I'm a stranger here myself

Essays and criticism

Print length: 288 pagesBroadway Books, 1999

Description

After two decades in Britain, Bill Bryson returns to the United States with his English wife and four children and discovers that home has become unexpectedly foreign. In a series of comic observations, he tries to master an America of elaborate conveniences, baffling routines, and everyday convictions that its residents rarely pause to examine. Domestic errands and family adjustments become occasions for comparing American habits with the life he left abroad, while his outsider’s perspective remains tempered by affection for the country that formed him. The result is a humorous account of reverse culture shock, built around the uneasy pleasure of recognizing a homeland that no longer feels entirely familiar.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Conversational · Direct · Witty

Pace

Brisk

Tone

Humorous · Playful · Reflective · Warm

Structure

Episodic · Vignettes

Focus

Ideas · Voice

Emotional intensity

2 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 2 / 5
Ideas: 2 / 5
Structure: 2 / 5
Background knowledge: 1 / 5

Themes

BelongingCommunityFamilyIdentityTechnology and society

About Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson is an American-British nonfiction writer whose subjects range from travel and language to science and domestic history. A former newspaper journalist, he gathers large quantities of information and arranges them as a guided tour, using brisk explanations, comic anecdotes, and digressions into the people and accidents behind accepted knowledge. His travel books add self-deprecation and close social observation to that method. In A Walk in the Woods, an inadequately prepared Appalachian Trail hike becomes the spine for excursions into ecology, conservation, and the communities beside the route. A Short History of Nearly Everything applies a similar curiosity at cosmic scale, moving from atoms and geology to evolution and human vulnerability. At Home reverses the scale again, using the rooms of a rectory to trace commerce, architecture, technology, and changing habits. His prose is conversational and direct, often moving from an ordinary object or bodily fact to a much larger history. He repeatedly attends to how knowledge is made and how error and eccentricity complicate orderly accounts of progress.