Review 632: Neither Here nor There

Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe by Bill Bryson
My rating: 2.5 of 5 stars

Bryson goes to many different countries across Europe, mostly revisiting places he had been to before with a friend of his several decades earlier.

He tries for humor, it mostly doesn't work with me. The exaggeration for comedic effect was overdone. All that is okay. My main gripe with his writing is how the exaggeration was often done as a way to denigrate the place, or generalize the people. Of course, there is also the suffering of Bryson.

As I was nearing the end of the book I was starting to wonder if I will ever read another of his books. Maybe. The last couple places he visits had tipped in his favor. So often he was describing his everyday experiences, mostly complaining, but with the last couple of places he visited, there is a small amount of history.

These locations were part of the USSR that broke up when the soviet communism collapsed. When Bryson was in Sofia, a city in Bulgaria, the people were struggling; inflation was rampant and there was practically no food to be found, except for the few tourists in the only hotel in the city. This chapter he treated with a bit more humanity than I would have expected based the previous 90% or so of the book. But it did take him a minute to get there. It’s hard to be a comedian when faced with such dire circumstances.

I’m not unhappy I read the book. Bryson visited many countries I visited while on a brief European tour of my own a couple decades ago and this book reminded me of my own experiences, which does improve my impression.

Review 320: The Treeline

The Treeline: The Last Forest and the Future of Life on Earth by Ben Rawlence
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

An investigative journalist, used to working in war zones or refugee camps, went out to investigate the furthest reaches of forest in the far north places, in six locations: Scotland, Canada, Norway, Alaska, Russia, and Greenland. Each place has one tree that dominates, such as the downy birch in Norway and the dahurian larch in Russia; spruce, Scots pine, poplar and ash are the other trees. The research is extensive, and so is his experience with visiting these places. The book is partly travelogue with the people Ben Rawlence meets and how he gets out to these far reaches in the forest.

While the focus is on the trees and the changing landscape, where climate change is more noticeable and effecting the local environment, he also talks about the people, descendants of native populations that have lived in these areas for a very long time. In Norway there is the Sámi people who lived in the far northern reaches for thousands of years, herding reindeer and hunting other animals. In Russia the native peoples, the Nganasan, were isolated from the world living in the far reaches of Siberia until very recently, in the 1930s when they became known to the Soviets.

Rawlence describes how they lived with the land and how the trees that grew there shaped their lives, and how they in turn helped shape the landscape. That humans and nature are intertwined, along with the other plants and animals in the area. And these far northern species of trees can help to restore where the climate is changing.

The book was intricate, with dense rich sentences. The language used was compelling and the topic even more so. While the focus is much on what is being lost, there is also a great amount of hope within the book.

The print book includes line drawings of the trees being discussed in each chapter. There is also a Glossary of Trees contained in the back of the book, with more line drawings and information included. This is a book to return to, read again, as there is so much and done beautifully.

Review 141: My Struggle: Dancing in the Dark

My Struggle: Book 4 - Dancing in the Dark by Karl Ove Knausgård
My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This installment of the series is mostly about Karl Ove's one year teaching, when he was 18 to 19, in Northern Norway. There is some backwards looking, and briefly going forward, but mostly around that time of teaching. It's a very small town where he is teaching. They always have young temporary teachers, people don't seem to stay. Since his age was only a couple years older than some of the students he has attractions, but doesn't act on anything. He does briefly go out with a 16 year old that is going to school in another town close by and his students remark on it. Karl Ove breaks it off quickly, before anything really develops with her.

The book is mostly linear, but there are some points when he goes back in time, and also briefly forward. One part he said years later, maybe eleven, he wrote a novel (his first) about that time as a teacher, most of it was the school, town and the characters. He worried what the people from the town would think. Then two girls came to see him speak, from the town. They had met up at a coffee shop. Karl Ove was nervous, of course, and one was the young girl in the school that he liked, and wrote about. They discussed it briefly and turned out to be okay. Nothing every happened either, by then he was married.

The book is still continuing the relationship with his father. A large part of the digression from the main story line was about the time when his parents split up, his dad started drinking a lot. Karl Ove is drinking a lot in this book as well, and there seem to be similarities that aren't discussed.

I found myself getting a little bored with some of the teenage boyhood desires for a date, for having sex with someone, anyone. It occupied more of the books pages than I wanted to read. I'll still continue on the series, most likely, but it may be some time before I get to the next book. Hopefully not three years like this one took.

Previous books read in series:

• My Struggle: Book 1: Death in the Family 
• read: May.06-24, 2016
• My Struggle: Book 2: A Man in Love 
• read: July.05-Aug.08 2016
• My Struggle: Book 3: Boyhood
• read: May.15-24 2017

All rated 5 stars