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Peter Ackroyd
A short essay by Peter Ackroyd about his 2009 novel The Casebook of Victor Frankenstein
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   Summary and Book Reviews

A Walk In The Woods: Summary and book reviews of A Walk In The Woods by Bill Bryson, plus links to an excerpt from A Walk In The Woods and a biography of Bill Bryson.

A Walk In The Woods A Walk In The Woods
Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail
by Bill Bryson
Hardcover: Jun 1998,
274 pages.
Paperback: May 1999,
255 pages.

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Book Summary

"Not long after I moved with my family to a small town in New Hampshire, I happened upon a path that vanished into a wood on the edge of town."

So begins Bill Bryson's hilarious book A Walk in the Woods. Following his return to America after twenty years in Britain, Bryson decided to reacquaint himself with his native country by walking the 2,100-mile Appalachian Trail, which stretches from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Mount Katahdin in Maine. The AT, as it's affectionately known to thousands of hikers, offers an astonishing landscape of silent forests and sparkling lakes--and to a writer with the comic genius of Bill Bryson, it also provides endless opportunities to test his own powers of ineptitude, and to witness the majestic silliness of his fellow human beings.

For a start, there's the gloriously out-of-shape Stephen Katz, a buddy from Iowa who accompanies the similarly unfit Bryson on the trail. Once Bryson and Katz settle into their stride, it's not long before they come across the fabulously annoying Mary Ellen, whose disappearance ruins a perfectly good slice of pie, a gang of Ralph Lauren-attired yuppies from whom Katz appropriates a key piece of equipment, and a security guard in Pennsylvania who, for no ascertainable reason, impounds Bryson's car. Mile by arduous mile these latter-day pioneers walk America, along the way surviving the threat of bear attacks, the loss of key provisions, and everything else this awe-inspiring country can throw at them.

But A Walk in the Woods is more than just a laugh-out-loud hike. Bryson's acute eye is a wise witness to this fragile and beautiful trail, and as he tells its fascinating history, he makes a moving plea for the conservation of America's last great wilderness. An adventure, a comedy, a lament, and a celebration, A Walk in the Woods is destined to become a modern classic of travel literature.

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 The Washington Post Book World
Choke-on-your-coffee funny.

 The New York Times Book Review
Bryson is . . . great company right from the start--a lumbering, droll, beatnik intellectual who comes off as equal parts Garrison Keillor, Michael Kinsley, and . . . Dave Barry.

 The Boston Globe
A Walk in the Woods is an almost perfect travel book.


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