This was an unexpected gift, from a working colleague - a perfect book for little trivia lover like me.
Bill Bryson I know from one book ("A Short History of Nearly Everything") that filled my head with all sorts of funny stories, this one is even funnier and perhaps more mind-boggling.
Bryon uses the old British countryside house he lives in as a starting point of a eccentric tour trough history of our living habits, culture and discoveries. Starting from the Hall, than kitchen, scullery, larder, drawing room (I never knew, it has nothing to do with drawing but it comes from "withdrawing"), dining room, cellar and so on - along the way he weaves countless anecdotes about our history, inventors, famous and obscure people, the way new technical gadgets found a way into our everyday use and such. Occasionally Bryson gets so far from the subject that I had to stop and ask myself how did we ever get here, but most of the time he has such a infectious good time and is such a wonderfully good natured storyteller that I wallowed in this book with greatest pleasure and probably need to re-visit it all again at certain point, because I read it simply too fast to remember everything. Just a wonderfully entertaining, crazy book, real page turner for me.
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