Book 39: At Home

TITLE: At Home: A Short History of Private Life
AUTHOR: Bill Bryson
STARTED: July 29, 2011
FINISHED: September 11, 2011
PAGES: 512
GENRE: Non-Fiction

FIRST SENTENCE: Some time after my wife and I moved into a former Church of England rectory in a village of tranquil anonymity in Norfolk, in the easternmost part of England, I had occasion to go up into the attic to look for the source of a slow but mysterious drip.

SUMMARY: [From Amazon.com] From one of the most beloved authors of our  time—a fascinating excursion into the history behind the place we call home. “Houses aren’t refuges from history. They are where history ends up.”

Bill Bryson and his family live in a Victorian parsonage in a part of England where nothing of any great significance has happened since the Romans decamped. Yet one day, he began to consider how very little he knew about the ordinary things of life as he found it in that comfortable home. To remedy this, he formed the idea of journeying about his house from room to room to “write a history of the world without leaving home.” The bathroom provides the occasion for a history of hygiene; the bedroom, sex, death, and sleep; the kitchen, nutrition and the spice trade; and so on, as Bryson shows how each has fig­ured in the evolution of private life. Whatever happens in the world, he demonstrates, ends up in our house, in the paint and the pipes and the pillows and every item of furniture.

Bill Bryson has one of the liveliest, most inquisitive minds on the planet, and he is a master at turning the seemingly isolated or mundane fact into an occasion for the most diverting exposi­tion imaginable. His wit and sheer prose fluency make At Home one of the most entertaining books ever written about private life.

THOUGHTS: I probably could have reviewed this book before I finished it. The reading was slow going, but none of it was bad. (I kept getting distracted by episodes of The Office and games of Lego: Pirates of the Caribbean.) Home left my head swirling with facts and stories that I will one day recant at dinner parties. (Fear me friends, those days will come.)  Bryson's book feels like a fact-o-pedia, but an unboring one. It was all good stuff. There was just a lot of it.

Frankly, I don't know how Bryson managed to cram in so much detail. He jumps around all over the place (using each room as a framing point), but not once did I think, "Hmmm, that was quite the stretch." In one chapter, he goes from talking about English boarding school to Darwin and parental approval. And! it all made sense. This is the kind of book where you are just hanging on for the ride. If you can trust that Bryson's "plot" lines and digressions make sense, than you will find this book enjoyable. On the other hand, if you attempt to follow his logic, you may find yourself wearing a "Baroo?" face. I found that just "going with the flow" made the book extremely enjoyable. Don't question. Just read.

For a book that is so steeped in facts and trivia, I expected to be bored with the "things I didn't care about" when they, inevitably, came along. That never happened. Even the categories of "stuff" I thought would be boring we're actually very interesting. Brsyon relates knowledge via stories. He keeps infodumping at a minimum, and gives each set of facts a narrative. In many ways, he reminds me of that random uncle who always entertains you at family holidays with all his useless knowledge. You don't know why you like it, but you can't wait to hear what he has to say this year. There is a familiar humor about this book that makes it so enjoyable.


As much as I liked At Home, I was extremely happy to finish; I'm ready for something else. Bryson is a masterful, non-fiction writer but I think my brain can only hold onto so much detail. I will, however, rock at an trivia nights. 

RATING: 7/10 [Very Good]