Rating: 
Summary: Enough Is Enough
Review: I picked up this book based on the reviews and would have to say that I was dissappointed. It's a essentially a character piece with the problem being that the writing is overdescriptive to the point of clumsiness. Middleton's style ends up bogging the book down, and with little in the way of plot, this proves disasterous. If you removed Middleton's descriptions of the color of clouds and the sky alone you'd shorten the book by twenty pages. Look for books by authors that practice a little more descriptive economy and don't write like a seventh grader trying desperately to stretch an anemic thought into a 1000 word essay.
Rating:
Summary: Enough Is Enough
Review: I picked up this book based on the reviews and would have to say that I was dissappointed. It's a essentially a character piece with the problem being that the writing is overdescriptive to the point of clumsiness. Middleton's style ends up bogging the book down, and with little in the way of plot, this proves disasterous. If you removed Middleton's descriptions of the color of clouds and the sky alone you'd shorten the book by twenty pages. Look for books by authors that practice a little more descriptive economy and don't write like a seventh grader trying desperately to stretch an anemic thought into a 1000 word essay.
Rating: 
Summary: One of my ten best of all time!
Review: I read at least five to ten fly-fishing books per year. However, this book should not be considered a fishing only type of book. I too have lent this book to friends who do not fish and they were just as moved as I. A very powerfull book, best read by light of a roaring fire in the woods somewhere. In my top ten books of all time. Harry Middleton, werever you are, tight lines, and beautiful sunsets.
Rating:
Summary: An American Classic
Review: I was fortunate to have purchased a 1st edition of this book in 1996 and consider it to be one of the indispensible books in my personal library. I am a regular volunteer at the local public school and this is the one book I take to the school to read to the high school literature classes every year. This book is not a book about fishing but a book about life. Buy this book for your friends, family, and English teachers, I do!! A book to be treasured, truly an American Classic. Lynn
Rating:
Summary: this is a masterpiece of fiction
Review: I was raised by a legendary flyfishermen of the Northwest and picked up this book for him several years ago. He gave a copy back to me and reading it was a rare joy. This novel is perfectly constructed and written with a poets love of language and image. One caution...the print gets a little blurry toward the end. I can't shake the idea that Redford should film this with Paul Newman.
Rating:
Summary: Middleton makes you smile; makes you think; makes you act.
Review: I've read a good number of books that deal with the subject of fly-fishing, streams, trout and country living, but I've never read one that makes me see the images of my home; home stream; home woods; home folk, quite the way Middleton does; he is superb. Middleton's pen works just like the streams and life he writes about; it wanders, meanders, gurgles, sprits, colors and calls: beckons you to come along - regardless of whether you see where you're going or not. You will gladly follow and are generously rewareded for your efforts. Middleton is such an artist in delivery, that one must be patient in order to see the full palette of his work. It is well worth the wait. The captivation experienced within the color and tale found in Middleton's work, is only the lure for the more meaningful and deep-rooted feelings he exposes and we try so desperately to hide from. The meaning of words like: home, place, belonging, passion, love, devotion, loyalty and the like are all brought to clarity through Middleton's pen. Middleton pens the human condition into hues and shades we canot overlook; cannot run from; they envelop you and gracefully force you to look deep into the soul that makes us who we truly are. This book may be best read after living the first 50 years of ones life; else it's wisdom would most likely be lost. But I surely wish all would read it - at least the first time - early in life, then pick it up again later on; read it again, and drink in the full meaning: drink long and full. If only the simple wisdoms pointed out here could be learned early on ... life would be far more enjoyed, than simply endured. The rest of Middleton's books are equally salient and soulful reminders of what truly matters in life. And chorus the statement eloquently posited here, "The Earth is Enough"; take care of it, there's only one. When it is gone, it's ALL GONE.
Rating: 
Summary: faux faulkner
Review: In his foreword, Russell Chatham writes, "It was shortly after reading Harry Middleton's "The Earth is Enough" that I made the decision to give up flyfishing."
If I'd read the book first, I might never have taken up fly fishing. This book almost makes one want to give up reading. The book is overwritten and under-edited -- like a high school sophomore with a big vocabulary and not enough sense to keep his mouth shut. Belongs in the "Br'er Rabbit Book-of-the Month Club." I didn't learn much about flyfishing -- or anything else -- from the book and when someone asks what I've read lately, I probably won't remember the book. It really is that bad.
Rating:
Summary: Harry Middleton's Best
Review: In the preface to a later book, the late Harry Middleton said he was asked by an young student how much of this books were true. His answer was, "More than I want." This is the story of a young boy growing up in a military family, stationed at a staging area during the Vietnam War. When one of his friends is killed - and Harry badly injured - playing with a grenade they found in the jungle, Harry is packed off to his grandfather, a subsistence farmer in the Ozarks of Arkansas. There, with his grandfather, granduncle and the old American Indian, Elias Wonder, Harry is healed, not just of the trauma of seeing his friend disappear in a "pink mist" but healed as well of a great deal of other things he may not have known ailed him. As Harry learns the rhythms of the land and the mysteries of Starlight Creek from his grandfather and the irascible Elias Wonder, he grows and the reader grows with him. Like David James Duncan's _The River Why_, this is a book about growing up and coming of age, and flyfishing - that "hopeless addiction to trout and the push of water against your legs" - is simply the author's narrative tool. Harry must have been a more patient and willing teenager than I was, or perhaps time has colored over Harry's experience, but there is nothing else to criticize. Beautifully written, exceptionally well told, full of life, sadness, humor, death and understanding. And if flyfishing became an addiction for Harry, that was to haunt him in his later years, well, he was warned and in any event there are far worse fates.
Rating: 
Summary: Emotionally Heavy
Review: Middleton served up all the emotions, from the joys of life and nature to the sorrows of death. I pretty much love all books about fly fishing. This one will definitely be added to my "for the love of fly fishing" list. My favorite quote from the book is the one by Uncle Albert, who said, "Take up the fly rod, and the shotgun, and before you know it, you're an outcast, a social leper, rejected by your family, despised by your neighbors, mistrusted by your community....The final question is, should any man turn his back on ambition, profit, security, and a parking place in the city, just to pursue a fish?" That quote pretty much captures the life of Uncle Albert and Grandfather Emerson who were tasked with raising their young relative in the Ozarks of Arkansas. Add a little influence from their half crazy Native American neighbor and you understand where the title comes from. The old fellas loved and praised the earth like Native Americans do. My only complaint with this book is that it was almost too heavy with sadness and I don't handle death well. I much preferred his book, "On the Spine of Time", which was lighter and funnier.
Rating:
Summary: Emotionally Heavy
Review: Middleton served up all the emotions, from the joys of life and nature to the sorrows of death. I pretty much love all books about fly fishing. This one will definitely be added to my "for the love of fly fishing" list. My favorite quote from the book is the one by Uncle Albert, who said, "Take up the fly rod, and the shotgun, and before you know it, you're an outcast, a social leper, rejected by your family, despised by your neighbors, mistrusted by your community....The final question is, should any man turn his back on ambition, profit, security, and a parking place in the city, just to pursue a fish?" That quote pretty much captures the life of Uncle Albert and Grandfather Emerson who were tasked with raising their young relative in the Ozarks of Arkansas. Add a little influence from their half crazy Native American neighbor and you understand where the title comes from. The old fellas loved and praised the earth like Native Americans do. My only complaint with this book is that it was almost too heavy with sadness and I don't handle death well. I much preferred his book, "On the Spine of Time", which was lighter and funnier.
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