I loved Bryson's book,
A Walk in the Woods, too, Rob! And I will probably never do a hike like that either. (Although have hiked the Camino in
Spain.)
Did you see what Hollywood did to that book? (Same title,
movie version with Nick Nolte)
It's amazing how great a book can be and then the
movie version ends up being lame...
My own point-of-view is that no matter what, there is no way of conveying a personal experience that will truly get it across. Bryson's experiences are filtered through his funnybone, so they are eminently entertaining - but ultimately, you just have to experience things for yourself. Then they are yours. And not
for sale.
Years ago, I was at the Old Year's Night celebration at Foxy's in the
British Virgin Islands. It was a tropically hot and humid night. Everyone was in summer clothes/bathing suits, sandals or barefoot.
Rum punches and
beer flowed liberally. Foxy's 6 sons were jamming the reggae
music. Multiple barbeques were going full-tilt. Hundreds of people were dancing (there were 300
boats in the harbour that night); a guy was walking around in a court jester's hat lit by
Christmas lights, a couple was having sex under a picnic table near where I was standing catching my breath (I'm a dancer and there wasn't much of that night I wasn't dancing.)
There was a guy nearby standing on top of a picnic table with a video
camera (remember those?) panning in a 360-degree view of the heaving scene at around 2am.
I remember grinning to myself, "he's going to take that tape home, pop it into his video player and tell his family/friends that
this was what his sailing holiday was like... and it's not going to capture even one-quarter of this...!"
We had berthed our
boat in West End at the old Sunsail base, so found ourselves waiting for the local
ferry named
When at 3am, which got us back to West End at 4am on New Year's Day.
Now THAT was an experience!

LittleWing77