Book reviews

I succumbed to a come-on from Amazon.com a couple of weeks ago - buy two Random House books and get the third free. The books arrived last week, and I've finished two of them (the ones I paid for?) and started the third (the free one?). I'm going to attempt to review the two I've finished. I want to write book reviews for amazon.com; haven't dared to yet, although, let's face it, some of the ones that are up there are terrible. I could certainly do better than that!

A Walk in the Woods; Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail, by Bill Bryson.
I love to walk in the woods. One of the reasons I've been going to physical therapy for my arthritic knee is so that I can hike again. Reading this book made me wonder if - maybe wearing a knee brace - I could walk part of the Appalachian Trail... I really enjoyed this book. I've never read anything by Bill Bryson before, although apparently he's written other travel-related books. I preferred Part 1, where he and his out-of-shape and overweight friend, both in their 40s, hiked from Georgia up to Virginia, camping out and roughing it for the most part. It was inspiring, hilarious, entertaining, and it brought me right onto the trail with them. Part 2 wasn't quite as much fun. For the most part, Bryson did day hikes without his friend, and I missed the sense of continuity of the first part - every day, they'd get up and go on, no matter how tired and grumpy they were feeling. I'd recommend this book, and I think I'll be looking for more of Bryson's work.

The Plot Against America, by Philip Roth.
I haven't read any of Philip Roth's work since Portnoy's Complaint back in the 70s. (I didn't like it.) But this one intrigued me. It's an alternative history: What if Charles Lindbergh had been elected President? No, in reality he didn't run. In Roth's alternate universe, though, not only did he run, but he won in a landslide. He kept the US out of World War II, and managed to ally himself with Hitler. Roth told the story from the point of view of an eight-year-old boy named Philip Roth growing up in a Jewish neighborhood in Newark, New Jersey; I expect it overlapped his own history. It was frightening. I think it was worth reading, and I will probably read it again.