圖書標籤: Bill_Bryson 旅行 澳大利亞 遊記 downunder BillBryson audiobook 英文
发表于2025-05-28
Down Under pdf epub mobi txt 電子書 下載 2025
It was as if I had privately discovered life on another planet, or a parallel universe where life was at once recognizably similar but entirely different. I can't tell you how exciting it was. Insofar as I had accumulated my expectations of Australia at all in the intervening years, I had thought of it as a kind of alternative southern California, a place of constant sunshine and the cheerful vapidity of a beach lifestyle, but with a slightly British bent - a sort of Baywatch with cricket…' Of course, what greeted Bill Bryson was something rather different. Australia is a country that exists on a vast scale. It is the world's sixth largest country and its largest island. It is the only island that is also a continent and the only continent that is also a country. It is the driest, flattest, hottest, most desiccated, infertile and climatically aggressive of all the inhabited continents and still it teems with life - a large proportion of it quite deadly. In fact, Australia has more things that can kill you in a very nasty way than anywhere else. This is a country where even the fluffiest of caterpillars can lay you out with a toxic nip, where seashells will not just sting you but actually sometimes go for you. If you are not stung or pronged to death in some unexpected manner, you may be fatally chomped by sharks or crocodiles, or carried helplessly out to sea by irresistable currents, or left to stagger to an unhappy death in the baking outback. Ignoring such dangers - yet curiously obsessed by them - Bill Bryson journeyed to Australia and promptly fell in love with the country. And who can blame him? The people are cheerful, extrovert, quick-witted and unfailingly obliging; their cities are safe and clean and nearly always built on water; the food is excellent; the beer is cold and the sun nearly always shines. Life doesn't get much better than this.
As his many British fans already know, bearded Yankee butterball Bill Bryson specialises in going to countries we think we know well, only to return with travelogues that are surprisingly cynical and yet shockingly affectionate. It's a unique style, possibly best suited to the world's weirder destinations. It's helpful here: Bryson's latest subject is that oddest of continents, Australia.
For a start, there's the oddly nasty fauna and flora. Barely a page of Down Under is without its lovingly detailed list of lethal antipodean critters: sociopathic jellyfish, homicidal crocs, toilet-dwelling death-spiders, murderous shrubs (yes, shrubs). Bryson's absorbing and informative portrait is of a terrain so intractably vast, a land so climatically extreme, it seems expressly designed to daunt and torment humankind.
This very user-unfriendliness throws up another Aussie paradox. If the country is so hostile how come the natives are so laid back, so relaxed? As Bryson shuffles from state to state, he seeks the key to the uniquely cool Australian character and finds it in Australia's tragicomic past, her genetic seeding of convicts, explorers, gold diggers, outlaws. This is a country of lads and mates, of boozy gamblers--nowadays mellowed by sunshine and sporting success.
Down Under is a fine book. So it may not be quite as deliciously malicious as Bryson's The Lost Continent, nor as laugh-out-loud funny as Neither Here Nor There. But so what? A Bill Bryson on cruise control is better than most travel writers on turbodrive. --Sean Thomas --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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評分Bill Bryson的又一部傑作,我看過他的另一本遊記"THE LOST CONTINENT-Travels in Small Town American",覺得他的語言非常風趣幽默,在作品裏不斷穿插一些趣聞軼事,夾雜著他風趣幽默的評論,讓他的文章栩栩如生,如同身臨其境,讓你覺得看他的遊記是一種享受。 這本書裏記錄瞭澳大利亞的一些獨特的曆史,從最初的殖民者一直到土著居民,荒蕪的沙漠,獨特的惡劣氣候,和澳大利亞人樂觀豁達的性格,已經很多的奇特的自然景觀,緻命的毒蛇,水母,各種其他有毒的植物,動物蟲子,鰐魚,讓你在增長知識的同時也獲得瞭樂趣,強烈推薦大傢讀一下這本書,本書的有聲版本用標準美式口音閱讀,聽他的有聲版本更是一種享受。
評分not a fan
評分可能是因為自己偏心,墨爾本之後的章節都沒有什麼印象,讀到三分之二還扔下這本書去看彆的瞭……但是無論如何,感謝bill bryson這個可愛的胖子,讓我更喜歡澳大利亞。
評分not a fan
内容挺好,但是翻译不太好。在最前面的总序中序者陆谷孙引用了正文中的一段,应该是他自己翻的,跟后面正文中的同一段内容的翻译一比,高下立判。 举个例子,文中有这么一句: “该待在里面的所有东西——大舌头、小舌头、冒潮答答泡泡的小肠气——义无反顾地漏出来。” 什么...
評分开始看Bill Bryson是因为听说他很幽默,在最初我也觉得是这样的,各种小笑话层出不穷,倒也可以看个热闹。 这几天看完了几本他的书,看多了就会发现他的幽默种类有点单一:基本上全是讽刺,有时候言过其实,而且总把自己摆在受害者的位置,看起来就是个whiny baby。而且有时候...
評分开始看Bill Bryson是因为听说他很幽默,在最初我也觉得是这样的,各种小笑话层出不穷,倒也可以看个热闹。 这几天看完了几本他的书,看多了就会发现他的幽默种类有点单一:基本上全是讽刺,有时候言过其实,而且总把自己摆在受害者的位置,看起来就是个whiny baby。而且有时候...
評分这本书好在:它是一个外国人的澳洲游记,既有一个局外人对澳大利亚的种种惊诧,又因作者本人的好奇博学让人充分了解到奇风异俗后的深厚渊源;它介绍了澳大利亚的简短历史,也描述了澳洲经百亿年才形成的自然地质奇观;它既诙谐幽默让人捧腹,又不留情面的涉及澳洲殖民史而沉重...
評分开始看Bill Bryson是因为听说他很幽默,在最初我也觉得是这样的,各种小笑话层出不穷,倒也可以看个热闹。 这几天看完了几本他的书,看多了就会发现他的幽默种类有点单一:基本上全是讽刺,有时候言过其实,而且总把自己摆在受害者的位置,看起来就是个whiny baby。而且有时候...
Down Under pdf epub mobi txt 電子書 下載 2025