Re[2]: Re2: [at-l] 2000 Plus Or Minus

[Bob Cummings <ellen@clinic.net> (Bob C.)]

"...Gawd when will people learn to leave him (Bill Bryson) alone."

 I think anyone who writes should expect criticism. What I seek in a book is
 honesty. Only those who who have no understanding of the trail think Bryson
 wrote an honest book.

 Yes. It was amusing in places. Yes. It spoke the truth in places. But basically
 it is a hoaxed up account of a failed thru hike by someone who basically found
 he hated the trail and long distance hiking so much that he made no effort to
 really understand the trail.

 The evidence is obvious. Some of the most fascinating people found anywhere can
 be found on the trail. Bryson missed them all. The only fellow hikers he seems
 to have met in any detail are two mostly imagined caricatures -- an obnoxious
 female and a lost-prone man.

 It's a lousy book because it is a fake account, a product of his imagination,
library research, and a summer of driving around the Appalachians, taking an
occasional day hike..

 Weary