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Easily my favourite Bryson book and one I happily recommend as a light hearted introduction to Britain.

Bryson is the perfect coffee and a doughnut writer. You can read him while concentrating on your coffee and it will pass your time pleasantly, maybe you won't gain anything from this exercise, no wisdom, no insight, no sudden new understanding but he won't cost you anything either (view spoiler)[ apart from an expanding doughnut packed body and mindNotes from a Big Island is the epitome of his art - the collected, USA themed, journalism that he wrote when he returned to America after a spell living in the UK (view spoiler)[ before bouncing back to the UK (hide spoiler)]. Short, easy reading, and mildly comforting, even if lacking in nutrition for the hungry brain.

In this book I've always particularly enjoyed his recollections from his first visit to the UK and his reflections of working in newspapers in the pre-Wapping days. There are some nice vignettes of editors shocked to discover the people who were working for them, the arcane process of collecting expenses - which with careful consideration could be worked out to be more than the weekly wage, and the terrible days when this all came to an end as a legion of sun tanned Australian accountants descended on the newspaper office with forensic thoroughness to assess the true level of wear and tear on pencils and to count the stock of typewriter ribbons. (hide spoiler)]