April 22, 2010: Page Turners 7 p.m.

Book: In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson

Discussion:

We had quite a varied reaction to this month’s book, In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson. Since we read his A Walk in the Woods last year I expected more thumbs up votes, but we only had three. Aside from those three, three other Page Turners voted sideways, and the final third abstained from voting.

We began the discussion by talking about Bryson in general. We wanted to know what exactly his occupation was before he began writing full-time. Some thought he had been a teacher. I read the biographical information I had brought with me but it did not properly address the question. After the meeting I looked up Bryson’s official site through Random House, which suggested that he had previously been a journalist in England. He wrote for both The Times and The Independent while supplementing his income with travel articles. In this respect Bryson seems similar to Dave Barry, a humor columnist and author we had already been comparing with Bryson.

Once we had dispensed with Bryson’s biography we moved on to his Australian trip. Throughout the book he takes different mini-trips, some by train, some by car, and he also references previous trips to the island continent. A few readers found it difficult to keep all these trips straight. It also reminded us of his piecemeal expedition on the Appalachian Trail. In that book, Bryson would hike a large portion of the Trail for many days at a time, then he would leave to fulfill other obligations and return when he could, sometimes only for a day.

We also discussed the numerous museums Bryson visited while in Australia. Some of them were quite surprising, like the Lambing Flat Museum, while others were just plain odd. In the latter type Bryson would often be the only visitor in them!

From here we digressed into recounting some of the funny anecdotes in the book. One we particularly enjoyed was the tale of a married couple out in a rented boat on a popular waterway. They were hoping to find some good fishing and noticed a small inlet where no one else was. They rowed down a bit and got their gear together only to realize they had steered right into alligator central. After about ten very disconcerting minutes they managed to return to safe waters, in tact and with an amusing story.

This story brought us to the topic of how many unique creatures there are in Australia, many of which could kill you quite easily. Some of these creatures include spiders, snakes, sharks, caterpillars, and jellyfish. With such a large amount of killer species several Page Turners questioned why anyone would choose to live in Australia. Thanks to some history provided by Bryson we know that Australia was originally established as a penal colony. Thus, those poor souls had no choice but to live among these animals. As to the current population, we can only assume that, having been born or raised among these creatures, the Australian people have grown used to them and as a result do not live in daily fear of them. Now Bryson presents a totally different question. I have always considered Bryson to be a fairly fearful individual. Yet, despite more than one encounter with a few of these creatures, our author continued to walk around quite a bit of Australia. Perhaps we misjudged him.

In regard to Bryson’s personality we did decide that we enjoy his adventures more when he shares them with other people. Part of the fun of reading A Walk in the Woods was discovering what kind of person his next hiking buddy would be. Reading about the different sites he visited in Australia was interesting but many of the more comical parts came when he was interacting with another person.

At this point we were nearing the end of the meeting and diverged into the topics of the World War II bombings in Darwin, immigration during that war, internment camps, and the 2008 film Australia. We also agreed that we learned many facts by reading this month’s book and are glad we did so, though we may think twice before making a trip to the land down under.

Flyers for upcoming programming and copies of next month’s selection, The Romanov Prophecy by Steve Berry, were also distributed as usual.