Road to Little Dribbling

More Notes from a Small Island

400 pages

English language

Published 2015 by Transworld Publishers Limited.

ISBN:
978-0-85752-234-4
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3 stars (19 reviews)

Over twenty years ago, Bill Bryson went on a trip around Britain to celebrate the green and kindly island that had become his home. The hilarious book he wrote about that journey, Notes from a Small Island, became one of the most loved books of recent decades, and was voted in a BBC poll as the book that best represents Britain. Now, for his first travel book in fifteen years, Bryson sets out again, on a long-awaited, brand-new journey around the UK.

11 editions

Review of 'The road to Little Dribbling' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

Some laughs, but overall a bit disappointing. Bryson is really at his most crotchety - usually his complaints are part of the fun but in this one he comes across as a bit mean, grumpy and unable to be pleased by anything other than a country hillside and a pint. There were quite a few cringeworthy comments that just made him seem wilfully out of touch. Also, the whole of Scotland gets barely more than three pages. I look forward to reading more of his other more cheerful books.

Review of 'The road to Little Dribbling' on 'Goodreads'

1 star

TL;DR: Old man yells at cloud.

I really enjoyed all of Bryson's past travelogues, but the tone of this book is just super grumpy and unfunny. He spends most of his time complaining about how things were better in the good ol' days, and making pointless, negative hyperbolic statements about everything. Every time I tried to make progress in this book it felt like a chore, and was the first Bryson book that I've put down without finishing.

Review of 'Road to Little Dribbling' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

Sadly, I don't think I can read Bill Bryson anymore. I have loved his past work fiercely, gone to hear him speak when he was in town, championed his books to everyone... but as I've grown I find I can't tolerate his sneering sexism any more. I put this book down four separate times after being shocked and dismayed by the shitty way he talked about someone he'd encountered (almost always women); each time, I decided to pick it back up and try again. The final straw was his recollection of a time when he "saved" a bookshop worker from a mentally ill person he happened to know, and preened over how breathing she'd thanked him, and said "who knows what might have happened if she hadn't been nearly spherical."
Gross, gross, gross. I've reached the end of my patience, and, to my great sorrow, the end of my Bryson …

Review of 'The Road to Little Dribbling : Adventures of an American in Britain' on 'Storygraph'

3 stars

I'm rounding up to 3 stars simply because it's Bill Bryson. Otherwise, this is just a bunch of ramblings of an extremely pissed off old man who isn't even funny in his nastiness. Some of the things he rants about border on downright offensive, and I got tired of it. It was extremely disappointing.

Review of 'Road to Little Dribbling' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Oh how I love Bill Bryson. No one else can describe a country so eloquently, flowery, and simply funny like him. If you badly need a good laugh or feel low and need someone who can bring you up through humorously describing his own miseries with a pinch of sarcasm, then this is the book for you.

Review of 'Road to Little Dribbling' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Bill Bryson is really grumpy in this book.  I'm a big Bryson fan.  I think I've read everything he's written.  He's never veered far from curmudgeonly but he's downright peevish in this book.  He's telling people to fuck off repeatedly.  Far warning if that kind of thing bothers you.To start this journey he drew a line on a map connecting the farthest points he could find on a map of the United Kingdom.







 






He started his trip from Bognor Regis in the south and meandered his way north in the general direction of this line.  This made me spend some quality time with Google maps.  I thought I had in my head a general idea of where he was going.  Then suddenly he was in Wales.  I didn't know which one of us was not understanding geography.  I did find that I didn't have a very good grasp on …

Review of 'The road to Little Dribbling' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

In this follow up to Notes From A Small Island, Bryson sets out on another tour of England 20 years after the first book. He deliberately doesn't try to retrace the locations of the earlier book, but instead traces an approximate and fairly arbitrary line across the UK, from one coast to the opposite. His narrative is a mix of humour, historical information, and reminiscence.

It's been a while since I read the first book, and now with a mobile phone and internet access in my pocket I can google for pictures of all the places he mentions and see exactly what he's describing in each of the charming towns he describes, which is great. I remember the first book being funnier than this one though; this seems to lean a bit more towards "in my day" grumbling and political comments, which are valid but not so entertaining to read. …

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Subjects

  • Great britain, description and travel
  • Great britain, civilization