“Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with that there is”

It’s such a simple story — a man trying to catch fish — written without much fanfare. Few adverbs and I doubt there is a single metaphor in this book. But how we do one thing is how we do everything. And this is a battle of stoic man versus a big fish. Old methods and motorboats, of aging and youth, of experience and luck, of the journey and the destination, of pride and humiliation, locals and tourists. About life when nobody is watching.

Like the other hunting-for-a-fish classic, Moby Dick (although Herman Melville takes it to 800 pages), it takes one subject and looks at so many sides of it. And when the tale is through, you’ve briefly lived another life.