Managed to get over to the Bill Bryson reading at Stacey's Books yesterday. For those who haven't heard of him, he's the author of the extremely funny Neither Here Nor There, Notes From a Small Island and several other books, mostly travelogues. He was reading from his latest, A Short History of Nearly Everything which sounded weighter and more serious, but still had several giggly moments in it, at least in the part he read. I just got my Stacey's bonus; perhaps it will go towards this (even though I am one of those weird people who dislike reading hardcovers ((too hard to read in the bathtub)) ).
My favorite part of the reading was the Q&A afterwards; someone asked him what he was planning to write about next. He said, "I'd love to go to Canada and do a book about it. The trouble is that publishers go white when you mention Canada. No one wants to read about Canada. Even Canadians don't want to read about Canada."
Bill Bryson has an interesting accent. He's originally from Ohio, but moved to England, married, and lived there for two decades (they moved back to the U.S. for seven or eight years, but are now heading back over — I wanted to ask if politics had anything to do with it, but didn't dare). As a consequence, although he looks like your typical burly Midwestern guy, his speech is a blend of American Rs and softly trailing sentences that just somehow sound English English. Note, please, that he doesn't sound anything like the put-on way Madonna talks. Please.
