Your body is a wonderland

Bryson takes us on a body-part-by-body-part tour, with chapters devoted to the brain, the guts and the skin and hair

During the few moments it will take you to read this review, your body will be extremely busy.

Your lungs will inhale and exhale about 300 sextillion oxygen molecules.

Your bone marrow will create some 200 million red blood cells.

Your eyebrows will serve as a buffet for thousands of tiny mites that, as Bill Bryson puts it, munch on our cells as if they are a “giant crusty bowl of Corn Flakes.”

I like to remind myself of these mind-boggling (and occasionally disgusting) facts because I so often take my body for granted.

One of the strengths of Bryson’s