He's witty without being at all condescending I guess is how I'd describe him. Kind of like if you were on a road trip with an adventurous and friendly dream Dad? His approach is very approachable!
I absolutely LOVED Bill Bryson’s a short history of everything - he manages to make the most complicated science easy to really understand, be completely fascinating, and incredibly funny at the same time.
That's unfortunate, because it's not like Bryson is mass market schlock in any way. I was thinking he might be one of the only authors that I can imagine a broad swath of bipartisan Americans reading? However I might be forgetting some statements that could be interpreted as controversial. I can't recall him being embroiled in any #metoo type scandal or other bad behavior either? Going to have to look it up and check. I'm sorry to hear that you've lost subscribers because there are fewer people reading deeply for pleasure every year and I'd like to think we'd try to support each other a bit better than that. "We" talk about how reading encourages empathy so that's especially disappointing. 🤍
'That's unfortunate, because it's not like Bryson is mass market schlock in any way.'
He's not. His approach isn't particularly sophisticated or radical, though - he just approaches nonfiction writing with the energy and wit of the best fiction writers. He actually tries to write like a human being, which we can't say about many writers of nonfiction, still droning on in what Stephen Pinker calls the Classic Style: https://philosophicaldisquisitions.blogspot.com/2014/09/steven-pinkers-guide-to-classic-style.html
As someone who once had the chutzpah to enter the Royal Society's Science Prize- with a poetic anti-Darwin tracing of the history of inspiration (Involution... I know, not science in 2013) this extract from Bill Bryson's Everything, gives real hope. Certainly elegantly economical prose, but, more importantly, somewhat irreverent. A crack in the straight face. Almost a delighted smile. It's a start.
loved Bill Bryson’s “At Home” with strange passion, -some books, I love more intimately, as if they were written for me only; and these, I tend to keep silent about, as if hiding them jealously, it makes no sense, I know . Other books though, I love so much I indeed can’t stop blabbering about them; I want so to share I become ridiculous; it’s some other kind of love. You want to read it aloud when you read. That’s what happenned with “At Home”.
I knew Bryson is an author of several more bestsellers, but I gave myself some time before I read some of them. It’s like I wanted to keep to my joy from ‘At Home” for longer.
Your post makes me think I might be ready.
Thank you-and thank you for the rest of the list, of course.
He's witty without being at all condescending I guess is how I'd describe him. Kind of like if you were on a road trip with an adventurous and friendly dream Dad? His approach is very approachable!
The Tim Walz of nonfiction writing...
Excellent. Top pick!
I absolutely LOVED Bill Bryson’s a short history of everything - he manages to make the most complicated science easy to really understand, be completely fascinating, and incredibly funny at the same time.
I love Bill Bryson! He's occasionally made me feel hopeful against my will.
This pick has resulted in more unsubscriptions than any other since we started. Perhaps because the book is so well known?
Anyway, it was undoubtedly the best-written of the above previous winners, though a couple ran it close.
That's unfortunate, because it's not like Bryson is mass market schlock in any way. I was thinking he might be one of the only authors that I can imagine a broad swath of bipartisan Americans reading? However I might be forgetting some statements that could be interpreted as controversial. I can't recall him being embroiled in any #metoo type scandal or other bad behavior either? Going to have to look it up and check. I'm sorry to hear that you've lost subscribers because there are fewer people reading deeply for pleasure every year and I'd like to think we'd try to support each other a bit better than that. "We" talk about how reading encourages empathy so that's especially disappointing. 🤍
'That's unfortunate, because it's not like Bryson is mass market schlock in any way.'
He's not. His approach isn't particularly sophisticated or radical, though - he just approaches nonfiction writing with the energy and wit of the best fiction writers. He actually tries to write like a human being, which we can't say about many writers of nonfiction, still droning on in what Stephen Pinker calls the Classic Style: https://philosophicaldisquisitions.blogspot.com/2014/09/steven-pinkers-guide-to-classic-style.html
As someone who once had the chutzpah to enter the Royal Society's Science Prize- with a poetic anti-Darwin tracing of the history of inspiration (Involution... I know, not science in 2013) this extract from Bill Bryson's Everything, gives real hope. Certainly elegantly economical prose, but, more importantly, somewhat irreverent. A crack in the straight face. Almost a delighted smile. It's a start.
'A crack in the straight face.'
And someday all nonfiction writers will face a well-deserved lynching if they don't have this.
loved Bill Bryson’s “At Home” with strange passion, -some books, I love more intimately, as if they were written for me only; and these, I tend to keep silent about, as if hiding them jealously, it makes no sense, I know . Other books though, I love so much I indeed can’t stop blabbering about them; I want so to share I become ridiculous; it’s some other kind of love. You want to read it aloud when you read. That’s what happenned with “At Home”.
I knew Bryson is an author of several more bestsellers, but I gave myself some time before I read some of them. It’s like I wanted to keep to my joy from ‘At Home” for longer.
Your post makes me think I might be ready.
Thank you-and thank you for the rest of the list, of course.
Thanks, Chen.
One blessed day science writers will be forced at gunpoint to take the care over their sentences that Bryson does.