Will Bill Bryson tackle the Arab world next?

Travel humorist Bill Bryson has written about America, Europe, Australia and Africa, but now it looks like he has sights set on the Arab world. Maybe. It’s actually hard to tell when you read the Guardian article that broke this news. The title of the article, after all, is “Bryson books a wry look at the Arabs” — but in the same article, Bryson suggests he might go to Canada instead. “It is much, much easier for me to make fun of people in wealthy countries like Canada,” he says. “I have a problem writing my kind of book about Third World countries.”

Personally, I hope Bryson gives Canada a miss and heads for Arab lands, since the travel-lit world could use another lighthearted look at the Middle East (the best such book in the last couple decades — Tony Horwitz’s Baghdad Without a Map, is over a dozen years old now).