LIFTING SPIRITS With the potential for a less sociable Christmas than last year, East Devon author Bruce Harris has a few suggestions to lift your mood.
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any people are likely to be finding this Christmas quieter than most, with less hospitality both offered and taken. One of the few upsides will be an increase in ‘me time’; and those who dedicate some of their me time to reading will perhaps be unusually well off during this festive season. Some people, of course, tend to read within the same genre, venturing only rarely out of their comfort zone. Fortunately, this country produces vast quantities of books in all genres to cater for those staying where they’re happy as well as anyone daring enough to take a Yuletide walk on the wild side. None of the books mentioned is new; it usually takes a book at least weeks, and sometimes years, to make an impact. But they are all books I have read and enjoyed recently and they are all widely available, so any of them could conceivably unlock treasure troves of new reading to open-minded readers. THE FUNNY ONE The Road to Little Dribbling by Bill Bryson Published Transworld Publishers 2016 Paperback RRP £9.99 TWENTY years after Bill Bryson’s resounding success with Notes from a Small Island, he has British as well as American citizenship and a British wife and family. Curious to know ‘what’s the furthest you can travel in a straight line without crossing salt water’, his ruler indicates a line from Bognor Regis in the south to a Scottish promontory called Cape Wrath. His journey along this line forms the structure for this book, but of course, the real subject of the book, like most other Brysons, is Bryson himself. His reactions to the places he visits and the experiences he has are sometimes caustic
54 The Marshwood Vale Magazine December 2020 Tel. 01308 423031
and incredulous, but more often than not, very funny. Observations on the area where the reader lives are perhaps going to be most carefully read, and Bryson travels extensively in the West Country, through Dorset, Devon and Cornwall. He passes through Lyme Regis with a pleasant nod to the history of Mary Anning and her dedication to fossils: ‘the house where she lived is now the site of the local museum, and it is, let me say at once, a perfect little institution’. A word of warning, however, in case you’re thinking of presenting a copy to your favourite aunt. Bryson’s humour and language can be muscular. Any strong language is entirely in context and contributes to the humour, but there are quite frequent instances of it. However, readers who can live with the muscular and are interested in a subjective, honest and sometimes very funny comparison between Britain in the nineteen-nineties and Britain in the twenty-teens will get an absorbing festive read from this book.
