A River Runs Through It

5 stars for the title novella; 3 stars for the other two stories. It's been over twenty-five years since Robert Redford turned the title story in this collection into a film that starred the young rising actor, Brad Pitt. The movie also starred the canyons and rivers and fish of Montana: But I was mo......more

It took Maclean most of his life to write his first book, and it reads as if he’d been saving every beautiful observation about life, family and fly fishing for one unforgettable burst. I never tire of reading it.......more

Growing up, while the rest of my family hated the movie, I have always been inexplicably attracted to its ideas. Whenever it was on the TV, I had to sneak down to the basement to watch it. The film is one of the few out there that can speak to my innermost soul. I finally read the book a few years a......more

I really, really fucking hate to fish, but. Can you end a sentence with "but?" Did I write that correctly with the quotation marks? Do you see what I'm doing here? I'm using humor to avoid talking about my real feelings. When I first read this book I was on a cross-country flight. I was just finishi......more

This is one of my favorite of all books, best known for the novella that opens the book and provides its title. It may be a book that could only have been written by someone in his seventies, as Maclean was when he began it. On the surface, it's a story about Maclean, his gifted but fundamentally fl......more