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Bill Bryson's African Diary |  | Author: Bill Bryson
Publisher: Broadway
Category: eBooks
This item is no longer available
Rating:  67 reviews
Sales Rank: 3906
Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
Edition: 1
Pages: 64
Number Of Items: 1
Dewey Decimal Number: 916.7620443
ASIN: B000XUBG3C
Publication Date: December 18, 2007
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Product Description
In the late 1940s and early 1950s after he became a little too saggy to fit into a Tarzan loincloth without depressing popcorn sales among cinema audiences, the great Johnny Weissmuller filled the twilight years of his acting career with a series of low-budget adventure movies with titles like Devil Goddess and Jungle Moon Men, all built around a character called Jungle Jim. These modest epics are largely forgotten now, which is a pity because they were possibly the most cherishably terrible movies ever made.
The plots seldom got anywhere near coherence. My own favorite, called Pygmy Island, involved a lost tribe of white midgets and a strange but valiant fight against the spread of Communism. But the narrative possibilities were practically infinite since each Jungle Jim feature consisted in large measure of scenes taken from other, wholly unrelated adventure movies. Whatever footage was available--train crashes, volcanic eruptions, rhino charges, panic scenes involving large crowds of Japanese--would be snipped from the original and woven into Jungle Jim's wondrously accommodating story lines. From time to time, the ever-more-fleshy Weissmuller would appear on the scene to wrestle the life out of a curiously rigid and unresisting crocodile or chase some cannibals into the woods, but these intrusions were generally brief and seldom entirely explained.
I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that no more than four people at a time ever paid money to watch a Jungle Jim movie. The series might well have escaped my own attention except that in about 1959 WOI-TV, a television station well known in central Iowa for its tireless commitment to mediocrity, acquired the complete Jungle Jim oeuvre and for the next dozen or so years showed two of them back to back late every Friday night. What is especially tragic about all this is that I not only watched these movies with unaccountable devotion, but was indelibly influenced by them.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 67
 Not the usual Bill Bryson travel diary August 23, 2010
Candid Reader
It is a very short book, I've probably read longer magazine articles, and I wish it had been longer. I did enjoy his descriptions of Kenya although I feel that in his attempt to be positive he must not have said a lot which is why to book is so short. Most of the humor comes from the descriptions of his fear of diseases, the train and the aircraft, but his compassion for the people of Kenya is felt in the more serious parts of the book. Not the usual Bill Bryson travel diary, it is, in the main, an endorsement for CARE.
 A short Bryson treat July 28, 2010
Mindy Mo
A lovely short read by Bryson, filled with his trademark wry humor (or is he back in England such that it should be humour?) Comprised of his typical balance of history (some topical, some random, always interesting), stories, and ruminations on ways his life is in danger (crocodiles, bandits) - it makes for a delightful read.
I was left wanting more, but as all proceeds go to charity, I will forgive Mr. Bryson just this once.
Too short June 17, 2010
BeachReader (Delaware)
Very short book but great insight into Bryson's trip around Kenya at the behest of CARE International, to which he donated all the proceeds. I was left wanting more and think that would have been easy for Bryson to give to his readers without a lot of effort. But how can one fault his intentions to make us more aware?
Guess I will have to read more about present-day Kenya someplace else. My first interest in Kenya occurred back in the late 80s when I read Barbara Wood's amazing GREEN CITY IN THE SUN. Why this book never was a best-seller is beyond me.
Shortest Bill Bryson book June 7, 2010
Richard S. Meyer (phoenix az)
This is a good book for a good cause, but definitely the shortest of all of Bill Bryson's books
Contains wonderful pictures and explanations of Africa May 8, 2010
Indian Prairie Public Library (Darien, IL)
A small book to get a quick insight into Africa. Bryson writes with his usual humor about traveling through Africa and what his preconception of Africa was before his trip.
Bill Bryson's story about Africa contains wonderful pictures and explanations of the continent. The profits of the book go to CARE to benefit African people.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 67
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