Me and Bill (October 28, 2013)

Last fall, Bill Bryson visited Ames, Iowa, for a reading. As a nonfiction writer, this was a dream come true. If nonfiction writing was baseball, Bill Bryson would be Babe Ruth. As far as I’m concerned, Bryson is a living legend. I contained my over-enthusiasm about meeting him long enough to lob him a question in the Q&A session and to have him sign my copy of his latest book, One Summer: America, 1927. At the time, I hadn’t actually read the book yet–it’s over 500 pages, and I’m in graduate school–but this winter, I finally sat down with One Summer, and I hardly came up for air until that “one hell of a summer” had ended.

In short, it was fantastic. For the long version, check my book review for Flight Patterns, the Flyway blog.