The Thunderbolt Kid
I‘d never read anything by Bill Bryson before and so I decided to buy The Life and Times of The Thunderbolt Kid. The book is a memoir and takes the reader through what it was like living in post-WW2 America. It’s a fascinating and also an incredibly witty account. Here’s an excerpt from page 64:
“Can we come?” they’d say.
“Yeah, all right,” you would answer if they were your size or “If you think you can keep up” if they were smaller. And when you got to the Trestle or the Vacant Lot or the Pond there would already be six hundred kids there. There were always six hundred kids everywhere except where two neighbourhoods met – at the Park, for instance – where the numbers would grow into the thousands. I once took part in an ice hockey game at the lagoon in Greenwood Park that involved four thousand kids, all slashing away violently with sticks, and went on for at least three quarters of an hour before anyone realized we didn’t have a puck.
What a glorious way with words Bryson has; he writes so crisply.
Bryson's great. While I haven't read that book yet, I've read several others. His research is often sloppy (his books about language should be taken with a shaker of salt), but his writing style is extremely entertaining. I highly recommend A Walk in the Woods, about his experiences hiking the Appalachian Trail.