Notes from a Small Island, by Bill Bryson (Black, Swan, £6.99 in UK)

Probably Paul Theroux began the genre of looking for the exotic near at hand as well as far away, and of travelling through the most unglamorous familiar places in search of colour and copy. Bill Bryson, who is American by origin but domiciled in England, went about Britain by, public transport, carrying little more than a suitcase, and apparently moved about according to day to day whim more than by overall plan. A competent journalistic writer, such as he obviously is, will generally find something somewhere to write about, and Bryson found plenty, though it is all pitched in rather a low key with a few moments of farce. Readable, though in a rather desultory way, and leaving curiously little aftertaste.