Book Review: Tiny Stations

Tiny Stations: An Uncommon Odyssey Through Britain's Railway Request Stops
Dixe Wills
Trains, travel

It's even more like the usual than usual. To appreciate Tiny Stations, you'll need:

• A high tolerance for a peculiarly English form of arch humor. Possibly Dixe Willis was savaged by Bill Bryson's Notes From a Small Island at an impressionable age, but he raises smiles where Bryson achieves guffaws.
• At least a passing familiarity with the British landscape. Tiny Stations is entirely undefiled by color photographs, and the few black-and-white images are small and a bit grainy. In a book that's more or less defined as "what I saw when I got off at Little-Snoodlington-in-the-Quagmire", good visuals are a must.
• A deep affection, not merely for trains--any fool could have that--not merely for train travel, but for the idea of train travel. Taking train trips can be jolly good fun. Reading about other people's train trips is not an endeavor that should be undertaken without plenty of time and a high tolerance for discursiveness.

There must be other people on this side of the Atlantic with all three qualifications, but probably not many of them. I liked Tiny Stations fairly well, actually, but it's possible that you actually must be of the British persuasion to fully grok this style of thing. A people who continue to believe, in the face of all common sense, in the existence of a sport ("cricket") which includes "full bungers", "silly midwicket", and "googlies" are clearly made of sterner stuff than you and I.

I should add, furthermore, that a relaxed attitude towards strict factual accuracy might be of assistance here. Wills swallows some blatantly urban-legend (or actually rural-legend, but it's the same thing really) anecdotes without a blink, and his personal commitment to truth in the face of a good story is open to question--he questions it himself. 

If you're one of the dozen or so Americans whose response to the above is "Well, I've got to read that!", please drop me a line, if your ward attendants are willing. We'll have a lot in common.