Book Review: The Fish's Eye by Ian Frazier

[Zeno]

This book is a paperback book. It has pages and text and two covers and a binding and the usual blurbs, acclaim, and pedestrian drivel that inhabit all book covers and the first few pages. It is small and neat as books go and at about 160 pages is not weighty or big enough to scare many people. There is a picture of half a fish on the cover, a rainbow trout possibly, but only the front half is shown, as if the ass end of a fish is uninteresting.

The text is a series of essays arranged in chronological order. It is not a chapter and verse type book. It cost less than fourteen dollars, including shipping; from a place that may or may not be called Amazon dot com, period. Which I add for emphasis.

Now, is the book worth reading? Yes. Is the book worth reading if you do not fish? Yes. Will you get “more” from the book if you are a fisher-type-person, especially the type called fly fishing fanatic? Yes. Is the book always about fishing? No. This is good. In addition, humor runs, like a small brook, throughout the text, occasionally jumping out mid steam and hitting you over the head, which is also good.

This is an excellent book. Much of it is very well written in an engaging, witty style. Ian mentions places from New York, Ohio, and New Jersey to Montana and from city fishing to winter fishing, freezing his butt on the Bitterroot River. And he also rattles on about the outdoors or owners of fishing shops or eccentric Homo sapiens beating about in the woods. One of the best essays is called, A Lovely Sort of Lower Purpose. The essay is not typical of most “outdoor” writing but it is the most insightful and uncanny piece that I have read in many a year.

The Fish’s Eye lives up to most of the blather printed on the back cover. I give it 9 fish out of 10.

Buy it, read it, then use it for bait.

Disclamier
[I also posted this review, before some modifications were made, in the Other Topics Forum. I decided to also post it in this forum because I can obviously annoy more people over here. If I every review a poker book, I plan on posting the review in the Psychology Forum]

Le Misanthrope