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Readers' Comments
We welcome your responses to our North Reading Reads 2008
selection, A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the
Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson. Or maybe you'd like to write
about a walk of your own.
An interesting and humorous travelogue that transports the reader to
the trials and tribulations on the AT.
Karen Vitale
What a concept,
to get out, carry your essentials and be at the mercy of the
elements. I say good for Bryson & Katz. I found myself
cheering them on. I enjoy Bill Bryson's sense of humor and
found myself chuckling frequently. But more than that I think
the book reminds me how out of touch we've become with nature.
It's only a slight exaggeration to say that everyone drives or
confines most of their walking to the treadmill!
Judi Segur
I laughed so
hard at times I had to put it down and wipe my eyes to see again.
Our son Steve actually had a smallish black bear in his yard
last year. I hope he forgets about them this year since he will
be 100 pounds heavier. The problem is that the neighbors
insist on feeding the birds -- which also attracts this lazy bear
(fat bear). We won't be camping anytime soon believe me, but
we will be able to take rides to the mountains via the Skyline
Drive. We even have to drive over the mountains to get to a
Home Depot. That's the kind of thing that would drive the Bill
Bryson's crazy.
Carol Prevost
Charlottesville,VA
(former NR resident)
I was
particularly intrigued by a couple of things. One is the idea
of Trail Magic: "often when things look darkest some little piece of
serendipity comes along to put you back on a heavenly plane." (P.
61) The other is "low-level ecstasy," (P. 125), which Bryson refers
to after coming upon a novel by Graham Greene, one evening, in a hut
in Virginia, when he had begun to despair of how he would occupy
himself for the evening. He says "low-level ecstasy" is what the AT
teaches and "something we could all do with more of in our lives."
Having to keep walking day after day is one kind of challenge, but
what to do with yourself when you stop walking is another.
Helena Minton
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The Evening
Book Group met recently to discuss A Walk in the Woods. Here
is a sample of their comments:
I liked the
antics of Bryson and Katz. They both had interesting
personalities. Their friendship developed along the trail and
that was one of the nice things to come out of the trip. The book was a
good choice for North Reading Reads because it has a little
bit of everything: humor and irreverence; history; environmental
concerns. It's a lot of different books in one. I found the
book really, really entertaining. My favorite character was Chicken
John, who kept getting lost. There's a
reflective, spiritual aspect to the book. Bryson's journey was
something like a Vision Quest of Native Americans--to really test
yourself and persevere at something. Walking leaves
Bryson's mind free to wander and touch on different subjects and
that's what the book is like, too, how his mind works on a walk.
The North Reading Book Discussion Club discussed Margaret Atwood's
novel, Surfacing, in February. They had read and discussed
A Walk in the Woods a few years ago.
Margaret Atwood addresses some of the same issues as Bill Bryson.
"Brilliant, diamond-sharp prose," is what one critic said of
Margaret Atwood's writing in the novel, Surfacing. In this,
her second novel, written in the '70's, she vividly portrays the
scenery, roads, and small towns as the main character and three
companions travel to a cabin on a wilderness lake in northern Canada
where she spent her summers as a child. They hike the woods, canoe,
and fish, but the main purpose of the trip is to find her missing
father. In this quest, she deals with the ghosts of her past,
and with the "bad things" she fears are happening in the wilderness
she loves.
The novel is worth reading, if for no other reason than to experience
Atwood's "brilliant, diamond-sharp prose."
Molly Leonard
Margaret Atwood's novel, Surfacing, contains powerful descriptions
of the forest and lakes of Northern Quebec, Canada. As I was
reading the story I kept remembering the times that I have gone
canoeing and fishing in similar forests in New Brunswick. Atwood has
the ability to make her readers see and hear the forests' sights and
sounds in the summer...I remember also the mosquitoes and black
flies that are the bane of the animals' as well as the humans'
existence in that part of the world.
Marilyn Henderson
Return to North Reading Reads 2008
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