A Twitch Upon The Thread Writers On Fishing

The best fishing writing is never really about fishing, or never only about fishing, and the writers collected in A Twitch Upon the Thread use angling as a way to write about love, loss, faith, and obsession. This is an anthology of fishing writing ranging from medieval times to the present, taking the reader from riverbank to open ocean, from England to New Zealand, from the shore to the depths. Read it and be hooked. Included are contributions from Virginia Woolf, Charles Dickens, Ota Pavel, Arthur Ransome, George Orwell, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Elizabeth Bishop, and dozens more.

This latest collection of walking literature from Notting Hill Editions celebrates the allure of the Continent. On foot the world comes our way. We get close to the Continent’s alpine ranges, arterial rivers, expansive coastlines. Close to its ancient cities and mysterious thoroughfares; and close to the walkers themselves—the Grand Tourers and explorers, strollers and saunterers, on their hikes and quests, parades and urban drifts. Sauntering features sixty walker-writers—classic and current—who roam Europe by foot. Twenty-two countries are traversed. We join Henriette d’Angeville, the second woman to climb Mont Blanc; Nellie Bly roaming the trenches of the First World War; Werner Herzog on a personal pilgrimage through Germany; Hans Christian Andersen in quarantine; Joseph Conrad in Cracow; Rebecca Solnit reimagining change on the streets of Prague; and Robert Macfarlane dropping deep into underground Paris. Contributors include: Patrick Leigh Fermor; John Hillaby; Robert Walser; Henriette d’Angeville; Joseph Roth; Joanna Kavenna; Richard Wright; Werner Herzog; Robert Antelme; George Sand; Rainer Maria Rilke; Robert Macfarlane; Rebecca Solnit; Kate Humble; Nicholas Luard; Edith Wharton; Elizabeth von Armin; Joseph Conrad; D. H. Lawrence; Vernon Lee; Guy Debord, Mark Twain, Thomas Coryat, and more.

"Thoughts on what led a young lad to begin freshwater fishing, and reflections on a 1950s boyhood in Christchurch, the wildlife in that city's rural areas, and the way urbanisation drove it away. Fishing, a thread charts progress from basic trout fishing skills, through the states - catch a fish, catch a big fish, a limit bag, then fly fishing. It reflects fishing as a constant in life, how it helps well-being and gives a positive focus. Attention is drawn to changes observed in our waterways across the years, while angling mentors are highlighted, as the thread continues to the wonderful West Coast, to answer the question, "How on earth did you end up in Greymouth?" The tale relates experiences west of the alps, dips into the author's 'Coastlines' column in The Fishing Paper and features various mates from days out there doing it. Expeditions to high country mountain lakes, deep sea fishing many kilometres out in the Tasman and lots of waterways in-between. It rounds out with encouragement to read the written word (naming some helpful writers) and for people to think about the way we treat our waterways, in the hope they will still be able to follow the thread."--Back cover.

From award winning novelist and journalist David Profumo comes a dazzling work about the restorative power of nature and finding joy in simple pleasures. 'David Profumo has fished everywhere man and boy, and come back with his creel crammed with adventures and misadventures - a memoir for every fisherman's bookshelf.' Tom Stoppard It is often said there is more to the experience of fishing than the mere catching of fish, and in this evocative, wide-ranging memoir he explores the delights and mysteries of one of mankind's most ancient pursuits. As we move from the Highland waters of his childhood and into his adult travels from the Arctic Circle to the South Seas, The Lightning Thread unpeels this idiosyncratic subject, and shows how it embraces folklore, poetry, magic, drink and disaster. By turns a lyrical celebration of the natural world and also the quirkiness of human nature itself, this is a hymn to the great happiness that pursuing his life's passion has brought the author. In exuberant prose of warmth, wit and lightly worn erudition, this is a future classic from one of our finest writers - across forty countries and sixty years, one man's quest for perfection. 'With wit, quiet craft, and a lifetime's store of piscatorial wisdom, Profumo draws us into his paradise.' Luke Jennings, author of the Killing Eve novels 'A fabulous confection of history, biology, philosophy and memoir...spiked with wit and crafted with precision and style.' Loyd Grossman 'An angling master and a dazzling writer. Everyone remotely interested in fishing, or writing, would love this book.' Prue Leith 'The Lightning Thread is a delicious account of a lifetime spent among interesting fish, people and places by a compulsive angler who seems to have forgotten nothing. Unimaginable that any fisherman could put it down.' Thomas McGuane, author of The Longest Silence

A delightful selection of articles by the ever-popular A. A. Milne, many of which haven't been in print for decades. Introduced by the prize-winning children's author Frank Cottrell Boyce, this volume brings Milne's brilliant non-fiction back to the spotlight. A. A. Milne was a successful writer long before the classic Winnie-the-Pooh stories made him famous. Milne had a talent for regularly turning out a thousand whimsical words on lost hats and umbrellas, golf, married life, cheap cigars, and any amount of life’s little difficulties. This anthology, spanning four decades of Milne’s life, includes his fiercely argued writings on pacifism. Happy Half-Hours features the very best of A. A. Milne in one delightful volume. “Milne’s gift to write amusingly about the most trivial things is a kind of blessing. The kind that can put you back together again when all else fails.” —Frank Cottrell-Boyce, from his introduction

"You'll meet eccentric shore workers, wealthy guests who arrive by yacht and floatplane, as well as essential guides Big Jake, Lucky Petersen, Vop and Wet Lenny. . . . A deadpan narrative keeps the absurdity coming as earnest RCMP, FBI and Fisheries officers encounter the salmon-obsessed denizens of the island resort. This book is a keeper." —Western Mariner A colourful portrait of life in an eccentric fishing village on the BC coast. After spending fifteen years as a fishing guide on the BC coast, David Giblin decided that the offbeat people and places he encountered during that colourful period in his life had to be preserved. Like any good fishing story, wherein the fish seem to grow faster after they are dead, the forty-seven interconnected narratives in what eventually became The Codfish Dream took on a life of their own. The result is a series of hilarious, strange, keenly observed, true (or mostly true) stories of Giblin’s experiences, held together by a thread of international intrigue that affects everyone in the small community of Stuart Island over one eventful summer, when FBI agents visit the island to investigate insider trading. The Codfish Dream is an unforgettable book imbued with an undeniable sense of place and time.

Cyclogeography is about the bicycle in the cultural imagination and also a portrait of London as seen from the saddle. In the great tradition of the psychogeographers, Jon Day attempts to depart from the map and reclaim the streets of the city. Informed by several grinding years spent as a bicycle courier, he lifts the lid on the solitary life of the courier. Traveling the unmapped byways, shortcuts, and urban edgelands, couriers are the declining, invisible workforce of the city. The parcels they deliver keep things running. For those who survive the crushing toughness of the job, the bicycle can become what holds them together.