The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid
Travels Through my Childhood
فرمت کتاب
audiobook
تاریخ انتشار
2006
Lexile Score
1330
Reading Level
10-12
نویسنده
Bill Brysonناشر
Transworldشابک
9781407031521
کتاب های مرتبط
- اطلاعات
- نقد و بررسی
- دیدگاه کاربران
نقد و بررسی
July 10, 2006
Though billed as memoir, Bryson's follow-up to A Short History of Nearly Everything
can only be considered one in the broadest sense. Sure, it's filled with Bryson's recollections of his Des Moines, Iowa, childhood. But it's also a clear foray into Jean Shepherd territory, where nostalgia for one's youth is suffused with comic hyperbole: "All sneakers in the 1950s had over seven dozen lace holes," we're told; though all the toys were crummy, it didn't matter because boys had plenty of fun throwing lit matches at each other; and mimeograph paper smelled wonderful. The titular Thunderbolt Kid is little more than a recurring gag, a self-image Bryson invokes to lash out at the "morons" that plague every child's existence. At other times, he offers a glib pop history of the decade, which works fine when discussing teen culture or the Cold War but falls flat when trying to rope in the Civil Rights movement. And sometimes he just wants to reminisce about his favorite TV shows or the Dick and Jane books. The book is held together by sheer force of personality—but when you've got a personality as big as Bryson's, sometimes that's enough.
If you've had the pleasure of hearing Bryson speak, you know he's a master of understated humor. If you haven't had that pleasure, an enjoyable new experience awaits you in this memoir of growing up in Des Moines, Iowa, in the 1950s.Why, you may ask, does a man raised in Iowa speak with a mostly English accent? It's because he's spent much of his adult life in England. That choice does not diminish his fond appreciation of growing up happily with his journalist parents in a kid-friendly community. Bryson punctuates his account by acknowledging such less happy aspects of the era as the Civil Rights Movement, as well as fear of Communism, the A-bomb, and polio. But, on balance, his story is good-natured and often laugh-out-loud funny. S.K. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine
دیدگاه کاربران