Name: A Walk in the Woods
ISBN: 9780795328053

A Walk in the Woods

Bill Bryson describes his attempt to walk the Appalachian Trail with his friend "Stephen Katz". The book is written in a humorous style, interspersed with more serious discussions of matters relating to the trail's history, and the surrounding sociology, ecology, trees, plants, animals and people.

What Hacker News says

ArrayListFeb 2019

Bill Bryson. Enough said.

"A Walk in the Woods" or "Notes from a Small Island" had me in stiches.

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ohmattJul 2018

"The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" by Tom Wolfe (RIP). One of my all time favorite book, one of my all time favorite authors.

"The World According to Garp" by John Irving. Again, one of my favorite authors, one of his best books, but I really recommend almost all of his books.

"Starship Troopers" by Robert A. Heinlein. Just read this a couple weeks ago, highly recommended.

"A Walk in the Woods" by Bill Bryson. Just another of my favorite authors, I recommend any of his books if you like travel books. Very witty and well written stuff. A Walk in the Woods is probably his best known book about his attempt to thru-hike the AT.

"Story of Your Life and Others" - Ted Chiang. Really really good sci-fi short stories. Some great stuff. The movie Arrival is based on the title short story, Story of Your Life.

Honorable Mentions (from things I've read in the past year): "Meddling Kids" by Edgar Cantero "The Island of Dr. Moreau" by H.G. Wells "Furiously Happy" by Jenny Lawson

I could keep listing books, but this is probably already excessive.

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trentmbJun 2018

> One thing that struck me is how much he reads. He had a list of suggested books to read in the back page, and there were probably hundreds

Here's the list, from the ebook I have at least:

  - Abrahams, Peter: A Perfect Crime
  - Abrahams, Peter: Lights Out
  - Abrahams, Peter: Pressure Drop
  - Abrahams, Peter: Revolution #9
  - Agee, James: A Death in the Family
  - Bakis, Kirsten: Lives of the Monster Dogs
  - Barker, Pat: Regeneration
  - Barker, Pat: The Eye in the Door
  - Barker, Pat: The Ghost Road
  - Bausch, Richard: In the Night Season
  - Blauner, Peter: The Intruder
  - Bowles, Paul: The Sheltering Sky
  - Boyle, T. Coraghessan: The Tortilla Curtain
  - Bryson, Bill: A Walk in the Woods
  - Buckley, Christopher: Thank You for Smoking
  - Carver, Raymond: Where I’m Calling From
  - Chabon, Michael: Werewolves in Their Youth
  - Chorlton, Windsor: Latitude Zero
  - Connelly, Michael: The Poet
  - Conrad, Joseph: Heart of Darkness
  - Constantine, K. C.: Family Values
  - DeLillo, Don: Underworld
  - DeMille, Nelson: Cathedral
  - DeMille, Nelson: The Gold Coast
  - Dickens, Charles: Oliver Twist
  - Dobyns, Stephen: Common Carnage
  - Dobyns, Stephen: The Church of Dead Girls
  - Doyle, Roddy: The Woman Who Walked into Doors
  - Elkin, Stanley: The Dick Gibson Show
  - Faulkner, William: As I Lay Dying
  - Garland, Alex: The Beach
  - George, Elizabeth: Deception on His Mind
  - Gerritsen, Tess: Gravity
  - Golding, William: Lord of the Flies
  - Gray, Muriel: Furnace
  - Greene, Graham: A Gun for Sale (aka This Gun for Hire)
  - Greene, Graham: Our Man in Havana
  - Halberstam, David: The Fifties
  - Hamill, Pete: Why Sinatra Matters
  - Harris, Thomas: Hannibal
  - Haruf, Kent: Plainsong
  - Hoeg, Peter: Smilla’s Sense of Snow
  - Hunter, Stephen: Dirty White Boys
  - Ignatius, David: A Firing Offense
  - Irving, John: A Widow for One Year
  - Joyce, Graham: The Tooth Fairy
  - Judd, Alan: The Devil’s Own Work
  - Kahn, Roger: Good Enough to Dream
  - Karr, Mary: The Liars’ Club
  - Ketchum, Jack: Right to Life
  - King, Tabitha: Survivor
  - King, Tabitha: The Sky in the Water (unpublished)
  - Kingsolver, Barbara: The Poisonwood Bible
  - Krakauer, Jon: Into Thin Air
  - Lee, Harper: To Kill a Mockingbird
  - Lefkowitz, Bernard: Our Guys
  - Little, Bentley: The Ignored
  - Maclean, Norman: A River Runs Through It and Other Stories
  - Maugham, W. Somerset: The Moon and Sixpence
  - McCarthy, Cormac: Cities of the Plain
  - McCarthy, Cormac: The Crossing
  - McCourt, Frank: Angela’s Ashes
  - McDermott, Alice: Charming Billy
  - McDevitt, Jack: Ancient Shores
  - McEwan, Ian: Enduring Love
  - McEwan, Ian: The Cement Garden
  - McMurtry, Larry: Dead Man’s Walk
  - McMurtry, Larry, and Diana Ossana: Zeke and Ned
  - Miller, Walter M.: A Canticle for Leibowitz
  - Oates, Joyce Carol: Zombie
  - O’Brien, Tim: In the Lake of the Woods
  - O’Nan, Stewart: The Speed Queen
  - Ondaatje, Michael: The English Patient
  - Patterson, Richard North: No Safe Place
  - Price, Richard: Freedomland
  - Proulx, Annie: Close Range: Wyoming Stories
  - Proulx, Annie: The Shipping News
  - Quindlen, Anna: One True Thing
  - Rendell, Ruth: A Sight for Sore Eyes
  - Robinson, Frank M.: Waiting
  - Rowling, J. K.: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
  - Rowling, J. K.: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azakaban
  - Rowling, J. K.: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
  - Russo, Richard: Mohawk
  - Schwartz, John Burnham: Reservation Road
  - Seth, Vikram: A Suitable Boy
  - Shaw, Irwin: The Young Lions
  - Slotkin, Richard: The Crater
  - Smith, Dinitia: The Illusionist
  - Spencer, Scott: Men in Black
  - Stegner, Wallace: Joe Hill
  - Tartt, Donna: The Secret History
  - Tyler, Anne: A Patchwork Planet
  - Vonnegut, Kurt: Hocus Pocus
  - Waugh, Evelyn: Brideshead Revisited
  - Westlake, Donald E.: The Ax

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M_GreyFeb 2017

Your comment made me think of Bill Bryson's accounts of how people change on the trail in 'A Walk In The Woods'. Good book if anyone is considering a thru-hike, and it's just a fun read anyway.

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SwellJoeFeb 2017

I'll be the lone dissenting voice with regard to the film. I liked it. It wasn't nearly as funny as the book; it was barely funny, at all, in fact. But, it still contained some of the gentle charm of the book. At the end of it, I said to my girlfriend, "I guess I just really like movies about hiking, even when they're kinda boring." (I also really liked Wild, and liked that book, too...in that case, I think the film held up better against the book, as the book just wasn't in the same league as A Walk In The Woods, so the film had less to live up to).

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raddanDec 2024

For me, it’s less about the food (but to be clear, still about the food) and more about the cultural experience. Going someplace different, seeing how other people live, and eating with them can be a real joy. Your mileage may vary, of course. But people often find ways to connect over our shared need to eat. I think fondly about a meal I shared in rural China. I was the only American in the group. Despite our many differences, we all learned a lot from each other. I have similar strong memories about having breakfast at Shaw’s hiker hostel in Maine (the one featured in Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods). And many others. I hope to have many more experiences like that in my life.

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