Reviews for The Best of Zane Grey, Outdoorsman: Hunting and Fishing Tales

The average rating for The Best of Zane Grey, Outdoorsman: Hunting and Fishing Tales based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-08-05 00:00:00 Robert Dower Zane Grey was a man of the outdoors and had his share of adventures. His true fishing stories are amazing. It seems he loved to catch all fish and was not a snob about it, whether it was for bass, trout, salmon, bonefish, tarpon, all of the large billfish, including the marlins, sailfish and swordfish as well as tuna. The money he spent on all his worldwide travels included buying and maintaining very large yachts and many other boats, establishing camps in Tahiti, Oregon, Catalina Island and others, just amazes me. I would not have thought that proceeds from his writing of western novels would have nearly been enough to fund his many travels. I don't know if he was born into wealth. And we can't forget his special hunting trips either. George Reiger filled in some key points for each story which was important in getting much more out of the stories.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-09-28 00:00:00 Lori Anastasio "Eat the Document" has an interesting premise -- Mary and Bobby, two sixties radicals, are forced to separate and go underground when their scheme to blow up the summer home of an executive whose company produces napalm (and/or Agent Orange) goes awry, killing an innocent victim. Thirty years later, both are living (unbeknownst to one another) in the Seattle area. Mary, who now goes by the name Louise, is raising a 16-year old son, Jason. Bobby, now known as Nash, runs an alternative book store for his friend Henry, who is dying of cancer. Mary has always intended to tell Jason the truth, and turn herself in, "as soon as he is ready". But Jason is a smart kid. What if he figures things out for himself first? Spiotta develops the story beautifully, essentially using it as a vehicle to explore questions of identity, as well as providing a fairly astute analysis of the 60s and 90s counter-culture. The novel is not as tightly constructed as it could have been -- a couple of story arcs (Henry's deteriorating health and the glib explanation offered for it, the May-December attraction between Miranda and Nash) added little. And while the main characters were believable and interesting, some of the minor characters (Miranda's boyfriend Josh, Jason's loser geek neighbor Gage, Mary/Caroline's travel companion Berry) were just cartoons. But these are occasional lapses - for the most part, Spiotta tells the story with subtlety and skill. Intentionally or not, it's the story of Mary and Jason that forms the emotional heart of the book; Nash is not unsympathetic, but he's not very interesting either. The book raises some very interesting questions, and Spiotta is an engaging and skillful writer. For those who enjoy that kind of thing, there are regular doses of "High Fidelity"-style geekishness, mainly centering on Jason's obsessive interest in -- The Beach Boys. Spiotta delivers these with such brilliance that it's hard not to be beguiled - the choice of the Beach Boys as the focus of Jason's obsession is inspired. It also allows the hilarious scene in which, to Jason's mounting horror, a slightly buzzed Mary reminisces about the time she danced with Dennis Wilson in a grungy surfer bar in Venice Beach. Despite its minor flaws, I really liked "Eat the Document", for the skill with which Spiotta unfolds the story, for the pitch-perfect portrayal of the relationship between Mary and Jason, for the acuteness of her examination of the counter-culture of both generations, and for the interesting questions it raises about the construction of personal identity in the U.S. Predictably enough, I wasn't particularly keen on the whole demonization* of the big pharmaceutical company story arc, but I can't necessarily criticize it as coming out of left field. * When I was typing up this review in the horrible Microsoft Works word processor, it refused to allow me to type this word, changing it each time to "deionization". Is this some kind of new sinister automatic bowdlerization feature that is being included with Microsoft programs? It was really creepy.