A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson

First, a disclaimer: I have hiked a considerable portion of the Appalachian trail in the South, I am a volunteer with the Georgia Appalachian Trail Club, and I live in north Georgia. I also belong to and support the Appalachian Trail Conference. If you are going to read my opinion of this book, I may as well be honest with you - I love hiking the Appalachian Trail, and I spend time and money supporting it.

Bill Bryson is a man who sees his glass half-empty. In this book he trashes the U. S. Forest Service, the National Park Service, the Army Corps of Engineers, and the Appalachian Trail Conference. He denigrates every locale that he hikes: North Georgia, Gatlinburg, Hiawassee, the Great Smoky Mountains, Pennsylvania, and his own adopted hometown. He dwells on the dangers of bears, panthers, weather, and attacks on hikers. Does he ever say anything good about anybody or any institution?

In the character of Katz, Bryson describes some of the worst behavior you see on the trail: he routinely litters, with aluminum cans, cigarette butts, and discarded food and equipment, yet Bryson makes no effort to correct him or point out how he is wrong.

I am sure Bryson went into this project knowing that he wanted to write a book, with the intention of gathering material for the book, and yet he did not finish his hike. So he has the effrontery to present himself as some sort of authority, someone qualified to write a travel memoir about the AT, even though he gives up his hike every time the challenge is too much for him.

So if you are looking for a memoir about a successful hike of the AT, don't bother with this pseudo memoir by a great pretender. Instead, go to the ATC website, where you will find a large number of excellent hiking memoirs for sale.