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YOUR FESTIVE SEASON READING – SORTED

REVISION OF A MAN - MATT SMYTHE

There’s a good chance that the last time you read any poetry was back in high school. If that’s the case, it’s time to revisit the genre and, in our opinion, there’s no better poet to start with than Matt Smythe. Angler, hunter, veteran, lover, father, son, husband, Smythe, to put it bluntly, has lived. In Revision of a Man, he revisits and dissects with typical searing honesty and clarity the tropes of masculinity that have shaped his life and may well feature in yours too. As great poets do, with a simple turn of phrase or a moment glimpsed, Smythe’s poems can bring on real moments of emotion and connection. That’s the experience we had picking up and putting down Revision of a Man. Regardless of where you come from or the tack your life has taken, we wager this collection is going to have a similar impact on you. deadreckoningco.com

YOU’LL LOVE THIS IF THE VERY ACT OF BEING ON THE WATER CAN, AT TIMES, SEEM LIKE A POEM TO YOU.

THE FISHERMEN AND THE DRAGON - KIRK W. JOHNSON

From the author of The Feather Thief, the smash hit book about villainous flytying obsessives and a natural history heist, comes a new book The Fishermen and the Dragon: Fear, Greed, and a Fight for Justice on the Gulf Coast. Before writing The Feather Thief, US Army veteran Johnson founded The List Project, to help re-settle Iraqi allies, and his new book investigates tensions and deals with both refugees and fishing. Featuring xenophobic lies (that are all too common even today), the KKK, villains and heroes, The Fishermen and the Dragon dives into the ethnic collision between Vietnamese refugees who settled and began fishing in Galveston Bay in the 1980s and the racist locals who sought to chase them out. amazon.com

You’ll love this if you enjoyed the pace and depth Johnson brought to The Feather Thief.

THE RIVER YOU TOUCH - CHRIS DOMBROWSKI

We were huge fans of Chris Dombrowski’s Body of Water (acclaimed as a classic by none other than Jim Harrison), which followed the Montana author, guide and writing teacher’s infatuation with bonefish and his relationship with legendary guide Bahamas David Pinder. So, when The River You Touch was released recently, we were over the moon. This is Dombrowski’s memoir, but it’s more than that. It’s a meditation on fatherhood, on carving out a life driven first and foremost by passions rather than paychecks (as hard as that may have been for Dombrowski and his wife Mary, a kindergarten teacher) and a lyrical love affair with the rivers, mountains and landscapes of Montana. milkweed.org

You’ll love this if you have ever thought of rejecting conventional career trajectories to do what you truly want to do... e.g. fish.

FLY FISHING WORLD - LUBOS ROZA

Now available in English, Fly Fishing World by multiple world fly fishing champion Lubos Roza from the Czech Republic, covers an array of techniques, equipment and flies used in competitive fly-fishing. At the same time, multiple gold medal winner Roza also shares a number of personal stories from major tournaments. Written in a very accessible way, the book offers valuable information for anglers of all levels, from the novice to the experienced competition angler. It is well illustrated with a number of high-quality photos and highly detailed diagrams covering rigging, casting, flies and troubleshooting. xfactorangling.co.za

You’ll love this if you want to learn from the best of the best and become a better angler.

DELICATE PRESENTATIONS - ANDREW FOWLER

We’ve been lusting for some proper fly-fishing story-telling and in Delicate Presentations, Andrew Fowler (author of Stippled Beauties) delivers. The setting is the streams and still waters of the bucolic Natal Midlands. The characters include “Popjoy”, “Peabody” and “The Oaf,” a ribald collection of flyfishing obsessives who, we’re pretty sure, we might know. The stories cover their trout fishing hijinks and adventures across KwaZulu-Natal. Well-written, funny, poignant and with highly relatable fishing and characters, this is Fowler’s best work yet. Available to the public from 19 November at truttablog.com

You’ll love this if (A) you enjoy trout-focused fly fishing storytelling a la Tom Sutcliffe and (B) if you enjoyed the rollicking tales and ribald characters of Spud, the semibiographical book by John van de Ruit, detailing life as seen through the eyes of a boy at a prestigious KwaZulu-Natal boarding school. If the characters in Spud took up fly fishing and stayed in KZN for a few decades, they could easily feature in Delicate Presentations.