Geirach on books

I'm going to throw up a quote every now and then from favorite books. This is from John Gierach's "Fool's Paradise". Every outdoorsperson should read Gierach, whether they flyfish or not. If you don't flyfish, you'll probably get some idea of the appeal and you won't be bored. If you do, you'll learn something.

For this first time, two quotes from a chapter on books:

"Rereading a favorite book is one of the great literary pleasures, and doing it far from home in strange surroundings is sort of comforting, with its recalled passages and the familiar voice of the author."

"I guess my reading has always been haphazard but passionate, sort of like my fishing. I decided early on that it's perfectly okay to like a book that a certain kind of reader would call 'unimportant' or to honestly not get an acknowledged classic (that kind of book Mark Twain once defined as 'often praised, but seldom read'). Neither means you're stupid."