Bill Bryson is a favorite of mine, having written a bunch of books that are in the genre “travel narrative.”  Bryson’s wit and insight not just about travel but life in general, is amazing.  But just as wonderful is his voice.  Luckily, most of his books he narrates himself with his half Midwestern half Brittish accent.  This description doesn’t do it justice; of course, you really have to hear it.  It’s not like an affected Brittish accent taken on by some (the head of my high school comes to mind), but just an odd intonation that alerts one to the fact that Bryson probably hasn’t spend his whole life in the U.S.  In fact, he moved the U.K. when he was in his early 20’s and settled down there.  Back in the mid-1990’s, I believe, he decided to come back to his native country and settled in a small town in New Hampshire with his family.  Unfortunately it looks like we’ve lost him again as he has moved back to his adopted homeland.

Recently when I was on Audible.com’s site, looking through new books, I noticed “A Short History of Nearly Everything” in non-abridged format!  I was ecstatic.  The length was a full 19 hours.  Back in July when I saw Bill Bryson had a new book out and it was available for download on Audible, I jumped at it, despite the fact that it was an abridged version.  At over 6 hours, it was still a decent length. Now with a non-abridged version available, I felt compelled to snatch it up.  Silly me I assumed that Bryson narrated this unabridged version; after all, he's narrated all of his other books available on Audible. The narrator, Richard Matthews is British, but doesn't have nearly the pacing and intonation that make Bryson such a pleasure to listen to. Nevertheless, you can still hear Bryson's voice sometimes through the words if you try. At over 19 hours, there's of course a lot more detail – mainly a bit fuller explanations and technical details of the science, which can be helpful if there are areas that are hard to grasp without examples, etc.

I would have to say that “History” is one of those books where I find the abridged version slightly better than the unabridged.  One could probably say this about many poorly written books that drone on and on and could be actually improved by an abridgement.  But this isn’t the reason that I prefer the abridged version, of course, it’s the narration!  Matthews narration is by no means bad, but it is the difference between good narration and wonderful.  It’s hard to explain, but Bryson’s voice, pacing, intonation, etc. is just so distinct and of course his actual voice reflects that which actually wrote the words down to begin with.  Somehow I felt like I learned and remembered more from the abridged version than from the unabridged.   Part of this may have to do with the content and that the unabridged version simply fills in some of the details that the abridged version leaves out but still purveys in a general sense that can be understood. 

I have also come to the conclusion that in some cases for non-fiction books, less is actually more.  When a certain historical event is covered, that’s one thing, but a broad accounting of events throughout history begins to get overwhelming after a while and even with the best of authors can start to feel like a mere log of events and persons.  I’m sure the more one is already familiar with the events and people the less this is the case.  I have read a lot of science history, so much of this was familiar, but Bryson’s book is tour de force of science, including almost all sciences you can imagine.  Kind of a Cosmos of the 21st Century.  A nice thing about the unabridged version that I didn’t notice in the abridged (although perhaps I just overlooked it) was that Bryson quotes a lot of other science writers, which gives one recommendations for further reading in most areas of science. 

For those who like reading about science or even who just like Bryson, I would still recommend the unabridged version, but I think it should be read in addition to the abridged version, not instead.

posted Sunday, 22 February 2004

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