Tag: Super

Bill Bryson – The Road to Little Dribbling | Review

Title: The Road to Little Dribbling

Author: Bill Bryson

Type: Non-Fiction

Page Count: 390

Rating: 4/5

This book is subtitled More Notes from a Small Island, and so as you can expect, it’s pretty much the natural and spiritual sequel to Notes from a Small Island. Arguably Bryson’s most successful book, that one charted his experiences as an American who’d moved to the United Kingdom and then spent a bunch of time travelling around it.

Since then, he’d moved to America and then presumably back to the UK again. It’s kind of hard to tell with Bryson sometimes because I don’t necessarily read his books in publication order and it’s my understanding that he’s headed backwards and forwards here and there. The good news is that I enjoy him most when he’s writing about the UK, possibly only because I live there and so it’s easy for me to picture the things that he’s writing about.

I also think that Bryson has continued to mature as a writer over the years. It’s not that his style has changed, but he has tightened it up a little bit and I think this book benefits because of it. He’s perfected the art of narrative non-fiction and has the knack of writing super engaging informational books on pretty much any topic he tries his hand at.

I will admit that from time to time I’ve found that Bryson’s humour can grate on me, but that’s okay because it wasn’t a problem here. I think it really depends upon his headspace at the time, because when he came across as petty and vindictive, he was having a pretty tough time of things while travelling across Europe.

Overall then, I enjoyed reading this one and would definitely recommend it if you’re a fan of Bryson’s travel writing and stuff. If you’re new to him, though, I’d probably go for Notes from a Small Island to begin with, although this wouldn’t be a bad place to turn to second. And so all in all, it’s a cracking book and I enjoyed it a lot, despite it being my second Bill Bryson book in as many weeks. He hasn’t started to get old yet, at least if we’re talking about my opinion of his books. Looking forward to more!

Learn more about The Road to Little Dribbling.


Henry Firth and Ian Theasby – Bish Bash Bosh! | Review

Title: Bish Bash Bosh!

Author: Henry Firth and Ian Theasby

Type: Non-Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 290

Rating 4.25/5

This is the second Bosh! cookbook that they’ve released, and I enjoyed the recipes in the first book so much that I asked for the second one for my birthday. I’m lucky in that I have a super awesome girlfriend, and so she bought me a signed copy – although the cynic in me suspects that she just wanted me to cook for her. But that’s okay and I’m cool with that.

In case you didn’t get the memo, Bosh is a YouTube channel that specialises in making videos about vegan food. In this cookbook, they share all kinds of awesome recipes spanning a range of different cuisines, and I picked up everything from starters and desserts to bad ass mains, and in fact I ended by making roast stuffing balls, nut roast and quick onion gravy. It was delicious.

I tend to measure my recipe books based on how many of the recipes I take away with me and put into my overall master list of recipes. This book gave me a good 20+ recipes that I took away for good, and that compares to two or three from some other books that I could (but won’t) mention. And because my copy was a limited edition, it was also signed and included six bonus recipes, two of which in particular I was a fan of.

My only criticism would be that a lot of the recipes have already appeared on their YouTube channel. There were a few in here that I already had because of that, but I can live with that. Yum yum.

Click here to buy Bish Bash Bosh!.