The Road to Little Dribbling

Bill Bryson provides a personalized tour of Britain in The Road to Little Dribbling.  Bryson, an American who has spent most of his life in Britain shares his love of the county and it’s eccentricities in this book.  Now my favorite book of Bryson’s is In Sunburned Country (an exploration of Australia) so I come to each of his books hoping to find that book’s equal and this book did not rise to the challenge.  Bryson appears to be settling into a curmudgeonly old age if this book is any judge.  He is constantly bewailing the deterioration of society, the proliferation of stupidity, the prevalence of litter and reminiscing about how things used to be more sensible, this gets a bit tiresome even when I agree, however, every now and then a bit of the Bryson I enjoy would appear as he shared some fascinatingly amusing fact or story.  On the whole while this is not a book I would tell people not to read I would probably recommend another work by the author instead.