The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid

I haven't actually finished reading Bedroom Secrets of The Master Chefs by Irvine Welsh yet, but that's because I was sidetracked by Bill Bryson. It took me about three days to read The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid but it felt far shorter than that. I finished it on a packed train on the way home from Waterloo yesterday, and once I'd turned the last page I actually felt disappointed that it was all over and that there was nothing left. I was suddenly and cruelly booted back into the modern world, where you pay a fortune for the privilege of being herded like cattle in a sauna, and where a fellow commuter was happily drooling on my shoulder in drowsy oblivion. Anyway, it's certainly one of the warmest, funniest things I've read in a long time and I'd certainly recommend it to anyone in need of a chuckle. Crowd or no crowd, I laughed out loud on the train at a couple of parts, and the rest of the time I was fighting to keep the sniggers under control.

 

It doesn't really sound like the sort of thing you'd find funny. Bryson basically waxes nostalgic about his childhood in 50's Iowa and paints a pretty vivid picture of what life was like before the unstoppable rise of TV and the total dominance of the motor car. But his self-deprecating wit and refreshing honesty make this a really entertaining read. From describing his annual attempts to get into the stripper's tent at the Iowa State Fair to the time his friends accidentally blew up their house in an ambitious prank gone bad, he keeps you turning the pages until, all too soon, there are none left. I think I would comfortably have finished this in a day if I'd had the time, but it's definitely worth a look. Not sure what I'll read next - perhaps I'll give John Courtenay Grimwood's End of the World Blues a try as I haven't read much scifi lately.