I wasn’t looking to read a book. My goal was to use books to gather information. But despite my best efforts I was turning page after page, laughing, and getting a lot more than fishing tips.

All thanks to John Gierach.

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As a child I was a vociferous reader. Books assigned in school were merely speedbumps on a road paved with stacks of books checked out from the library. If the program hadn’t had a cap, I could have sustained myself on coupons earned from Pizza Hut’s Book It initiative. But as is often the case, childlike ambition was quickly crushed by the burdens of teenage years. And by burdens, I mean angst, girls, and a general 13-17 malaise. Those factors, along with the requisite forced reports which accompanied the few books that  remained, stymied any last literary pursuits.

But for a burgeoning fly fisher in a time before the internet’s ubiquity, there were only so many options to learn about angling. Saturday morning ESPN only lasted a few hours. The local fly shop was an hour away, which wasn’t local enough for someone without a car. This left the library.

My library had a remarkable amount of fishing books. At least two shelves were devoted to fly fishing. Within these two shelves, a great diversity of topics and genres were covered. Casting technique. Where to fish in Virginia. How to tie classic dry flies. Izaak Walton. And, for some reason, a book with sex in the title. As a teenager, I was interested in fly casting. But obviously, Gierach’s Sex, Death, and Fly-Fishing caught my attention.

Suspect initial motives aside, that book drew me back into reading.

Fly fishing is certainly the subject and the setting of his books. But it is the observations about community, culture, and life  that make the stories effective. Plus, there is heart.  And the humor: the well-crafted, building, laugh out loud humor.

While the books on tactics, approach, and local streams were instrumental in building a foundation for  how I approached fly fishing, Gierach’s books helped me give words to the why. I hadn’t grown up in and around fly fishing. Living in suburbia, there wasn’t a local angling hangout where I could absorb traditions by observation or osmosis. I learned to appreciate musty corners in fly shops, familiar contours in rod grips, and long drives with good friends.

And, in a time when I needed it, I rediscovered my appreciation for good books.

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I don’t own a single John Gierach book. I can say with certainty that I’ve read everything he wrote in the 80s, 90s, and 00s. Some of my favorites, like Dances with Trout, Standing in a River Waving a Stick, and  Sex, Death, and Fly-Fishing have been read and reread numerous  times. I’ve seen these exact volumes at virtually every used book store I wander into.

Maybe it is the collector in me, but when I buy these books – books that matter – I want them to be mine. The page corners, the dust jackets, the “library of” embossing: mine. More likely, it is the perfectionist in me looking for symmetry. Simon & Schuster has reprinted the majority of his canon in the same format.  But they are paperbacks. And his most recent title,  Dumb Luck and the Kindness of Strangers, doesn’t conform to the aesthetics.

Perhaps I should get over it. Or perhaps I should just go back to my library, sit down, and read a familiar fly fishing book.