Then I shriek once or twice in a piercing and effeminate manner and wake up to find that all motion within five hundred feet has stopped and all children under eight are clutching their mothers’ hems. It is the driest, flattest, hottest, most desiccated, infertile and climatically aggressive of all the inhabited continents and still Australia teems with life - a large portion of it quite deadly. Fortunately, the lack of pizza was compensated for with free beer (complements of Irv and John), which helped lubricate the conversation. For long periods I grow unnaturally still, in a way that inclines onlookers to exchange glances and lean forward in concern, then dramatically I stiffen and, after a tantalizing pause, begin to bounce and jostle in a series of whole-body spasms of the sort that bring to mind an electric chair when the switch is thrown. Bill Brysons travels in a sunburned country- Australia will never look the same again. Seven book group members braved the bitter cold and lack of pizza (The Rivers was unexpectedly closed) to discuss Bill Bryson’s In a Sunburned Country and select next year’s reads. And I snore, hugely and helplessly, like a cartoon character, with rubbery flapping lips and prolonged steam-valve exhalations. From time to time, like one of those nodding-duck toys, my head tips forward to empty a quart or so of viscous drool onto my lap, then falls back to begin loading again with a noise like a toilet cistern filling. With stopovers in major cities, out-of-the-way mining towns and treks through the vast wilderness, it’s a travelogue packed with insights into the history, culture and wildlife of this unique nation. Whatever is inside-tongue, uvula, moist bubbles of intestinal air-decides to leak out. In a Sunburned Country (2000) is Bill Bryson’s personal account of his time traveling around Australia. My legs fall open in a grotesque come-hither manner my knuckles brush the floor. I sleep as if injected with a powerful experimental muscle relaxant. Most people when they nod off look as if they could do with a blanket I look as if I could do with medical attention. “I am not, I regret to say, a discreet and fetching sleeper.

In a sunburned country by bill bryson