Read a good book lately

I'm a terrible fisherman, I don't have the patience for it and I can rarely bring myself to eat something that I've killed.

And that's why I never read Norman Maclean's A River Runs Through It. Fly fishing is pretty alien to an urbanised Singaporean. Even when Robert Redford turned it into a movie with Brad Pitt in it, I still wasn't interested.

And then I came across the book's 25th anniversary edition in the library. It had a quiet cover with a simple pencil and ink drawing of a fly on it. Always one to judge a book by its cover, I borrowed it. Actually, I took it because it has a foreword by Annie Proulx and I was more interested in what she had to say because I've always enjoyed her books.

And I was -- err -- hooked. Line. And sinker. Except that I don't think there are sinkers in fly fishing. Right from the opening line -- "In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing."

In my -- err -- book, that's an opening line that ranks up with Austen's "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife." Funny how you can remember word for word a good opener of a book you first read 25 years ago. Guess I fall for a good pick up line anytime.

A River Runs Through It is one of the most beautifully lyrical books I've read in a long while. I just wonder how it was possible to capture it into a movie. Even if it's Robert Redford.