Down Under

As his many British fans already know, bearded Yankee butterball Bill Bryson specialises in going to countries we think we know well, only to return with travelogues that are surprisingly cynical and yet shockingly affectionate. It's a unique style, possibly best suited to the world's weirder destinations. It's helpful here: Bryson's latest subject is that oddest of continents, Australia.For a start, there's the oddly nasty fauna and flora. Barely a page of Down Under is without its lovingly detailed list of lethal antipodean critters: sociopathic jellyfish, homicidal crocs, toilet-dwelling death-spiders, murderous shrubs (yes, shrubs). Bryson's absorbing and informative portrait is of a terrain so intractably vast, a land so climatically extreme, it seems expressly designed to daunt and torment humankind.This very user-unfriendliness throws up another Aussie paradox. If the country is so hostile how come the natives are so laid back, so relaxed? As Bryson shuffles from state to state, he seeks the key to the uniquely cool Australian character and finds it in Australia's tragicomic past, her genetic seeding of convicts, explorers, gold diggers, outlaws. This is a country of lads and mates, of boozy gamblers--nowadays mellowed by sunshine and sporting success.Down Under is a fine book. So it may not be quite as deliciously malicious as Bryson's The Lost Continent, nor as laugh-out-loud funny as Neither Here Nor There. But so what? A Bill Bryson on cruise control is better than most travel writers on turbodrive. --Sean Thomas --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

出版者:Black Swan

作者:[美] 比尔·布莱森

页数:432

出版时间:2001-08-06

价格:GBP 8.99

装帧:Mass Market Paperback

isbn号码:9780552997034

图书标签:Bill_Bryson旅行澳大利亚游记downunderBillBrysonaudiobook英文

It was as if I had privately discovered life on another planet, or a parallel universe where life was at once recognizably similar but entirely different. I can't tell you how exciting it was. Insofar as I had accumulated my expectations of Australia at all in the intervening years, I had thought of it as a kind of alternative southern California, a place of constant sunshine and the cheerful vapidity of a beach lifestyle, but with a slightly British bent - a sort of Baywatch with cricket…' Of course, what greeted Bill Bryson was something rather different. Australia is a country that exists on a vast scale. It is the world's sixth largest country and its largest island. It is the only island that is also a continent and the only continent that is also a country. It is the driest, flattest, hottest, most desiccated, infertile and climatically aggressive of all the inhabited continents and still it teems with life - a large proportion of it quite deadly. In fact, Australia has more things that can kill you in a very nasty way than anywhere else. This is a country where even the fluffiest of caterpillars can lay you out with a toxic nip, where seashells will not just sting you but actually sometimes go for you. If you are not stung or pronged to death in some unexpected manner, you may be fatally chomped by sharks or crocodiles, or carried helplessly out to sea by irresistable currents, or left to stagger to an unhappy death in the baking outback. Ignoring such dangers - yet curiously obsessed by them - Bill Bryson journeyed to Australia and promptly fell in love with the country. And who can blame him? The people are cheerful, extrovert, quick-witted and unfailingly obliging; their cities are safe and clean and nearly always built on water; the food is excellent; the beer is cold and the sun nearly always shines. Life doesn't get much better than this.

读后感

开始看Bill Bryson是因为听说他很幽默，在最初我也觉得是这样的，各种小笑话层出不穷，倒也可以看个热闹。 这几天看完了几本他的书，看多了就会发现他的幽默种类有点单一：基本上全是讽刺，有时候言过其实，而且总把自己摆在受害者的位置，看起来就是个whiny baby。而且有时候...  

出门之前，应该多多的了解，不然匆匆走过跟逛街差不多，也没办法在别人不注意的地方发现有意思的亮点。就这来说，真是佩服老布。仿佛一边看历史书，一边看游记，像个导游。在他的引领下，我也被“活叠层”深深吸引。那东西实在太奇妙了！ 澳大利亚有骄阳，有灰尘，有危险的动...  

this book can serve as a guidance. you can even try to follow the author's route within Australia, and enjoy the immeasurable heaps of fun when you see things mentioned in the book, but diffently.  

内容挺好，但是翻译不太好。在最前面的总序中序者陆谷孙引用了正文中的一段，应该是他自己翻的，跟后面正文中的同一段内容的翻译一比，高下立判。 举个例子，文中有这么一句： “该待在里面的所有东西——大舌头、小舌头、冒潮答答泡泡的小肠气——义无反顾地漏出来。” 什么...  

2019年2月23日我把这本几乎十年前读完的书又通读了一遍，距我们从阳光明媚的昆士兰州回来仅为一个礼拜。 澳大利亚就是一个没有什么需求的时候不会让人有感觉的地方。然而，他是如此的宽敞和未知，国民是如此充满活力。 布莱森的游记是如此不同，十年前毫无感觉的文字如今读来如...  

用户评价

Sure it's not wrong to dub Australia a conservative, unconfident and racist backwater, but just as Mr Bryson tirelesly (but rightly) states on countless occasions: this is a good country, and it's trying, really hard.

informative. witty. 射手座唠叨起来还真是。。推荐给正在以及想去的人

I love Bill Bryson!

not a fan

the very very frist i brought with me ..to the downunder !