The lure of fly-fishing by a delightful essayist who's becoming one of the most popular and respected angling writers in the country. A resident of Longmont, Colorado, Gierach (Even Brook Trout Get the Blues, 1992; Sex, Death and Fly-Fishing, 1990) does most of his fishing in the streams and rivers of the Rocky Mountains. He and a few friends follow one such stream to 11,000 feet above sea level to ``find and fish a certain alpine lake'' reputed to have large cutthroat trout. They wandered, he says, for six or seven miles, not fishing the right lake until after they'd spent the day joyously casting on a scenic pond ``as sterile as a stone toilet bowl.'' On yet another Colorado pond, Gierach tries to ignore a ``purplish-black, almost eggplant-colored'' thundercloud, settling for an afternoon in the truck, watching the bass rise in the rain: ``When you have to hold your hat with one hand and dodge your streamer fly, it's too windy.'' He describes a long-awaited trip to Scotland in quest of Atlantic salmon; fishing a ``private river,'' he and his friends ``drank the good whiskey they don't export to America and, of course, our party of five fished hard for six days and caught one fish among us.'' In 1991 Gierach participated in the First Annual Colorado Fly-Casting Open tournament—his first, and last, try at ``competitive fishing''—during which he placed ``dead third and came very close to wishing ill on a friend,'' but stopped short of hoping for that friend to ``slip on a wet rock and break his casting arm.'' He happily recounts his pursuit of a ``large, fat rainbow'' during a Pale Morning Dun mayfly hatch on a catch- and-release local river. Defiantly floating in a hard-to-cast-to pool about four yards square, the fish eluded Gierach for two days, but the angler remembers it as a time when he summoned all his skill and knowledge and got ``everything right.'' Informative and sassy, these well-crafted gems sparkle even in a genre known for quality writing. (Illustrated by Glenn Wolff—not seen)
Pub Date: April 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-671-77924-9
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Doesn’t dig as deep as it could, but offers a captivating look at the NBA’s greatest era.
NBA legends Bird and Johnson, fierce rivals during their playing days, team up on a mutual career retrospective.
With megastars LeBron James and Kobe Bryant and international superstars like China’s Yao Ming pushing it to ever-greater heights of popularity today, it’s difficult to imagine the NBA in 1979, when financial problems, drug scandals and racial issues threatened to destroy the fledgling league. Fortunately, that year marked the coming of two young saviors—one a flashy, charismatic African-American and the other a cocky, blond, self-described “hick.” Arriving fresh off a showdown in the NCAA championship game in which Johnson’s Michigan State Spartans defeated Bird’s Indiana State Sycamores—still the highest-rated college basketball game ever—the duo changed the course of history not just for the league, but the sport itself. While the pair’s on-court accomplishments have been exhaustively chronicled, the narrative hook here is unprecedented insight and commentary from the stars themselves on their unique relationship, a compelling mixture of bitter rivalry and mutual admiration. This snapshot of their respective careers delves with varying degrees of depth into the lives of each man and their on- and off-court achievements, including the historic championship games between Johnson’s Lakers and Bird’s Celtics, their trailblazing endorsement deals and Johnson’s stunning announcement in 1991 that he had tested positive for HIV. Ironically, this nostalgic chronicle about the two men who, along with Michael Jordan, turned more fans onto NBA basketball than any other players, will likely appeal primarily to a narrow cross-section of readers: Bird/Magic fans and hardcore hoop-heads.
Doesn’t dig as deep as it could, but offers a captivating look at the NBA’s greatest era.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-547-22547-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
One of the NBA’s 50 greatest players scores another basket—a deeply personal one.
A basketball legend reflects on his life in the game and a life lived in the “nightmare of endlessly repetitive and constant pain, agony, and guilt.”
Walton (Nothing but Net, 1994, etc.) begins this memoir on the floor—literally: “I have been living on the floor for most of the last two and a half years, unable to move.” In 2008, he suffered a catastrophic spinal collapse. “My spine will no longer hold me,” he writes. Thirty-seven orthopedic injuries, stemming from the fact that he had malformed feet, led to an endless string of stress fractures. As he notes, Walton is “the most injured athlete in the history of sports.” Over the years, he had ground his lower extremities “down to dust.” Walton’s memoir is two interwoven stories. The first is about his lifelong love of basketball, the second, his lifelong battle with injuries and pain. He had his first operation when he was 14, for a knee hurt in a basketball game. As he chronicles his distinguished career in the game, from high school to college to the NBA, he punctuates that story with a parallel one that chronicles at each juncture the injuries he suffered and overcame until he could no longer play, eventually turning to a successful broadcasting career (which helped his stuttering problem). Thanks to successful experimental spinal fusion surgery, he’s now pain-free. And then there’s the music he loves, especially the Grateful Dead’s; it accompanies both stories like a soundtrack playing off in the distance. Walton tends to get long-winded at times, but that won’t be news to anyone who watches his broadcasts, and those who have been afflicted with lifelong injuries will find the book uplifting and inspirational. Basketball fans will relish Walton’s acumen and insights into the game as well as his stories about players, coaches (especially John Wooden), and games, all told in Walton’s fervent, witty style.
One of the NBA’s 50 greatest players scores another basket—a deeply personal one.Pub Date: March 8, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4767-1686-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
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