As much as I like shooting and hunting, fishing is right up there too. I could wax poetic about the whole thing but I’ll spare you. I just wish some of my fellow outdoor writers would extend the same courtesy.
“A River Runs Through It” is a beautiful book but it forever screwed things up for those of us that like to fish with fly rods. Suddenly it wasn’t enough to just fish. You had to be solving the grand mysteries of nature, fighting through your midlife crisis, creating a quasi-religious belief system that would make a Scientologist blush with embarrassment and otherwise bore the hell out of anyone in earshot.
I’m reminded of this every time another one of these…books…crosses my desk for review. In this case it is “The Last Best Day” by Michael Altizer. As soon as I saw the subtitle (A Trout Fisher’s Perspective) I knew I wouldn’t even open it up so as to avoid giving myself an uncontrollable twitch.
To my dismay, however, I flipped the book over and saw this pullquote in oversized type: “God didn’t have to create trout; He could have settled for bass…”
If I weren’t in the office, I’d pour myself a drink.