1235. The Geography of Bliss (Eric Weiner)

Synopsis:

Part foreign affairs discourse, part humor, and part twisted self-help guide, The Geography of Bliss takes the listener from America to Iceland to India in search of happiness, or, in the crabby author's case, moments of "un-unhappiness." The book uses a beguiling mixture of travel, psychology, science and humor to investigate not what happiness is, but where it is. Are people in Switzerland happier because it is the most democratic country in the world? Do citizens of Qatar, awash in petrodollars, find joy in all that cash? Is the King of Bhutan a visionary for his initiative to calculate Gross National Happiness? Why is Asheville, North Carolina so damn happy? With engaging wit and surprising insights, Eric Weiner answers those questions and many others, offering travelers of all moods some interesting new ideas for sunnier destinations and dispositions.

My rating: 5 stars

712. A Walk in the Woods (Bill Bryson)

The Southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail on Springer Mountain, Georgia

Synopsis from Amazon Canada:
God only knows what possessed Bill Bryson, a reluctant adventurer if ever there was one, to undertake a gruelling hike along the world's longest continuous footpath—The Appalachian Trail.

The 2,000-plus-mile trail winds through 14 states, stretching along the east coast of the United States, from Georgia to Maine. It snakes through some of the wildest and most spectacular landscapes in North America, as well as through some of its most poverty-stricken and primitive backwoods areas.

With his offbeat sensibility, his eye for the absurd, and his laugh-out-loud sense of humour, Bryson recounts his confrontations with nature at its most uncompromising over his five-month journey.

My rating: 4 stars

681. Bill Bryson's African Diary (Bill Bryson)

Synopsis from Amazon Canada:
In this slim, invigorating volume, the author of Notes from a Small Island and A Walk in the Woods sets his dry, Midwestern fish-out-of-water wit on Kenya. For eight days in the fall of 2002, Bill Bryson, accompanied by workers from the international poverty-fighting organization CARE, toured the East African country, visiting various CARE-sponsored projects and meeting the locals. One of these is Dr. Mbua. Among Bryson's interests is the human fossil record, and so an appointment at the National Museum--which "has the finest collection of early human remains in existence"--is arranged. Among its treasures is a 19-million-year-old ape skull returned to its rightful country after 40 years of bargaining with the British Museum, where it was sent for cleaning in the 1940s. Bryson asks Dr. Mbua, a paleontologist, why the museum kept it for so long. "'They coveted it,' she said, smiling serenely, but hinting at levels of darkness in the world of paleontology that I hadn't known existed." In describing why a highway isn't in the shape it's supposed to be in, Bryson drolly notes, "some government official or group of government officials decided to spare Kenyan workers the wearying toil of laying tarmac under a hot sun, and pocketed the money instead." For all his humour, Bryson never takes his eyes off the main point of his journey--that CARE has been a force for good, bringing improvements in the quality of life of poverty-stricken Kenyans, but that much more work is needed. Proceeds from the sales of this worthwhile little book (illustrated with photographs by Jenny Matthews) go to the organization, and hence to aiding fellow humans. As Bryson writes of a farmer he meets, "William Gumbo ... is a happy man and he has a future. Surely every human being is entitled to at least that much."

My rating: 4 stars

656. In a Sunburned Country (Bill Bryson)

Synopsis from Amazon Canada:
Bill Bryson follows his Appalachian amble, A Walk in the Woods, with the story of his exploits in Australia, where A-bombs go off unnoticed, prime ministers disappear into the surf, and cheery citizens coexist with the world's deadliest creatures: toxic caterpillars, aggressive seashells, crocodiles, sharks, snakes, and the deadliest of them all, the dreaded box jellyfish. And that's just the beginning, as Bryson treks through sunbaked deserts and up endless coastlines, crisscrossing the "under-discovered" Down Under in search of all things interesting.

Bryson, who could make a pile of dirt compelling -- and yes, Australia is mostly dirt -- finds no shortage of curiosities. When he isn't dodging Portuguese man-of-wars or considering the virtues of the remarkable platypus, he visits southwest Gippsland, home of the world's largest earthworms (up to 12 feet in length). He discovers that Australia, which began nationhood as a prison, contains the longest straight stretch of railroad track in the world (297 miles), as well as the world's largest monolith (the majestic Uluru) and largest living thing (the Great Barrier Reef). He finds ridiculous place names: "Mullumbimby Ewylamartup, Jiggalong, and the supremely satisfying Tittybong," and manages to catch a cricket game on the radio, which is like

listening to two men sitting in a rowboat on a large, placid lake on a day when the fish aren't biting; it's like having a nap without losing consciousness. It actually helps not to know quite what's going on. In such a rarefied world of contentment and inactivity, comprehension would become a distraction.

"You see," Bryson observes, "Australia is an interesting place. It truly is. And that really is all I'm saying." Of course, Bryson -- who is as much a travel writer here as a humorist, naturalist, and historian -- says much more, and does so with generous amounts of wit and hilarity. Australia may be "mostly empty and a long way away," but it's a little closer now.

My rating: 4 stars