I'd never read anything by Mary Roach before this book but when I heard an opinion that her writing style is similar to that of Bill Bryson - I immediately wanted to try something by her. I was really lucky to spot this on NetGalley and to receive it as an e-book later on.
My Planet is a really short book, it has only 160 pages, and it consists of a number of Roach's essays that have been published in Reader's Digest. The essays touch upon many seemingly mundane topics but she writes in an amazingly hilarious way! She wirtes about her husband, her new house together with new alarm system that she has problems figuring out how to use, family trips and dates with her husband and many many other situations from her everyday life. What they all have in common is the fact that Roach presents herself as a highly awkward human being :) She shows herself struggling through quite embarrassing situations and does that with lots of great sense of humor.
Roach has a gift for puns, word play and witty finishing lines. Her essays read like a dream. There is only one 'but': after you've read five of them, you can predict when the pun is going to be placed, the whole surprise of a great summary is lost because the essays have the exact same pacing/structure. Which is a shame, because I loved the structure at the beginning and later it just became a little tedious. But if you decide to maybe NOT read the whole book in one go but instead read only a few essays today and then return to the book in a week - it might just work for you.
On the whole I have to say that I really like Roach's writing style and would love to try one of her 'regular' books, mostly because I do love her sense of humour. However, I must admit I don't think I would treat her as an equal of Bill Bryson.
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