The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir | Bill Bryson

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir | Bill Bryson | Brain Candy

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The Life and Times...

	The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir Bill Bryson Broadway, 2007 - 288 pages average customer review:based on 65 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Every boomer (and their parents) should read this book!

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid: A Memoir

Our memories tend to be unreliable :-) so Bill Bryson brings back all those funny things from childhood that I hadn't thought about in years! Nor had my mom, who thoroughly enjoyed it, too.

And some things -- like the McCarthy era measures - I hadn't really read about at all. (Seems the more some things change, the more they stay the same.)

A really good book - and a great present for every boomer on my list!

Brain Candy

Every so often, a book comes along that is so good, you don't want to reach the end. "Thunderbolt Kid" is just such a book. I found myself having to pause regularly to allow my sides to stop aching from laughter, and I read about half of the book out loud to my wife because I HAD to share it. You don't read this book; it just happens inside your head. The trees that died to print this classic must be quite proud of their demise.

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Hilarious.

This is a very funny book and is a great view of growing up in the 50s and 60s. I loved it.

Hysterical!

I found this book in a bookstore and was hooked from the first page! Bill Bryson writes a wonderfully humorous story that any child born in the 1950's can relate to. For Baby Boomers, the 1950's were an age of innocence, magic, discovery and wonder. Each chapter follows young Billy as he experiences and imagines his childhood world of Des Moines, Iowa. Bill captures the essence of each character in the book with wonderful detail, from parents to friends to teachers -- we all know people just like them all. Each chapter is a treasure and a great read for all.

Note to readers: Read only one chapter a day. You don't want to rush through this gem!

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Westside Story

My primary motivation for buying this book is that I, like the author, grew up in Des Moines in the fifties (and left it for college and a career in the sixties), and I hoped that the book would be a pleasant trip down memory lane. In that regard, the author is largely successful in evoking a time and a place that I knew and loved. Indeed, I was surprised by his recall of Des Moines in the fifties, because when the curtain closed on that decade, Mr. Bryson, by my calculation, was in the third grade (I was in the eleventh).

The book is well written, humorous (the result of more than a little comedic license, I suspect), and triggered some wonderful memories of Des Moines. (The author does not limit himself to Des Moines: he tries, with mixed success, to examine America in the fifties, as well.) But while many of his descriptions of places that I knew from my youth resonated, I could not identify with the author, who grew up in one of the more affluent neighborhoods of the city's Westside, the most affluent side of town, light years from the working class neighborhood I called home. As I read his story, increasingly I heard the voice of a privileged kid; a privileged kid whose arrogance got the better of him when, in describing Riverview amusement park, he had this to say: "Kids from the Riverview district went to a high school so forlorn and characterless that it didn't have a proper name, just a geographical designation: North High. They detested kids from Theodore Roosevelt High School, the outpost of privilege, comfort, and quality footwear for which we were destined." I graduated from East High School, the other Des Moines high school possessed of a mere geographical designation, and I admit to having detested kids from Roosevelt. After reading the above, I was surprised to learn, decades later, that I still do. Despite these feelings, I think that Mr. Bryson and I can agree on this: Des Moines was a great place, and the fifties a wonderful time, in which to grow up.

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