First I have to say that this is the first Kindle book I have checked out from the library, and that experience was fantastic. It took me a while to find a Kindle book on my library's website that A) I wanted to read, and B) wasn't completely checked out. But once I chose my book, with just a few short clicks it was delivered to my Kindle.

It's on a 2-week check-out period, which is plenty of time for me. I also discovered that you can go to Manage My Kindle on your Amazon account and click to return the book to the library. Thus freeing up copies for other borrowers, hint hint!

Anyway, the advent of Kindle books available for free through the library, without ever having to leave your home, is pretty much the greatest human accomplishment of all time. I'm convinced of it.

All of which only made it more disappointing that I derived so little enjoyment from this, my first Amazon library loan.

"A Bill Bryson book," I thought when I spotted it on the available list. "Bryson is always good for a nice, frothy read." I have read all of Bryson's other travel books, and I expected that this would be much the same. But it was not.

Reading At Home is like being blasted in the face with a shotgun full of facts. For a whopping 600 pages. 

The idea is that Bryson uses his own house as a framing device to discuss the history of the home and private space. But this is not quite what happens. Indeed, his home is almost completely missing from the bulk of the book. It makes the occasional appearance here or there, just a glance and then we're back at the bottom of a well being filled with facts. Glub!

It is the job (I feel) of a writer like Bryson to sift out all the facts and turn them into a narrative. Instead, At Home is a glut of them. Seldom does any single bit of narrative run to longer than a page or two, before veering off into another collection of facts. 

It begins to seem that Bryson is working against us, rather than for us. And there's just so much of it! The reader would be happy only reading one or two pages a day. But at that rate, it would take about a year to finish the entire book.