Customer Reviews: Read 88 more reviews...
 Very funny book November 28, 2008
This is the first Bryson book I have read and I really enjoyed it. The book follows Bryson's childhood, into teen years and was very funny. I was laughing out loud at most of the story. It was easy to read, a quick and satisfying read.
Bryson does put the book in historical context and talks about historic events that occurred in the 1950s and 1960s, including the Cuban Missile Crisis and the the threat of atomic bombs. However, this was interesting and often amusing as he explains how these events were viewed through a child's eyes.
He is very honest about what he got up to as a child, including minor thefts and bunking off school. He recalls many funny events and the life he lead in 1950s Iowa. The end was a bit sad, when he talks about what remains of his childhood town and the memories of his friends. But overall, a hilarious book which I really enjoyed.
9/10
Very...well, Bryson October 14, 2008
Bill Bryson's first book "The Lost Continent" starts with the line "I came from Des Moines, Iowa. Somebody had to." We now get the slightly exaggerated childhood and adolescence of Bill Bryson, aka The Thunderbolt Kid (in his own mind anyway) in Des Moines in the 1950s, when life in the USA for the average person was at its very best and unequalled anywhere else. Mr. Bryson presents an affectionate picture of the now-disappeared small(ish)-town America in the pre-McDonald's era, before Everywhere became like Everywhere Else.
I confess that I am a sucker for his droll style and keen sense of observation - he seems to have a talent for making the ordinary wryly amusing and even laugh-out-loud funny. I can understand why other people wouldn't find this book as thoroughly enjoyable as some of his other stuff. I'm not one of those.
A Gem of a Book! October 10, 2008
"The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid" is a gem of a book in which Bill Bryson takes us back to when he was a young boy in 1950s America. These memories are fond and poignant, as well as laced with a dose of Bill's trademark wit. Against the backdrop of the trends, commercialism and politics taking place in America at the time, he discusses his family and some of his childhood friends, relating the exploits he shared with each. He also talks about his curiosity of then in members of the opposite sex, about day-trips, boring toys, comic books, school days, a beer heist and other topics, all in a way only he and no-one else could describe them.
I really enjoyed the book, just as much as I enjoy his travel writing. The final chapter, "Farewell", was one of my favourites, in which he relates what his friends ended up doing with their adult lives all these years later and how times have changed. The only thing I didn't like about the book was the use of the Thunderbolt Kid character itself. Whenever he used it the writing suddenly sounded childish and out of place, really throwing the narrative. But this only a minor quibble of course and didn't spoil the book for me.
The language is pure Bryson, never a dull moment in the text. Of all the Bryson-isms in the book, my personal favourites were his reference to boring toys as producing "negative ecstasy", and this description of the plain clothes detective: "He had the last flat-top in America." Superb!
Nobody does it like Bryson!
 Perfection August 19, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I bought this book without knowing anything about Bill or his following, what her wrote or how he wrote. It was literally a last minute buy before a 2 week holiday. I'd finished before the end of the first week.
I was instantly drawn in by his characteristic writing style, which is playful and informative as ever. I loved learning about his childhood and all the events which surrounded it. I was literally in awe. I'd never read like this before.
So after a week and a half in Cyprus with nothing to read, I was home and went to a bookstore to buy another of his (Notes from a Large Country) which I loved as well.
I've read a few of his now, but still none beat this. And no other writers compare. Read this book!
 Not one of his best - for UK readers July 7, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
In this book, Bryson reminisces about life growing up in Iowa in the 1950s. For anyone else who was a kid in the US in the 1950s, I am sure this book will bring back nostalgic memories. But for those of us who grew up in the UK, the lists of the food he ate, drinks he drank, baseball games he saw and TV shows he watched have very little meaning. The book is written in Bryson's familiar humorous avuncular style, and is quite amusing in places (though much of the humour is rather lavatorial). But it is not in the same league as, for example, Notes From a Small Island. There are the usual exaggerated anecdotes, where the reader is left pondering how much truth there is in them, and the usual nostalgia for times past. I am surprised it has got such good reviews here. Perhaps if I wasn't such a Bryson fan, I wouldn't be so disappointed.
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