Road to Little Dribbling (Bryson)

The Road to Little Dribbling:  Adventures of an American in Britain
Bill Bryson, 2016
Knopf Doubleday
400 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780385539289


Summary
The hilarious and loving sequel to a hilarious and loving classic of travel writing: Notes from a Small Island, Bill Bryson’s valentine to his adopted country of England

In 1995 Bill Bryson got into his car and took a weeks-long farewell motoring trip about England before moving his family back to the United States. The book about that trip, Notes from a Small Island, is uproarious and endlessly endearing, one of the most acute and affectionate portrayals of England in all its glorious eccentricity ever written.

Two decades later, Bryson sets out again to rediscover that country, and the result is The Road to Little Dribbling. Nothing is funnier than Bill Bryson on the road—prepare for the total joy and multiple episodes of unseemly laughter. (From the publisher.)

Author Bio
• Birth—December 8 1951
• Where—Des Moines, Iowa, USA
• Education—B.A., Drake University
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in Norfolk, England, UK


William McGuire "Bill" Bryson is a best-selling American author of humorous books on travel, as well as books on the English language and on science. Born an American, he was a resident of North Yorkshire, UK, for most of his professional life before moving back to the US in 1995. In 2003 Bryson moved back to the UK, living in Norfolk, and was appointed Chancellor of Durham University.

Early years
Bill Bryson was born in Des Moines, Iowa, the son of William and Mary Bryson. He has an older brother, Michael, and a sister, Mary Jane Elizabeth.

He was educated at Drake University but dropped out in 1972, deciding to instead backpack around Europe for four months. He returned to Europe the following year with a high school friend, the pseudonymous Stephen Katz (who later appears in Bryson's A Walk in the Woods). Some of Bryson's experiences from this European trip are included as flashbacks in a book about a similar excursion written 20 years later, Neither Here Nor There: Travels in Europe.

Staying in the UK, Bryson landed a job working in a psychiatric hospital—the now defunct Holloway Sanatorium in Virginia Water in Surrey. There he met his wife Cynthia, a nurse. After marring, the couple moved to the US, in 1975, so Bryson could complete his college degree. In 1977 they moved back to the UK where they remained until 1995.

Living in North Yorkshire and working primarily as a journalist, Bryson eventually became chief copy editor of the business section of The Times, and then deputy national news editor of the business section of The Independent.

He left journalism in 1987, three years after the birth of his third child. Still living in Kirkby Malham, North Yorkshire, Bryson started writing independently, and in 1990 their fourth and final child, Sam, was born.

Books
Bryson came to prominence in the UK with his 1995 publication of Notes from a Small Island,  an exploration of Britain. Eight years later, as part of the 2003 World Book Day, Notes was voted by UK readers as the best summing up of British identity and the state of the nation. (The same year, 2003, saw Bryson appointed a Commissioner for English Heritage.)

In 1995, Bryson and his family returned to the US, living in Hanover, New Hampshire for the next eight years. His time there is recounted in the 1999 story collection, I'm A Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to American After 20 Years Away (known as Notes from a Big Country in the UK, Canada and Australia).

It was during this time that Bryson decided to walk the Appalachian Trail with his friend Stephen Katz. The resulting book is the 1998 A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail. The book became one of Bryson's all-time bestsellers and was adapted to film in 2015, starring Robert Redford and Nick Nolte.

In 2003, the Brysons and their four children returned to the UK. They now live in Norfolk.

That same year, Bryson published A Short History of Nearly Everything, a 500-page exploration, in nonscientific terms, of the history of some of our scientific knowledge. The book reveals the often humble, even humorous, beginnings of some of the discoveries which we now take for granted.

The book won Bryson the prestigious 2004 Aventis Prize for best general science book and the 2005 EU Descartes Prize for science communication. Although one scientist is alleged to have jokingly described A Brief History as "annoyingly free of mistakes," Bryson himself makes no such claim, and a list of nine reported errors in the book is available online.

Bryson has also written two popular works on the history of the English language—Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way (1990) and Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States (1994). He also updated of his 1983 guide to usage, Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words. These books were popularly acclaimed and well-reviewed, despite occasional criticism of factual errors, urban myths, and folk etymologies.

In 2016, Bryson published The Road to Little Dribbling: Adventures of an American in England, a sequel to his Notes from a Small Island.

Honors
In 2005, Bryson was appointed Chancellor of Durham University, succeeding the late Sir Peter Ustinov, and has been particularly active with student activities, even appearing in a Durham student film (the sequel to The Assassinator) and promoting litter picks in the city. He had praised Durham as "a perfect little city" in Notes from a Small Island. He has also been awarded honorary degrees by numerous universities, including Bournemouth University and in April 2002 the Open University.

In 2006, Frank Cownie, the mayor of Des Moines, awarded Bryson the key to the city and announced that 21 October 2006 would be known as "Bill Bryson, The Thunderbolt Kid, Day."

In November 2006, Bryson interviewed the then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Tony Blair on the state of science and education.

On 13 December 2006, Bryson was awarded an honorary OBE for his contribution to literature. The following year, he was awarded the James Joyce Award of the Literary and Historical Society of University College Dublin.

In January 2007, Bryson was the Schwartz Visiting Fellow of the Pomfret School in Connecticut.

In May 2007, he became the President of the Campaign to Protect Rural England. His first area focus in this role was the establishment of an anti-littering campaign across England. He discussed the future of the countryside with Richard Mabey, Sue Clifford, Nicholas Crane and Richard Girling at CPRE's Volunteer Conference in November 2007. (From Wikipedia. Adapted 2/1/2016.)

Book Reviews
Although he's now entering what he fondly calls his "dotage"…Bryson seems merely to have sharpened both his charms and his crotchets…. [H]e remains devoted to Britain's eccentric place names as well as its eccentric pastimes…. He's still apt to seek out the obscure.
Alida Becker - New York Times Book Review


Bryson’s capacity for wonder at the beauty of his adopted homeland seems to have only grown with time.... Britain is still his home four decades later, a period in which he went from lowly scribe at small-town British papers to best-selling travel writer. But he retains an outsider’s appreciation for a country that first struck him as "wholly strange...and yet somehow marvelous."
Griff Witte - Washington Post


[Y]ou could hardly ask for a better guide to Great Britain than Bill Bryson. Bryson’s new book is in most ways a worthy successor and sequel to his classic Notes From A Small Island. Like its predecessor, The Road to Little Dribbling is a travel memoir, combining adventures and observations from his travels around the island nation with recounting of his life there, off and mostly on, over the last four decades. Bryson is such a good writer that even if you don’t especially go in for travel books, he makes reading this book worthwhile.
Nancy Klingener - Miami Herald


Fans should expect to chuckle, snort, snigger, grunt, laugh out loud and shake with recognition…a clotted cream and homemade jam scone of a treat.
Sunday Times (UK)


At its best as the history of a love affair, the very special relationship between Bryson and Britain. We remain lucky to have him.
Matthew Engel - Financial Times (UK)

 
We have a tradition in this country of literary teddy bears—John Betjeman and Alan Bennett among them—whose cutting critiques of the absurdities and hypocrisies of the British people are carried out with such wit and good humour that they become national treasures. Bill Bryson is American but is now firmly established in the British teddy bear pantheon.... The fact that this wonderful writer can unerringly catalogue all our faults and is still happy to put up with us should make every British reader’s chest swell with pride.
Jake Kerridge - Sunday Express (UK)
 
 
There were moments when I snorted out loud with laughter while reading this book in public... He can be as gloriously silly as ever.
London Times
 

Everybody loves Bill Bryson, don’t they? He’s clever, witty, entertaining, a great companion... his research is on show here, producing insight, wisdom and startling nuggets of information... Bill Bryson and his new book are the dog’s bollocks.
Independent on Sunday (UK)
 

Stuffed with eye-opening facts and statistics.... Bryson's charm and wit continue to float off the page....Recognising oneself is part of the pleasure of reading Bryson's mostly affable rants about Britain and Britishness.
Daily Mail (UK)


We go to him less for insights—though there are plenty of these—and more for the pleasure of his company. And he can be very funny indeed. Almost every page has a line worth quoting.
Glasgow Herald


At last, Bill Bryson has got back to what he does best—penning travel books that educate, inform and will have you laughing out loud... I was chuckling away by page four and soaking up his historic facts to impress my mates with. Sure to be a bestseller.
Sun (UK)


Bryson has no equal. He combines the charm and humour of Michael Palin with the cantankerousness of Victor Meldrew and the result is a benign intolerance that makes for a gloriously funny read.
Daily Express (UK)


As usual, [Bryson] scatters an entertaining mix of wacky anecdotes and factoids.... His wry observations and self-deprecating humor keep him from coming off as a bitter cynic, and his lyrical way with words keeps the pages turning.
Publishers Weekly


Bryson complements his expansive repertoire with a revisit of Great Britain, reflecting on his experiences over the past several decades as a British immigrant as he travels "The Bryson Line" from southern England to the northernmost point of Scotland.... Britain and all its quirks. —Lacy S. Wolfe, Ouachita Baptist Univ. Lib. Arkadelphia, AR
Library Journal


(Starred review.) This being Bryson, one chuckles every couple of pages, of course, saying, "yup, that sounds about right."... He clearly adores his adopted country. There are no better views, finer hikes, more glorious castles, or statelier grounds than the ones he finds, and Bryson takes readers on a lark of a walk across this small island with megamagnetism.
Booklist


[A]nother fascinating cross-country jaunt [with Bryson].... No words are minced or punches pulled where he finds social decline.... However, the majority of his criticisms bear his signature wit, and the bulk of his love/hate relationship with Britain falls squarely on the love side.... [E]ntertaining and educational.
Kirkus Reviews

Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

Also, consider these LitLovers talking points to start a discussion for The Road to Little Dribbling—then take it from there...

1. In his 1995 Notes from a Small Island, Bryson referred to what he saw as a consideration for others that permeated British communal life. Now, in The Road to Little Dribbling, he sees the absence of consideration:

The Britain I came to [in 1977] was predicated on the idea of doing the right thing most of the time whether anyone knew you were doing it or not.... You might not leave a tip...but you wouldn't pretend to leave a decent tip and then stick in a small coin.

Talk about the above observation. Is Bryson correct? Is what he sees as Britain's current self-absorption endemic to other countries? Is it true for all age groups, or is it more prevalent in young people (thus it is always so)? Perhaps you disagree with him altogether.

2. The overriding theme of Bryson's book might be put this way: "in countless small ways the world around us grows gradually [lousier]." Is Bryson simply a cantankerous older man, who uses his fame and prestige to take umbrage at whatever annoys him? Or has he earned the right to be genuinely concerned about what he perceives as England's decline, its carelessness, and its misplaced values?

3. Bryson weaves a substantial amount of research with numerous facts into his tale. For instance, 600,000 riders populate the London Underground at any one time, "making it both a larger and more interesting place than Oslo." What other tidbits of information surprised you, made you think, or even laugh out loud? Consider his stops at Sutton Hoo where he contemplates Britain's long ago past; New Forest where he considers Arthur Conan Doyle's spiritualism; or Oxford where Roger Bannister ran the first sub-four-minute mile. Was all this of interest to you...or did it drag down the book's pace?

4. Bryson lists very specific reasons for continuing to live in England. Talk about his list...and make your own list, if not for Britain, than for the place you do live.

5. Do you find Bill Bryson funny? What are some of the funniest parts of his book? Where is the humor (perhaps) strained?

6. Have you read other Bill Bryson works, specifically his 1995 Notes on a Small Island, the prequel to this book, or A Walk in the Woods (1998) an account of his trek along America's Appalachian Trail? If so, how does this book compare to either of those?

(Questions by LitLovers. Feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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