River Music: A Fly Fisher's Four Seasons

Rating:
Summary: Editorial Review by Charles Rangeley-Wilson from The Field
Review: Two years ago Jim Babb published a collection of fishing essays in a book called Crosscurrents. I enjoyed that book more than any book I'd read on fly-fishing in some while. When I get Gray's through the door, the magazine Babb edits - a kind of US version of The Field in camouflage with adverts for bigger utility vehicles - I always turn first to his fishing essay. Babb elevates the ordinary and makes accessible the far-fetched. He can get inside your head and say something to which you'll think "oh yeah, that's right, that's how I see it" - only Babb expresses it for you.
In River Music you will find essays on Riverside cuisine and theories on social grouping according to whether you drink beer or spirits when camped by a river. There's also an exploration of a mid-life crisis played out while fishing and a brilliant story of ice-fishing.
The theme that links it all is the heritage of a musical father, Babb's tinnitus that sounds like a river in symphony and accompanies him wherever he goes, and the endless and soothing music that rivers make. This is a good book and I recommend you read it.
Charles Rangeley-Wilson