I think this is a great idea to marry songs with the story. The construction in the end was a bit lacking and it didn't flow into a cohesive story. I really wanted to give it more stars but just didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would given that I am an avid fisherman and was really looking forward to reading this book. ( )

I liked the idea of this book, using lyrics from different songs to tell a story, but I feel it fell short of its goal. Some of the chapters were forced causing the story to lose continuity. I found myself distracted away from the story trying to think of what song the line was from. ( )

I requested this for my husband to read. He is an avid fly fisherman. The book was not what I expected, but if one enjoys music also they will like this little volume. My husband found it interesting, but not all that informative. ( )

I honestly feel a little bad about saying this, but ... geez, what a ridiculous little volume. The book is a vanity-press undertaking by a self-promoting venture capitalist who may have watched "A River Runs Through It" once too often back in the 90s, and who apparently felt that getting a place in Montana and playing around with a fishing pole offered a way to give some meaning to that existence. The prose that comes out of that premise is stilted and purplish, reading like a bad Norman Maclean parody and failing in any effort to show an understanding or a connection with a landscape and its waters and its human traditions.

The volume's intended hook was the linking of that story with a playlist ... something that would have been a cool idea if it had been executed well. All the author apparently did, though, was awkwardly jimmy a series of song titles into the body of the narrative, without bothering to think about how or whether the song actually connects with the story itself. The appendix describing the songs is actually fairly solid, but trying to somehow relate the selected songs to the narrative is an exercise in futility, and the appendix is no help there. If you end up with a copy of this book, my advice would be to skip the story entirely and just read the musical trivia in the appendix. ( )

I'm a huge fan of fly fishing books. In fact, I devour them. However, this book was a huge disappointment for me. I'm going to get into some spoilers, so be forewarned!
The book is basically a super short (60 pages) story of a man with a ranch in Montana, who is after a big trout. Other than the idea of making an entire book about this one little story, okay so far.
Where I really had a problem with the book is in the author's attempt to link the story to a song playlist. Again, not in itself, a bad idea. He gives you a playlist to listen along with as you read the story. BUT! The author can give you, at times, three songs to listen to in the course of ONE SENTENCE! No one on Earth can possibly read that slow! And the songs are all over the map, in many many genres. No possible connections to pull the song into the sentences that I could understand. Also disturbing was the author's attempts to include the name of the song in the sentence. It was just all rather absurd and off-putting.
I cannot recommend this book. Sorry. ( )