That's all for today!
Thanks to Bill for his time and to everyone who posted questions.
'I invented the beer belly"
mfceiling asks:
You’ve had a beard long before the hipster revolution ... What else have you been a trendsetter with?
Guardian contributor
Have you considered a revised A Short History to take account of new and updated scientific knowledge since it was first published? The discovery of the Higgs Bosun immediately springs to mind just as an example.
Guardian contributor Yes, a revision really would be a good idea. The problem for me is finding time to do it and also stuff just happens so quickly that any revision would grow out of date practically before the ink was dry. But it is something that I have seriously thought about do very much want to return to at some point in the fairly near future.
stuckinazoo asks:
Which book felt least like work to write; maybe because you were just enjoying sharing your stories with us without slavishly note taking or worrying about pacing?
Guardian contributor Actually they all feel like work because they are work. But the one that was easiest and most enjoyable was The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. That was a book about me growing up in Iowa in the 1950s and it didn't require much research because I was just telling my life story. I really enjoyed doing that book.
24bel24 asks:
Hi Bill, what’s your favorite word (if any) and also what’s the truest fact that’s blown you away when you first came across it.
Guardian contributor I would say my favourite word is any word that's correctly punctuated.
I have actually just come across an amazing fact which I discovered too late to put in my book but it was simply this: if you imagined a cubic container three miles across on each side - and just try to imagine how massive that would be - and you filled it right to the very top with oil. That's how much fossil fuel we burn on earth every single year. And at the rate we're going, in less than 50 years, that cube will be nine miles across on each side. I thought that was pretty amazing.
Bookbadger asks:
Have you ever been confronted by one of the “characters” from your travel books who has read the book and recognised themselves? For instance I’ve often wondered about Mary Ellen!
Guardian contributor No I haven't. And that's at least partly because I do take some care to disguise them if there's a risk that they would be embarrassed or upset by what I've written about them. Mary Ellen, who was this extremely annoying young woman who hiked with us for a couple of days on the AT, really did exist and really was pretty much as I portrayed her in the book. But I did at least give her a pseudonym and didn't describe her in any way that would make her identifiable. I was also pretty confident that she was not the sort of person who reads books. Anyway, I've never heard from her.
Several people that I've written about in a neutral or friendly way and whose actual names I have used in my books have got in touch later and I am still in contact with some of them - there was for instance a father and son from Chattanooga with whom we shared a shelter during a snowstorm and they wrote to me later and we corresponded for a while.
"I am spectacularly parsimonious with my own money"
StephenCarter asks:
Firstly: Robert Redford? How long did your wife laugh?
I have always admired you as a staunch upholder of being “careful with your money” when no-one else in print will admit to a slight stinginess. Has the pleasure of getting the value out of every penny and refusing to be taken in by tourist traps faded now you are, presumably, comfortably off, or do you still refuse to buy overpriced guidebooks?
Thanks for the years of pleasure and give my love to little Jimmy!
Guardian contributor Thank you! I really am like that with money. I can't help myself but I just hate being screwed. Even when I'm travelling at someone else's expense it bothers me to see what it being charged to publishers for instance for things like the contents of minibars. So even when money isn't coming out of my own pocket I still tend to be parsimonious. When it is coming out of my own pocket I am spectacularly parsimonious. Drives my family crazy.
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flatofmirth asks:
I am from China and I like your works very much. I bought almost every book of yours, among which, Down Under is so funny and awesome.
My question is w do you think about China? Have you been there? Do you have a plan to write a book about China?
Actually I can’t expect such a book on China full of your wits and thoughts.
Guardian contributor I did go to China very briefly a couple of years ago to Shanghai, and loved it. China is obviously just about the most important and fascinating country on earth, but I don't think I will ever do a book about China. Partly it's because it would represent too much of a time commitment to go there and also I'm not comfortable writing about cultures and societies that I don't really understand. I'm much happier dealing with English-speaking people because I feel that I either understand them from experience or can easily get to understand them through conversation.
Todd_Packer asks:
I am a big fan of your book on Shakespeare – the best I have read about him. Do you have any plans for another biography of this sort?
Guardian contributor Thank you, I'm so glad you like the book. The genesis of that was that an American publisher did a series of half length biographies (40,000 words each) on famous people and asked me if I would take on Shakespeare. So it wasn't a full-fledged biography which I think I would have found too daunting. I really did enjoy the experience but I don't have any plans at the moment to try anything like that again. If I were going to do a biography, the person who appeals to me is George Washington, but doing the research for that would mean spending at least a couple of years in Virginia for practical reasons - that's not something I'd like to do at my time of life.
Washington has always fascinated me - he was a member of an extremely privileged, comfortable class of people and if America's campaign for independence had failed he would have been the first person executed. So the amount of peril he faced in furtherance of a political belief was quite remarkable. And on top of all that I just think he's a fascinatingly ambiguous but extraordinarily decent person.
basaya asks:
I read the book and it inspired me to visit Centralia in 2003. One of the most fascinating towns in America. So thanks for that. Any plans to actually walk the entire Appalachian Trail? Do you regret giving up when you we’re doing it? Did you feel any sense of failure at the time or did you feel you had acquired enough material to be able to start the book ?
Guardian contributor I'm really glad to hear you mention Centralia - we should perhaps explain for those who have never heard of it, that it's a town in Pennsylvania that was built on top of a coal seam and the coal seam caught fire many years ago and so the whole town was slowly consumed by an underground fire. And eventually had to be abandoned. It was one of the most surreal and strangely moving places I've ever been. I would love to know what it's like now nearly 20 years since I last saw it. As for your other questions, yes, I felt an acute sense of failure when I realised I wasn't going to walk the AT from end to end and was quite disconsolate for a couple of days. But then Katz and I realised that we were still enjoying walking. We just didn't want to do every inch of the trail, it was more than we could handle. You cannot imagine just how far 2200 miles is on foot until it's your feet that are experiencing it. So we decided we would walk as much of it as we pleasurably could, and in the end, we managed to cover about 850 miles, which is equivalent to walking from New York to Chicago in a single summer. So it was a pretty good summer's hike. But I do wish I could say I managed to do the whole thing from end to end.
pellihno asks:
Given the choice, would you rather have a fist made of ham, or an armpit which dispenses sun cream?
Guardian contributor Where did that question come from? I quite like the idea of an armpit that dispenses things but out of all the possible substances on Earth, I can't say that suncream would make my shortlist. Could it be money instead?
On the refugee crisis: "I do hope that all the rich nations including my own, the US, show a suitable amount of compassion"
Boxofviolets asks:
What are your views on the attitude of this small island to the refugee crisis?
Guardian contributor Goodness! That's a tough question. And I think it's too early to give any kind of a confident answer but I do hope that all the rich nations including my own, the US, show a suitable amount of compassion.
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John M’Boro asks:
Were you dissapointed with the film version of A Walk in the Woods? I found it completely boring and tedious – to be fair many in the cinema seemed to enjoy it immensely.
Guardian contributor Obviously I'm very sorry you found it boring and tedious, but I honestly did not, I thought they did a generally terrific job of translating the book to the screen. I thought the movie was particularly good at capturing the chemistry and friendship between the two main characters. And I also thought it was visually stunning because of how beautiful the eastern woods look. Interestingly we weren't always particularly aware of that when we were hiking ourselves, because when you're on the AT, you are mostly in a kind of tunnel of trees. One of the things a film can do is draw back from ground level and give you the big helicopter shots so I was quite stunned at how often sensationally beautiful it was. It was frustrating!
thelawofaverages asks:
Why did A Short History of Nearly Everything only include things white men had done?
Guardian contributor It didn't. Really it didn't. It talks about Marie Curie for one thing, at some length. But I suppose you have a point generally. Having said that I don't think I can especially take the blame for it. In western society historically - and we are dealing with history here - most scientific achievements have been done by white men.
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carrottes2 says:
Firstly, thanks for the books and for presenting me my degree at Durham in 2005. The question: do bears really love Snickers?
Guardian contributor I'm very pleased to have presented you with your degree, I hope you've made the most of it, and the fact that you can be sending me questions in the middle of the weekday afternoon doesn't indicate that you have subsided into a life of idleness. I don't think bears particularly love Snickers but they do love human food generally, and are actually a threat because of their enormous appetites.
ID4465198 asks:
I loved One Summer: America 1927. Any chance of a book on another year?
Guardian contributor Thank you very much, I'm really glad you enjoyed it. Quite a lot of people outside America complained that they thought there was too much baseball in it, so any praise I get from anyone in the rest of the English speaking world I cherish. I don't know if I'll ever do another book on a year, but I did enjoy that one. If I were going to choose one year the one that leaps to mind is 1903, which was the year of the Wright brothers' first flight, Henry Ford's invention of the modern motor car, and the first baseball World Series - so more baseball I'm afraid.
Dowling1981 asks:
What is your favourite episode of Friends?
Guardian contributor Do you really remember individual episodes of Friends? Do you think perhaps you should see someone about this?
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Trail advice? "Prepare for the hike, both mentally and physically"
FartyMacNivens asks:
So a few months ago I told my mom that I had some tentative plans for hiking the Appalachian Trail. These plans were totally up in the air, and I have since had second thoughts. She then went and told everyone in my family, so now I feel like I actually have to do the damn thing. Since your book was a bit of an inspiration for me, and since its recent adaptation has nudged the trail into the public imagination, I feel like you are somewhat responsible for my plight. Do you have any suggestions on how to prepare myself for such a hike? Or even better, how to get myself out of it?
Guardian contributor Yes I am responsible and I do apologise. But I can tell you one thing you really ought to do before attempting the AT is to prepare for it, mentally as well as physically. It's really hard! In practical terms, the big mistake we made was not to get fit first but in retrospect that made for a more comical book because we were such hopeless slobs. But if you're not writing a book and you want to have the best possible experience you should get yourself really fit before you do it. There isn't any way to prepare yourself for the mental challenge of it, but what you can do, and I think is a really good idea is to go and spend a week or two, or something, hiking a section of the trail before you make the whole commitment to do the whole thing end to end, that way it won't be such a total shock to the system when you set off in earnest.
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"The whole idea of the hike was that was that two disparate people are thrown together and form a somewhat unlikely bond as a result"
TobiasCrackers asks:
You walked the Appalachian trail in the 1990s when you were in your forties, yet you are portrayed in the film at present day by a seventy-eight year old Robert Redford. Do you believe this casting choice, and the altering of time changed your story?
Guardian contributor Yes and no. Clearly some adjustments had to be made because of the age differences between me and the real Katz on the one hand, and Robert Redford and NIck Nolte on the other. But I don't believe that that changed the fundamentals of the experience in any really important way. The whole idea of the hike and the book was that was that two disparate people are thrown together and form a somewhat unlikely bond as a result of this shared experience. I thought they captured that very well in the film, in a way that was utterly faithful to the book.
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Bill is with us now
Let’s get started!
Post your questions for Bill Bryson
Bill Bryson became an adopted national treasure for his book Notes From a Small Island in 1995, in which he observed British foibles on a trip round the UK. For his next travelogue, 1998’s A Walk in the Woods, he set out on the Appalachian Trail, a 2,200 mile route up the mountainous spine of east coast America – his partner was his friend Stephen Katz, an overweight recovering alcoholic. Together they encountered boredom and beauty in more or less equal measure, with Bryson tracking the ecology of the region as he trudged ruefully through it.
It’s now been adapted into a handsomely photographed movie starring Robert Redford, with Nick Nolte as the haggard Katz. Bryson meanwhile has continued to travel around the world, writing about his trips as well as Shakespeare, the home, science and his own personal history.
With the film out on 18 September, Bill is joining us to answer your questions about his epic trek and anything else in his career, in a live webchat on Thursday 20 September (time TBC). Post them in the comments below, and he’ll answer as many as possible.
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Thank you very much for your stimulating questions. We must do this again some time, but with beer.