Book 4 - Neither Here nor There

I was first introduced to Bill Bryson with his book "A Short History of Nearly Everything". It may have been the first science history book I read and now this is one of my favorite genres. Here is a list of science history books I have read (or listened to the audio book of) since:

1. A People's History of Science by Clifford Conner
2. The History of Money by Jack Weatherford (science of currency)
3. The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins (highly recommended)
4. The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes (should be mandatory reading for everyone)
5. The Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond (should be mandatory right after previous one)
6. Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond (interesting in parts but you can skip it)
7. Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne (Good but Greatest Show on Earth is better)
8. The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking
9. The Alchemy of Air by Thomas Hager (If you think climate change is bad, our negative impacts on the nitrogen cycle are just as scary)
10. The Demon Under the Microscope by Thomas Hager
11. The Monkey's Voyage by Alan de Queiroz

My second Bill Bryson book was "A Walk in the Woods". This was a delightful book about his failed attempt to walk the entire Appalachian trail.

"Neither Here nor There" was my third Bryson book and probably not as good as the other two (although I've read them at different times in my life so its hard to be sure). The writing details his attempt to recreate a trip through Europe that he took as a young man shortly after high school. Most of the descriptions are about his newer trip as an older man, with occasional recollections of the 1st tour. It is one of his 1st books and also contains more vulgarity than the other two I have read (which I don't mind of course and actually found it to be quite humorous). I think that it is meant as a different style of travel book that doesn't just list places to go and sights to see, but offers a frank impression of city styles, cultural attitudes, and the ability (or lack of) to inspire awe. Though the book was not as fun as the other Bryson works I have read, it did make me want to travel and experience some of the same sights and sounds. Furthermore, since his trip took place in the early 90s, he had no cell phone to call for directions or help or to instantly connect with his family back home. He also had no internet for trip planning and relied on finding vacant hotel rooms only after reaching his destination. Both ideas seem so out of place in today's society, so foreign to our current thinking, that the story imprints an antiquated sense in the mind of the reader. Events that took place so relatively recent feel like a different age, a different generation, a time so long ago that history books have almost forgotten it. These are "back in my day..." stories, stories told by your great grandfather.

Book 3 - Then We Came to the End

Then We Came to the End is set in an advertising office just after the dot com crash in the early 2000s. But this is not what the book is about.

The story is related from a 1st person plural point of view, from the collective. Everything is about us. We heard the boss has breast cancer. We knew that Amber was sleeping with Larry. We figured Tom would be the first to be let go. I rather enjoyed it. It certainly gave the author a lot of freedom to jump around without much continuity interruption.

The telling of events skips back and forth through time, in a Catch-22 style narrative (as described by other reviewers since I have yet to read Catch-22). Along this ride, the interests and fears of each character are revealed mostly through casual meetings in the office and in the manner of "I heard from Amy, who heard from Jim...". The author skillfully navigates through these fragmented anecdotes with liberal usage of nested quotations and mixing tenses within a single paragraph. For instance, the story will open up using the past perfect ("Benny had said"), followed by a switch to strictly past tense ("Roland looked"), incorporating present and future tenses within the lines of conversation between the players involved in the story. For me, it did what I imagined the author intended; it took me smoothly through the different timelines, making me feel that I was traveling into each characters head.

Ultimately, this story is about the camaraderie that develops in an office setting (which I believe to be transferable throughout any set of human interactions). As the proverbial walls are falling down around this group of office administrators, copyrighters, and graphic designers, each member of the team looks to find a balance between preserving their dignity and preserving their job. After each character's inevitable layoff, many lament about losing not just an income, but the sense of belonging to a community. Between the two parts of the book, there is an interlude describing how the partner in charge of the office is dealing with a diagnosis of breast cancer. It makes a great transition in the story to the personal and emotional problems faced by each character as their world crumbles around them.