A Walk in the Woods (Movie Tie-In): Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail

SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE Back in America after twenty years in Britain, Bill Bryson decided to reacquaint himself with his native country by walking the 2,100-mile Appalachian Trail, which stretches from Georgia to Maine. But A Walk in the Woods is more than just a laugh-out-loud hike. Bryson's acute eye is a wise witness to this beautiful but fragile trail, and as he tells its fascinating history, he makes a moving plea for the conservation of America's last great wilderness. An adventure, a comedy, and a celebration,A Walk in the Woods has become a modern classic of travel literature.. The AT offers an astonishing landscape of silent forests and sparkling lakes--and to a writer with the comic genius of Bill Bryson, it also provides endless opportunities to witness the majestic silliness of his fellow human beings.For a start there's the gloriously out-of-shape Stephen Katz, a buddy from Iowa along for the walk. Despite Katz's overwhelming desire to find cozy restaurants, he and Bryson eventually settle into their stride, and while on the trail they meet a bizarre assortment of hilarious characters

Louise de Longte said A couple of laughs but that's it. I read this straight after reading Cheryl Strayed's Wild which I absolutely loved. This book had a couple of laughs but on the whole I didn't really enjoy it. I wanted to read about their journey and the people they met on the trail. Instead over half of the book is American history which may suit a lot of people. But if I'd wanted to learn about that topic, I would have read a book about it. Found myself skipping through lots of pages. Disappointing at least for this reader.. As always, better than the movie F. Elizabeth Hauser Bryson's humor is laugh-out-loud-in -the-middle-of-the-night delicious! His weaving of the natural and political history of the area covered by the AT, as well as other notable sites, particularly our National Parks, with his observations and experiences on the trail, make this book a treasure and a delight unlike any other book of its kind. IS there another book anything like this? Not really, though there are many written accounts of hiking the AT, most quite good. No other author has given readers the rich descrip. "No photographs needed" according to John Jenkins. Backpacking the Appalachian Trail without ever having backpacked before is like getting married without ever having dated. But that is exactly what Bill Bryson and his friend Stephen Katz attempted in 1996. A Walk in the Woods, which resulted from their efforts, is a very readable account of what the AT is all about. Mr. Bryson interweaves an account of his adventure with a lot of information about the AT. He presents a fairly objective history of the trail, including the politics and economics, as well as the botany

You immediately get a hint of the humor that lies ahead, such as one of the innumerable reasons he longed to walk as many of the 2,100 miles of the Appalachian Trail as he could. Your initial reaction to Bill Bryson's reading of A Walk in the Woods may well be "Egads! What a bore!" But by sentence three or four, his clearly articulated, slightly adenoidal, British/American-accented speech pattern begins to grow on you and becomes quite engaging. By the time our storyteller recounts his trip to th