Book 17 - The Life and Times of The Thunderbolt Kid

I was first introduced to Bill Bryson's writings about eight years ago, when my then-boss lend me his "Notes from A Small Island". I didn't like it then, not because it's bad, rather because it wasn't quite what I expected and I had never read anything like it. I didn't even get to the first chapter to be honest.

But then I ran out of things to read and money to buy books, and free book was just too hard to pass, so I started leafing through it and the second time, I got it. The book was hillarious, entertaining, and in an unexpected way, informative.

The thing about reading Bill Bryson's book is that I never know what to expect. After that first travel book, I made the mistake of getting "A Short History of Nearly Everything", a book about...well, the short history of nearly everything, from biology, geology, archaelogy. It wasn't that it's not entertaining, on the contrary, it was very entertaining and very fine introductions to many things I won't care to know otherwise. It's just that I'm really, really, not interested in reading about biology, geology, et cetera.

But I love his writing because it makes me feel as if I'm sitting down and listening to a very witty, knowledgeable person with a great sense of humor who can explain things to me in a very interesting way with complete details that might even escape an expert in the subject matter. I have to say that he is simply brilliant that way. Which is why because I love traveling as much as I love reading, I love his travel books to Europe (Neither Here nor There), Australia (Down Under), and England (Notes from A Small Island).

But at the same time, while I can force myself to read through his other books on A Short History of Nearly Everything, history on English (The Mother Tongue), and American history (Made in America), well, it's not something I care to read twice. It has nothing to do with how he writes it you see. It's just that I'm not interested in those subjects. It's not his writing, it's me.

So when I saw his book, the Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, I felt like I need to read this rather than I want to read this. Why? Well, like i said, reading his books felt like sitting down and listening to him telling you entertaining stories, and after eight years and six books, it's about time to know more about where he came from.

Of all places, Des Moines, Iowa, apparently. The book told his story of growing up in the 1950s in Des Moines, Iowa. I had never heard of the city until I started reading his books. The first decade of his life was apparently the happiest moment in the American history, not because of his birth, though I'm sure it's a very happy occasion for his family, but because the level of prosperity that Americans enjoyed that was unmatched by any other countries in the world during that time, and on less obvious reasons, because it was a time of blissful ignorance: about the danger of smoking, about the danger of nuclear radiation, of pollution, etc.

It was very interesting because even if I'm not American, have never been to Iowa, and was born three decades after him, the way he so vividly described his childhood, how things were so fascinating through the eyes of a child were so real that I nodded with agreements.

In the end, reading his book reminded me of my own childhood, and how it was so different from my daughter's, now still three years old. It reminded me of growing up in a very different time, much simpler time when we did not possess as many things and yet not in any way less happier. When one of the highlights of the week was to put on your best clothes to go to the Church on Sundays, when there's only one television channel and one program for kids, when it was still okay to have instant noodle every day (because no one warned about preservatives then), when children in my neighborhood gathered and marveled at new toy that someone just got, when there's only one telephone in one block, when we never had to lock our door, and when everybody knew everybody in the neighborhood.

"What a wonderful world it was. We won't see its like again, I'm afraid" Although he's talking about Des Moines in early 50s, I can't help but thinking that's exactly how I felt about Surabaya in early 80s.