I love Bill Bryson. And that’s really all there is to it. He could write about anything and I would think it was hilarious and enjoy it tremendously. The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid is the story of Bill Bryson’s life. It tells of his childhood in Iowa and how everything was generally better and happier back in the 1950s when he was growing up. His parents were both newspaper writers…his father for sports and his mother on home decor. He shares a short excerpt of his father’s reporting on a baseball game and you catch a glimpse of how Bill Bryson got his voice. There are certain people who have a gift in just telling the most normal every day events in a way that is entertaining and amusing.
He talks about growing up in a time when people were innocent and didn’t see danger in every little thing. He describes different places in Des Moines where the kids would hang out and how they spent most of the time running around outside… sometimes behind trucks spraying DDT, playing happily in the mists. I did not live during these happy times and, to me, some of it was a little hard to imagine. However, told by Bill Bryson, it was very enjoyable. He is one of the few authors that I find myself laughing out loud.
While this was not quite as entertaining to me as In a Sunburned Country or A Walk in the Woods, if you like Bill Bryson, you will like this book.
08/08/2010 at 10:41 am Permalink
Stopping on by from Book Addiction’s site! Congratulations on winning In the Woods!
This sounds like a fun story — I’ve never read Bill Bryson before, so I may have to check it out!