A few years ago Bill Bryson wrote a book called A Brief History of Almost Everything. It sounded interested so I got myself added to the waiting list at the library and picked up a few of his other books to pass the time.

I’m not going to go into all my thoughts on Bill Bryson here. I will say that while I like most of his works, I don’t think I’d like him as a person very much. He seems arrogant and prejudice and can’t keep his politics to himself. But I do keep reading him because of jewels like this:

Only the day before in Maine I had seen a sign in a McDonald’s offering a starting wage of five dollars an hour. Harvey must have been immensely moronic and unskilled - doubtless both - not to be able to keep pace with a sixteen-year-old burger jockey at McDonald’s. Poor guy! And on top of that here he was married to a woman who was slovenly and indiscreet, and had a butt like a barn door. I hoped old Harvey had sense enough to appreciate all the incredible natural beauty with which God had blessed his native state because it didn’t sound as if He had blessed Harvey very much. Even his kids were ugly as sin. I was half tempted to give one of them a clout myself as I went out the door. There was just something about his nasty little face that made you itch to smack him. - Bill Bryson, The Lost Continent, pg 165