A Walk in the Woods

Here is a perfectly enjoyable book, mixing the author's wry reportorial style with William Roberts's expert reading. Roberts has a clear, easy, deep voice, which he uses to convey Bryson's words with confidence and clarity. He understands the author's meanings, alternating between being funny and starkly informative. Bryson helps by writing a book that is part hilarious misadventure and part serious message on the state of the Appalachian Trail. In essence, Bryson decides it would be fun to hike the entire trail with a buddy and, as with most romantic notions, walks headfirst into hell. His descriptions of hell are accompanied by history and botany lessons along the way. Roberts is with Bryson's every step, cracking the author's jokes and conveying the fear, apprehension and drop-dead tiredness of the serious hiker. R.I.G. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Starred review from May 4, 1998
Returning to the U.S. after 20 years in England, Iowa native Bryson decided to reconnect with his mother country by hiking the length of the 2100-mile Appalachian Trail. Awed by merely the camping section of his local sporting goods store, he nevertheless plunges into the wilderness and emerges with a consistently comical account of a neophyte woodsman learning hard lessons about self-reliance. Bryson (The Lost Continent) carries himself in an irresistibly bewildered manner, accepting each new calamity with wonder and hilarity. He reviews the characters of the AT (as the trail is called), from a pack of incompetent Boy Scouts to a perpetually lost geezer named Chicken John. Most amusing is his cranky, crude and inestimable companion, Katz, a reformed substance abuser who once had single-handedly "become, in effect, Iowa's drug culture." The uneasy but always entertaining relationship between Bryson and Katz keeps their walk interesting, even during the flat stretches. Bryson completes the trail as planned, and he records the misadventure with insight and elegance. He is a popular author in Britain and his impeccably graceful and witty style deserves a large American audience as well.