whether discussing the strange appeal of breakfast pizza or the jaw-slackening direness of American TV, Bryson brings his unique brand of bemused wit to that strangest of phenomena – the American way of life.
5. The Road to Little Dribbling: More Notes from a Small Island
Year: 2015
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To mark the 20th anniversary of Notes from a Small Island, Bryson makes a brand new journey round Britain to see what has changed.
Following a route he dubs the Bryson Line, from Bognor Regis to Cape Wrath, he sets out to rediscover the eccentric, endearingly unique country that he thought he knew but doesn’t altogether recognise any more.
With his unerring eye for the idiotic, the endearing, the ridiculous and the scandalous, Bryson gives us an acute and perceptive insight into all that is best and worst about Britain today.
6. The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America
Year: 1989
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‘I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to.’
And, as soon as Bryson was old enough, he left. Des Moines couldn’t keep him, but it did lure him back.
In The Lost Continent, Bryson drives 14,000 miles to Anywhere, USA; a lookalike strip of gas stations, motels and hamburger outlets populated by lookalike people with a penchant for synthetic fibres. He discovers a continent that is doubly lost: lost to itself thanks to greed, pollution, mobile homes and television, and lost to him for he has become a stranger in his own land.
7. Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe
Year: 1992
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Bryson journeys from Hammerfest, the northernmost town in Europe, to Istanbul on the cusp of Asia. Fluent in at least one language, he retraces his travels as a student 20 years before.
Whether braving the homicidal motorists of Paris, being robbed by gypsies in Florence, attempting not to order tripe and eyeballs in a German restaurant or window-shopping in the sex shops of the Reeperbahn, Bryson takes in the sights, dissects the culture and illuminates each place and person with his hilariously caustic observations. He even goes to Liechtenstein.
8. The Body: A Guide for Occupants
Year: 2019
Buy: Amazon, Waterstones
Bryson sets off to explore the human body, how it functions and its remarkable ability to heal itself. Full of extraordinary facts and astonishing stories, The Body is an attempt to understand the miracle of our physical and neurological make up.
‘What I learned is that we are infinitely more complex and wondrous, and often more mysterious, than I had ever suspected. There really is no story more amazing than the story of us,’ writes Bryson.
9. A Short History of Nearly Everything
Year: 2003
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Bryson describes himself as a reluctant traveller, but even when he stays safely at home he can’t contain his curiosity about the world.
A Short History of Nearly Everything is his quest to understand everything that has happened from the Big Bang to the rise of civilisation: how we got from there, being nothing at all, to here, being us.
Bryson takes subjects like geology, chemistry and particle physics, and renders them simply for people who have never thought they could be interested in science. As a result, A Short History of Nearly Everything reveals the world in a way most of us have never seen it before.
10. The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: Travels Through My Childhood
Year: 2006
Buy: Amazon, Waterstones
Like millions of his generation, Bryson grew up with a rich fantasy life as a superhero. In his case, he ran around the house wearing a jersey with a thunderbolt on it and a towel round his neck that served as his cape, leaping tall buildings in a single bound and vanquishing evildoers (in his head) as The Thunderbolt Kid.
Using this fantasy as a springboard, Bryson recreates the life of his family in the 1950s, a period that saw the inexorable rise of television, the opening of Disneyland, the testing of the atomic bomb, and the explosion of choice in everything from food to cars.
Warm and laugh-out-loud funny, The Rise and Fall of the Thunderbolt Kid is a modern classic, full of Bryson’s pitch-perfect observations.
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