Reviews and Comments

This was the book I read a million times when I was first learning to read. I checked it out of the library more than two dozen times. Pretty exciting story - a friend gets jealous of a friend's new friend. They decide they can all three drink tea and have a chat together.

The author's offensive classism made me quit after a few minutes.

My favorite David Sedaris I've heard so far. I'm not always in the mood for him, but when I am there's nothing else that compares.

Wow. It's typical of me to me most interested in early history and I stopped listening about a third of the way through this incredibly long and detailed book. I've been an apple user for decades, so it felt like it filled in the details on a huge factor in my life. That guy was a serious wizard. It helps with my whole understanding of the world to find out how wide open the possibilities were, back when these geeks were first connecting computing power to user interface, in a suburban bubble where lots of the dads had tech workshops in their garages. I so wish that not causing massive environmental destruction had been one of their design requirements. I did love the bit about the French first lady pitching shit at him about his abuse of workers.

What a wonderful book! The story, the writing. Trees. It was a pleasure to read. I’d sometimes stop to savor a particular choice of words, an image, a metaphor, a verb. I often have a hard time keeping track of the characters in novels, but here each person is so clearly drawn, they became very distinct individuals for me. This type of structure, jumping from one story to another seemingly unrelated story, often leaves me bored with some threads, impatient to get back to my favorite characters. In this case, though, I found myself equally interested in each story. Each of the characters is sympathetic in their own way. It’s really a remarkably well constructed work. I’m not usually much of a fiction reader, but I was attracted to this book because it deals with the themes of trees and our relationships with them. I feel like I am still engaging the issues the book raises, somewhere inside me. I expect I’ll have to read it again.

I was reading Bryson's "A Walk in the Woods" on our flight to Australia. The first afternoon we were there, I saw this book in a little neighborhood free library. He captures so much of what I noticed about Australians! It was nice to have his company on the trip, validating my observations.

One of my favorite novels. I've read it twice.