Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe by Bill Bryson.

Bryson comes into his own when writing about the British Empire, it seems - his work on UK the most entertaining and the one about Australia the most informative. In US he gets ponderous, seems a bit afraid to joke, and in Europe he is a bit lost.

The wit is in place but he is not, in this work. He begins in Hammerfest, which is nice to know of, but he then goes on that way with much small and unimportant details about strange places and then nothing about the most attractive - it is one thing to avoid a tourist route, but then why the details of going unplanned into yet another strange town and troubles of hotels and beer and food? Makes no sense at all. And, he neither drives nor plans the trip, so there is much travail on that account that is easily avoidable.

One reads Bryson for the fun, and this book gives that - from time to time. But then it is a chore to finish it most of the time. Worth reading since there is always something of a little smile unexpectedly or even an outright laugh at what he says, but all too often he plays to the gallery and uses unnecessary indecorous language.

Surprisingly he is unhappy with Switzerland, and too with Scandinavia, while he is happy with Italy and Germany - one can only conclude he did not know what one generally goes to Europe to look at, and while it is nice to know Sofia is beautiful or Hamburg is nice that is more useful for those who are likely to live there for a while or more. The rest of us are more interested in the normal nice things about places one is either likely to go or would wish to if only one knew about it.

Perhaps this was the first of the whole series he wrote, and he came into his own only with the land where he spent his growing adulthood years - Britain.