A Walk in the Woods

Bill Bryson

Buy on Amazon

Simple, lighthearted book about travel. Helped me realize that I don’t have to explicitly be learning something in a book to take a lesson. I read this mostly while doing a 48 hour water fast, and it wasn’t the best book to just plow through in one day or weekend. However, I learned that it is a great book to read each night before bed, for example, because it wasn’t too taxing on the brain and I didn’t have to remember much from it.

Notes

It’s a simple memoir of Bill Bryson who returned to the US after a long period of living in England, wanted to reconnect with America, and decided to walk part of the Appalachian Trail with an old high school friend named Stephen Katz. It’s an entertaining story about their twists and turns on the trail. One thing that I loved about it was that they didn’t run into anything that was typically a big story – they didn’t ever see a bear, they never got that close to hypothermia or heat stroke, or had anything else happen that would typically headline a newspaper. However, Bryson was an excellent writer who spoke similar to how people talk, used a great vocabulary, and wove in details about the environment and the AT throughout the chapters to bring some context to the story. It was a very well written book, lighthearted and entertaining to read and something I’m glad I did. If nothing else, this has encouraged me to read other lighthearted books on top of my other reading.

Enjoy reading this?

Join my newsletter! Each week I breakdown interesting finance and investing topics. I put in hours of research so that you can spend minutes learning. Unsubscribe at any time.

Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.