Reading Water: Lessons from the River (Capital Discoveries)

Rating:
Summary: Hard to put down!
Review: I picked this book up to glance at a few pages, found myself drawn in, and couldn't put it down! I stayed up late to finish it. The stories of the whitewater are thrilling, the tales of her loves and losses touching, the courage she shows inspiring. I recommend this book to anyone over the age of 12, river runner or not!

Rating:
Summary: Hard to put down!
Review: I picked this book up to glance at a few pages, found myself drawn in, and couldn't put it down! I stayed up late to finish it. The stories of the whitewater are thrilling, the tales of her loves and losses touching, the courage she shows inspiring. I recommend this book to anyone over the age of 12, river runner or not!

Rating:
Summary: A thoughtful ride on rivers
Review: Reading Water is a thoughtful ride on some of the most beautiful rivers in the American West. I appreciated reading about rivers from so many perspectives in this book: the purely physical, the spiritual, the hydrological. Lawton knows her stuff, and she presents her view of the river in succinct and beautiful language. Whether you've been on a river and loved it, or wanted to go and never gotten there, this book will touch your heart about places both hidden and right in front of you. There's definitely more to this book than river running!

Rating:
Summary: as captivating as a lovely river
Review: This collection of essays, in which Rebecca Lawton recounts adventures she's had in her many years as a boatman on Western rivers, is lovely. Though her descriptions of nature are not particularly lush, they capture memorable scenes with a brief, snapshot effect that leaves detailed images in the reader's mind. She fleshes out her descriptions with scientific and geologic facts--her writing is not burdened by science, but rather enlivened by it.
Lawton tells of how she nearly drowned a friend of hers with her own hubris; how she learned to get out of swift eddies; and how she became a boatman in the first place, despite the bias against females in that profession.
She also talks about her failed marriage, her mother's death from cancer, and a faithless lover. She draws life lessons from the characteristics of rivers, and although a few of the lessons seem too pat, or contrived to fit the river motif, many of them seem right on the money.
And always Lawson's writing has a sincere, honest tone, as if she is not trying to make herself look good so much as pondering what she has learned, from life and the river.
I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys reading about lives they will never live, or who values the wisdom others have worked hard to attain.