A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

My last post was spent whining about Bill Bryson. Sorry! He frustrates me. To make up for that I'm going to write about why Bryson is such an impressive writer. First off, I think he might be the most knowledgeable man in the world. He seems like a genius, or man who strives to understand the world. I hold him in the utmost respect on account of that. Because he has the drive to find things out, understand them and write it down. People with such a work ethic are rare. Even rarer are the one who can take the knowledge they have and put it in a fashion that could be understood by the Joe-Six-Pack-Next-Door. That's what teachers do. Most of them, some teachers are a mystery... maybe they just like to socialize. Anyways, he really has a skill, in taking information and connecting it to a million other things he's so good he can pick a topic and create a novel. For example he spent about 500 pages talking about Australia. Nothing ever happens in Australia, he says so himself.. as he writes a bajillion pages on a country that doesn't have a life. He gives Australia a life. Not a surfer bum one but a history. He makes Australia seem real. He gives earth a history in 544 pages. Just 544. He crammed it in. That, my friends is skill.