When you secure yourself a table at the sunlight-flooded coffee shop at Borders, overlooking the modest spire of the Northern Suburban Church and the uninspiring mien of Stein Mart, trying to find a little corner of peace on this summer-adjacent Saturday on which you have been stood up by not one, but two men, to ruminate about how it was thus, Bill Bryson’s “Notes from a Small Island” is the last book you should choose to read. You were perhaps going for sombre. What you end up is being this bundle of unholy mirth and almost toppling over in the effort to laugh silently so as not to make a spectacle of yourself. I like Bill Bryson. I found his “Short History of Nearly Everything” the kind of science book I wished I had in school (he explains Avagadro number as the number of popcorn kernels required to cover all of US nine miles deep!). His “Made in America,” a densely packed account of American history examined through a linguistics prism, was unputdownable. I love his breezy style, h