Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet or computer – no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Audible sample Sample
A Walk In The Woods: The World's Funniest Travel Writer Takes a Hike Paperback – Illustrated, 1 July 1998
There is a newer edition of this item:
£1.65
(21,287)
Only 4 left in stock.
At the age of forty-four, in the company of his friend Stephen Katz (last seen in the bestselling Neither Here nor There), Bill Bryson set off to hike through the vast tangled woods which have been frightening sensible people for three hundred years. Ahead lay almost 2,200 miles of remote mountain wilderness filled with bears, moose, bobcats, rattlesnakes, poisonous plants, disease-bearing tics, the occasional chuckling murderer and - perhaps most alarming of all - people whose favourite pastime is discussing the relative merits of the external-frame backpack.
Facing savage weather, merciless insects, unreliable maps and a fickle companion whose profoundest wish was to go to a motel and watch The X-Files, Bryson gamely struggled through the wilderness to achieve a lifetime's ambition - not to die outdoors.
Amazon Review
If nothing else, A Walk in the Woods is proof positive that the journey is the destination. As Bryson and Katz haul their out-of-shape, middle-aged bodies over hill and dale, the reader is treated to both a very funny personal memoir and a delightful chronicle of the trail, the people who created it, and the places it passes through. Whether you plan to make a trip like this one yourself one day or only care to read about it, A Walk in the Woods is a great way to spend an afternoon. --Alix Wilber
Review
"This is a seriously funny book" (Sue Townsend The Sunday Times)
"Short of doing it yourself, the best way of escaping into nature is to read a book like A Walk in the Woods... Mr Bryson has met this challenge with zest and considerable humor... a funny book, full of dry humor... the reader is rarely anything but exhilarated" (The New York Times)
"Entertaining and often illuminating" (Paul Johnson Sunday Telegraph)
"Irreverent, wildly funny, crowded with anecdotes and observation" (Ideal Home)
Book Description
From the Back Cover
At the age of forty-four, in the company of his friend Stephen Katz (last seen in the bestselling Neither Here nor There), Bill Bryson set off to hike through the vast tangled woods which have been frightening sensible people for three hundred years. Ahead lay almost 2,200 miles of remote mountain wilderness filled with bears, moose, bobcats, rattlesnakes, poisonous plants, disease-bearing tics, the occasional chuckling murderer and - perhaps most alarming of all - people whose favourite pastime is discussing the relative merits of the external-frame backpack.
Facing savage weather, merciless insects, unreliable maps and a fickle companion whose profoundest wish was to go to a motel and watch The X-Files, Bryson gamely struggled through the wilderness to achieve a lifetime's ambition - not to die outdoors.
About the Author
www.billbryson.co.uk
- Print length368 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherBlack Swan, London
- Publication date1 July 1998
- Dimensions12.7 x 2.2 x 19.8 cm
- ISBN-100552997021
- ISBN-13978-0552997027
Customers who viewed this item also viewed
Product details
- Publisher : Black Swan, London; paperback / softback edition (1 July 1998)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 368 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0552997021
- ISBN-13 : 978-0552997027
- Dimensions : 12.7 x 2.2 x 19.8 cm
- Best Sellers Rank: 518,148 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 3,905 in Walking, Hiking & Trekking
- 5,191 in Travel Writing (Books)
- 74,474 in Home & Garden (Books)
- Customer reviews:
About the author
Bill Bryson was born in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1951. Settled in England for many years, he moved to America with his wife and four children for a few years ,but has since returned to live in the UK. His bestselling travel books include The Lost Continent, Notes From a Small Island, A Walk in the Woods and Down Under. His acclaimed work of popular science, A Short History of Nearly Everything, won the Aventis Prize and the Descartes Prize, and was the biggest selling non-fiction book of the decade in the UK.
Photography © Julian J
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings, help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyses reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on Amazon-
Top reviews
Top reviews from United Kingdom
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
Only days before Bryson is about to depart and hike the 2,000-mile Appalachian Trail, he is contacted by an old friend STEPHEN KATZ who wishes to accompany him. Katz’ call comes as a voice of rescue from Bryson’s fear of having to do the hike solo, with all the dangers of accidents, bears, snakes, rednecks, and serial killers, but -on the face of it anyway - Katz is not an ideal companion for this formidable endeavour. He’s overweight, lamentably unfit, and he’s been struggling with a drink problem. Katz presents a rather stereotyped image of roly-poly, slow-moving reluctance. A giant child calling for Coca-Cola and snicker bars. But Bryson’s at it as well – and these are guys in the 40s – not 20-something workaholics going 24/7 in a Chicago ad agency. The two of them consume enough Coke, cup-cakes and snicker bars en route to bring on an attack from prize-winning size kidney stones.
The humour is decidedly ‘student.’ Bryson’s authorial voice is like the ‘boast’ in the student union bar. The butt of his humour being; enthusiastic assistants in sports shops, overweight female hikers with poor social skills, and fellow hikers eulogizing over their equipment. But it’s not all student humour, and on several occasions it (the humour) mercifully tips over into being endearingly droll, such as when Bryson gives himself a scare when caught out by polar weather swings on a mountain top, or when Katz becomes the focus of attention from motorists who are baffled by the concept of a human carrying their food and clothing around with them in a large backpack.
Bryson furnishes the reader with liberal statistics on the success and failure rate of AT hikers, as he does the history of the trail, and in my view, this is what really makes this a book worth reading. He gives the reader jaw-dropping facts and statistics on; deforestation, dam-building and the reshaping of the landscape; natural catastrophes, and when we read his description of Gatlinburg – a town which Bryson visited several years previously, but in the intervening years keeps totally renewing itself, one begins to appreciate – speaking as a Brit – why America is as it is, why it has an obsession with newness. For me, the single most telling phrase in this book is, “In America, beauty has become something that you drive to see.” Sadly – speaking as a Brit, I can testify that this disease has also long been virulent in the UK.
Oh, and if you read this book, you'll learn something to!
I believe this one has been made into a Robert Redford film.
🌟 Rating - 3 out of 5 starts ⭐⭐⭐
I've just finished reading this book so I thought I would pop a quick review on here.
"A Walk In The Woods" is a autobiographical story of Bill Bryson trying to walk the 2190 mile Appalachian trail with his freind Katz
First of all I obviously have to acknowledge how popular a writer Bill Bryson is, especially within the travel and adventure sphere. Having said that I found this book OK/good at most. That's probably going to annoy some people.
Bill's writing style is as good as I was lead to belive. He has a charasmatic way of drawing you into the story in such a way that you feel your there. Bill has a way of teaching you things you were not expecting to learn. All while coating everything with his dry sense of humour. Unfortunately he can come across sometime as being smug. Like he is looking down on everyone he comes across, including Katz.
Unfortunately this book didn't keep me engrossed the way previous adventure books have. It was as though his writing wained as his desire to finish the trail did.
Before I go, I need to talk about Katz. I can't honestly decide if I like Katz, with his sarcastic sense of humour and surprising determination, or if I dislike him for his constant littering and reckless decisions. He seems like the fun bloke at a party but I doubt I would want to hike with him.
Overall it was an interesting read, filled with all the usual things you need, adversity, pain, triumph, emotion, ect. It just lacked something for me and I can't really put my finger on what it was.
Some of the anecdotal details were extremely interesting and the exchanges between the author and his friend Katz were often hilarious. Perhaps it helped that I saw the Robert Redford/Nick Nolte film of the story quite recently so I could put their voices and faces to these funny, and often painful, scenes. I had not had much interest in finding this book until recently but I am glad that I did. Bryson is always good value and the Kindle price was very reasonable. I immediately downloaded his Australian adventures after finishing this one, and am enjoying it already.
I suppose the main question that any of us NON-long distance hikers would have is why on earth would anyone risk their life to follow such a project as the AT. It doesn't matter whether or not the protagonists complete the trail. The very attempt has to be applauded, even though Katz was clearly much less suited to the endeavour than his friend. In conclusion I will just say that it is great to read about others' monumental efforts. It saves me having to try it for myself!