What’s So Great About Britain?

NOTES FROM A SMALL ISLAND: An Affectionate Portrait of Britain by Bill Bryson (William Morrow and Co., $25).

It’s tempting to divide a Bryson book review into three parts: 1) say the book is charming, clever, funny, ribald and sly; 2) list as many examples as space allows; 3) lean back with satisfaction in a job well done.

Before I give in to this temptation, here’s some background: After living and working in England for many years, Bryson decided to return to his United States homeland. As a kind of fond farewell he poked about Great Britain for a few weeks, giving him an excuse to expose the (generally) lovable eccentricities of the English and himself under the guise of writing a travelogue. Bryson is perhaps best known for his witty books on the English language (“Mother Tongue,” among others).

On the Underground: “In other cities, station names are drearily mundane: Lexington Avenue, Postdamer Platz, Third Street South. In London, by contrast, the names nearly always sound sylvan and beckoning: Stamford Brook, Turnham Green, Bromley-by-Bow, Maida Vale, Drayton Park. That isn’t a city up there, it’s a Jane Austen novel.”

Just before an unfortunate incident in Liverpool: “Now the second rule of excessive drinking (the first, of course, is don’t take a sudden shine to a woman larger than Hoss Cartwright) is never to drink in a place on a steep slope.”

On strangers in trains: “Over a long period of time it gradually dawned on me that the sort of person who will talk to you on a train is almost by definition the sort of person you don’t want to talk to on a train.”

On the weather: “I have a small, tattered clipping that I sometimes carry with me and pull out for purposes of private amusement. It’s a weather forecast from the Western Daily Mail and it says, in toto, ‘Outlook: Dry and warm, but cooler with some rain.’ ”

A conversation in a Glasgow taxi: “ ‘D’ye nae a lang roon?’ said the driver as we sped along a motorway toward Pollok Park.

“ ‘I’m sorry,’ I said for I don’t speak Glaswegian. ‘D’ye dack ma fanny?’

“I hate it when this happens--when a person from Glasgow speaks to me. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said and floundered for an excuse. ‘My ears are very bad.’ ”

“ ‘Aye, ye nae hae doon a lang roon,’ he said, which I gathered meant, ‘I’m going to take you a very long way around and look at you frequently in the mirror with these menacing eyes so that you’ll begin to wonder if perhaps I’m taking you to a disused wharf where I will beat you up and take your money.’ ”

FOUR CORNERS: History, Land, and People of the Desert Southwest by Kenneth A. Brown (Harper Collins, $26, photos).

It’s tough to turn laccoliths, diatremes, rift zones and other aspects of geology into interesting reading. Kenneth Brown almost succeeds. But in the end, “Four Corners” is like Moab, Utah, in August: too dry. One of the problems is revealed in the subtitle. There’s simply too much subject for one book--at least, one insightful book. Brown is trying to be encyclopedic--everything from dinosaurs to Mormons to the Anasazi to the growth patterns of aspen trees--and too much of “Four Corners” reads like an encyclopedia.

It’s a testament to Brown’s enthusiasm for the area and his breadth of knowledge that “Four Corners” comes close. Many of the chapters begin with scenes from Brown’s own experience and are written with a force that propels the reader onward only to be bogged down in the dunes of factual overload. Still, it’s a remarkably complete overview and, taken in small doses, fascinating.

1996 SOUTH AMERICAN HANDBOOK edited by Ben Box (Passport Books, $39.94, maps).

This is the 72nd edition of a remarkable guide. I used it extensively on a recent trip to Chile and can attest to its accuracy and completeness. It’s the ultimate in utilitarianism: no photos, no schematics, nothing cute--15 words on a recommended restaurant would be verbose. Just lots of phone numbers, addresses and helpful hints. (The hotel listings are particularly acute.) The guide is 1,500 pages, but parchment-thin paper makes it practical to carry. For a long time the handbook was the only worthwhile guide to South America; it’s still the best.

Though the handbook series concentrates mostly on more adventurous destinations, its hotel and restaurant recommendations cover a wide range of traveling styles. The nine titles in the series include: India Handbook; Indonesia, Malaysia & Singapore Handbook; Mexico & Central American Handbook; and the new Morocco & Tunisia Handbook. Expected soon are guides to Egypt, Nepal and Tibet, Sri Lanka and Pakistan.

Quick trip:

BACKROAD BAJA by Patti and Tom Higginbotham (Somethin’s Fishy Publications, $14.95, maps, photos, paperback). A couple of Baja rats outline 20 mostly four-wheel-drive trips to the back country of central Baja (which is as back country as it gets). Chatty and very helpful, though hand-drawn, artsy maps are inadequate.

Books to Go appears the second and fourth week of every month.