A rare negative book review from The Movie Snob.
The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America, by Bill Bryson (1989). I found this paperback on a books-for-sale table at a public library. The price was 50 cents, and I still got ripped off. The author, as the back cover says, was born in Des Moines, but once he was grown he made tracks and wound up living in England for almost two decades. At some point he decided to go back to Iowa and then continue on with a driving excursion throughout America, and this is his travelogue of the experience. I quit after about 70 pages and chucked the book into a recycling bin. I found Bryson insufferably condescending and not even remotely amusing. He believes that all small-town Americans are overweight morons, and he enjoys telling us every time his belief is confirmed. He writes about the South as if it were a third-world country and the KKK were running every city and town south of the Mason–Dixon Line. I found him thoroughly obnoxious. He probably has a regular show on NPR.
The Movie Court 