The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir | Bill Bryson

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir | Bill Bryson | Absolutely hilarious and interesting read for young and old

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The Life and Times...

	The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir Bill Bryson Broadway, 2007 - 288 pages average customer review:based on 62 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir

A laugh out loud look at a boy growing up in Iowa in the 1950s. A wonderful nostalgic look at life through a boy's eyes. For anyone who grew up in the fifties this is the ticket for a trip down memory lane. This is a wonderful get well gift as laughter aids in healing and relieving pain. I challenge anyone to read this and not laugh out loud. This is Bill Bryson at his best and who could ask for more.

Absolutely hilarious and interesting read for young and old

Too funny! I was born in the 60's, but this book has given me a thorough understanding of life in the 50's - all the innocence and fun. So interesting, but mainly, laugh out loud funny! Fun for young adults and older folks, this book will appeal to any age who wants at least a couple of laughs PER PAGE! Definitely worth reading, in fact, I have ordered his other books as a result. Impressive writer.

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Billy Remembers When...

It is a constant theme in Bill Bryson's books - he always points out what is (or in this case, was) good and enjoyable about his life's experiences. His exaggerations are done for comedic effect, but also to illustrate a point. I always leave the confines of his pages feeling like I have been transported to a different place or different time. Have we become so consumed with what we have, what we want, and how to get them that we have lost many of the enjoyments in life, or is it that being an adult just isn't as much fun as being a kid?

I'll have Bill know that because of him I won't be doing my part to contribute to our consumer-driven economy. I'm putting off enlarging and vastly improving the size and quality of my TV. More money for books, I suppose...

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A Trip Down Memory Lane

My son has been raving about Bill Bryson's for some time now, but I was not sure that they would appeal to me. After hearing others rave about his memoir: The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, I thought this might be a fun audio book. I am sorry I waited so long to try Bryson's work.

This memoir was terrific. It leaves you with a feeling of appreciation for the simple things in life. Bill Bryson and I were born a year apart, and as baby boomers growing up in the 50's and 60's, I found this memoir to be a trip down memory lane. He talks about his mom's bad cooking, his strange relatives, going to the store for penny candy (candy cigarettes), playing outdoors until dark, first crushes, Saturday at the movies, loss of innocence etc. He could be describing a whole lot of baby boomers in this memoir. This book is hysterical, and there were many times I had tears in my eyes from laughing so hard. The audio version is highly recommended.

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Des Moines' own local hero in defense of a boy's right to be dirty

Approximately normal, but at times excessively disgusting, Bryson gives us the frog's perspective to Halberstam's magnificent bird's eye view of the Fifties.
Bryson's specific kind of humour, the exaggeration to absurdity of nearly everything, can be very funny, but also trying. Boys will be boys, so they do odd things, but when you exaggerate them, they go a bit out of their normal frame. Some of his stories are plain yukki. (eating buttered popcorn in a cinema while peeling something soft away from underneath the chair? crawling underneath the toilet partitions to lock all doors from the inside? watching the man with the hole in his throat while he eats and speaks? etc ad nauseam, literally)
So the fun is there but not always.
Apart from that, my main reason to read the book is the fact that Bryson grew up with a dad who was a sports reporter, and in Bryson's surely not exaggerated recollection the greatest American baseball reporter ever. Now that I have resigned from my less than promising career as a reviewer at Amazon.de to focus fully on Amazon.com, I realized that I have no clue why you guys like baseball so much.
After Bryson, I still don't have a clue, but I learned one thing: it must help to have grown up with it. I guess I will never make it even to the outer circles of the half-initiated.

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