Tag Archives: Book review

The Extraordinary Complexity of a Fishing Life: A Review of Janet Messineo’s Casting into the Light (2019)

10 Sunday Jul 2022

Posted by in Book Reviews, Writings

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by Hank Veggian

What holds a book “together?” Many readers will look for a theme or a message, a “take-away” that makes a “point” over many pages. I call them the miners, because they look to extract something useful from a book. Other readers read for the story, and take pleasure in moving with the tides. I call them the swimmers, because they go with the flow. A third type of reader: the editor. These readers take pleasure from a book’s style, and admire how the words are assembled, above all.

There are always exceptions to the types, and other types. Can they all co-exist? How many personalities can inhabit a reader? What about a single life? And can they all be captured in a book? Janet Messineo’s Casting into the Light had me wondering about these questions. Did the book answer them? Maybe, and indirectly, but not because it sought to. And that’s why I enjoyed reading it. It’s a raw book in some ways, without major goals or some splendid architecture to showcase. It’s nonetheless a collection of stories that add up in some way to a portrait of a life, and an interesting one at that.

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Lead into Gold: A Review of Kenn Oberrecht’s “The Angler’s Guide to Jigs and Jigging”(1982)

30 Tuesday Jan 2018

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Lead into Gold: A Review of Kenn Oberrecht’s “The Angler’s Guide to Jigs and Jigging”(1982)

 

People sometimes ask me “Hank, why do you read these old fishing books?” My answer is “Shakespeare.” Awkward silence generally follows, or someone accuses me of being a professor.

Let me explain (that’s what professors do, after all). First, there is no such thing as an “old book.” Every book is new the first time we read it. And just like any other book, we ease into it, fit our mind to its author’s style in the early pages, slip into ideas and characters that it presents, etc. We all remember the first time we read Hamlet in high school. It was like learning a new language. If you stuck it out you were rewarded with a mighty drama about choice and regret.

Second, there is no such thing as a “fishing book.“ That’s just a phrase we use to describe writings composed by people who spend a lot of time holding fishing tackle around water. What we call “fishing books” are really just books that explain how a person thinks through a specific type of problem. The central premise of every fishing book is basically “How can I trick and catch a living animal that cannot directly be seen (most of the time).” As such, fishing books are really books about the art of tricking an aquatic animal. Or, if you prefer, books written by people who think too much about fishing.

Does thinking ever get “old?” I hope not. And what would life be without choices, or regrets? I wouldn’t want to know. For one, the fishing stories would be few and far between.

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