At home

Where Bryson's "Short History of Nearly Everything" leads you through all the big questions about the origins of our worlds (and the people who made the discoveries), this book tries to examine the history of every day life. It's stuffed full of fantastic anecdotes, interesting fun facts and a perspective of history that's new to most of us. More than anything, it highlights how many people has played a big part in shaping our world, and that small inventions and ideas can have big consqeunces in the life of many.

What Bill Bryson did really well in "Short History..." was to tie together stories that on the surface are not that related, and give the a flow that was very easy to follow as a reader. Bryson is a great story teller. In this book the gimmick is that he uses his own house as the basis and structure of the book. This does not really work, and I feel that it to some degree ruined the flow of the book. There's also several sections where I found myself losing interest in the stories told. This is not suprising in such a big book with so many different stories, but it never happened in "Short History...". Perhaps it's easier to grab my attention with the people who discovered how the world worked, than the people who discovered how asymmetrical architecture should work?

And as always with these kind of books: I wish I remembered even a percent of what I read. It's super interesting, but nothing sticks. Oh well.