Article of the Week 4

IR Book:

A Walk in the Woods

By: Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson is just a funny guy who has done a lot of traveling. His book subjects are mostly about his travels, as well as the English language, and science. So far in A Walk in the Woods, Bryson has had the insanity to even decide to walk the Appalachian trail, and even more insane is that he is walking it with an old college friend who he hasn’t talked to in years and who is not the most fit person. Throughout the book as Bryson narrates his own adventures, he mentions a lot about the history of the Appalachian trails; things along the lines of how it came to be and the amount of forests that have been cut down to make roads so that it will be even easier for loggers to cut down more forests. I suppose his goal is supposed to be to evoke an appreciation of America’s vast and quickly disappearing wilderness in his readers. I suppose the audience he is gearing his story toward then is the average American who doesn’t always realize the great expanse of adventure that waits in their very own back yards. Bryson’s story has a huge amount of humor; he mocks himself as well as the ridiculous people and events he comes across. The fact that he laughs at himself seems to draw me to be on his side, trusting him to give more true accounts, since he doesn’t seem to leave things out to try to make him look like a better person. Overall I think that Bryson did a good job of informing his readers about the Appalachian trail without sounding like a text book.