A prolific fly-fishing expert and nature writer dispenses hard-won field-and-stream wisdom.
Few writers, if any, have written about the implications of fly-fishing as eloquently as Ernest Hemingway in The Big Two-Hearted River, but Gierach (Fool’s Paradise, 2008, etc.) brings detailed insight and a sense of humor to the subject. With a title taken from an Annie Dillard quote (“There is no shortage of good days; it’s good lives that are hard to come by”), the book is a collection of fondly remembered fishing trips and random fishing-related topics, along with miscellaneous other narrative odds and ends thrown in the mix: fishing and firewood, fly-fishing versus bait fishing, fly-fishing’s countercultural history, salmon fishing, the experience of fishing with guides and even a random chapter on the perils of combining fishing with the pain-in-the-neck necessity of book tours. The author’s strength is his obvious obsessive drive to find the perfect fishing spot and make the perfect cast; his travels take him from his home state of Colorado to Canada, Wisconsin, Washington State and Mexico. While his fisherman’s jargon can get a bit too specialist-sounding for non-expert fisherman, Gierach’s good for plenty of man-of-the-soil maxims. On the subject of fishing on film: “Fishing is like sex in that it can be anywhere from deeply meaningful to just plain fun to participate in, but it’s oddly boring to watch in videos.” Though his thoughts occasionally veer off on unforeseeable tangent, even these detours often have a certain charm: One minute he’s talking about hooking wild trout in public water; the next, he’s on to some old-fashioned transcendentalist contemplation on the frivolity of material wealth. Gierach’s genial campfire manner and woodsy witticisms should hook more than just the average fishing fanatic.
Pub Date: May 17, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-7432-9175-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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IN THE NEWS
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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