More Good Reads--Travel Version

My most recent bout of reading (following on the heels of reading The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings) has been to tackle some Bill Bryson. I've seen his travel books in the bookstore for some time now and wondered if I would enjoy his prose. And how...

It started the week that Summer was at Women's Conference and I took the kids to the library. I found The Mother Tongue by the said Bryson, a rollickingly good read about things linguistic. Bryson delves into the history of the English language and the odd quirks that make it such a fun language. The writing is witty and fun, which, given the topic (historical and comparative linguistics--woo hoo!). A bit too brief for the devoted word nerd on break between terms, this would actually be fun as a text (or supplement) for a lower-division History of the English Language course.

After that, I decided to tackle some of Bryson's travel writing, of which thereis quite a bit. I found at the library In a Sunburned Country, which recounts a few trips in the late 1990s to Australia, all in the years leading up the the Sydney 2000 Olympics.

As a bit of a preface, my father served his mission in Australia (the Australia West Mission), and he's told me some fun stories of the people and land. But after reading Bryson's book (in which he hits all of the major cities and some of the remote backcountry), I'm convinced dad's been holding out on me.

For example, Bryson spends considerale time outlining the various ways a traveler (or, I assume, resident Aussie) can meet an unfortunate end--poisonous spiders, snakes, and sea creatures; Cassowaries; sharks; rip tides; dehydration; being run over by a road train; and, I suppose, bar fights (Bryson does a lot of drinking, and he tends to forget much of what transpires at the watering hole, so I have to surmise on this one). He makes Down Under seem awfully dangerous.

Then there's the human history, how a penal colony transformed into a modern civilization, hosting two Olympic games and having as its most famous (or second-most famous, possibly, after Uluru) landmark an opera house.

Among that history we have a political system that melds the oddest elements of the American and English systems, a Prime Minister who once vanished without a trace (see the aforementioned rip tides) and a territory that decided it did not wish for statehood when it was offered.

The picture Bryson paints is that of a multifaceted, imperfect, but fascinating land, one where a great diversity of topography, climate, cultures, and histories intersect. I came away from reading In a Sunburned Country convinced Austrlaia is hot, dry, hostile, remote, dangerous, and definitely somewhere I wish to visit. I could probably even live in Perth, given the chance...