It's just a collection of excerpts and short stories - The irati river passage from The Son Also Rises, Big Two-Hearted River, etc.

I've read all the stories before, but it's a perfect collection for a boat or beach holiday. Collapse onto the bed and open it as the rocking of the van comes to a squeaking halt.

If you've read Hemingway, you've read it all before, but it's still good. Make sure if you go anywhere near a fishing shop while you're reading it, make sure it's on the windward side of payday (I don't have a credit card anymore).

Just finished this. It's a compilation of different fishing stories. Either articles he wrote about fishing for various magazines, or extracts from some of his novels. I was underwhelmed. I really don't like any of his works, except for his non-fiction work on bullfighting, "Death in the Afternoon." I have read most of his works. Aside from Hemingway, I think it's hard for fisherman to get excited about fishing stories, because it's just nothing like the real thing. I like reading "how to" type articles from Field & Stream or articles that identify good locations, but I think reading fishing stories is boring. Telling fishing stories is quite a different matter. Telling fishing stories is fun, because we generally lie.

Some of the stories, especially the Big Two Hearted Stories were just beautiful. Some of the billfishing stories and novel excerpts struck me as being too macho.

Enjoyed the book although I found it to be a bit challenging at times. The book has three parts and different stories make up each part. Some stories have a more natural flow into the next and others are quite different. All in all, if you enjoy fishing, the stories are a great read.

never realized trout fishing would be so interesting
great collection of EH's writings on his lifelong past-time
fascinating how the hunter has a bittersweet appreciation for its prey, a sadistic and inevitable kind of love,
that to know the prey enough to capture and murder it is also to fall in love with it and know it as oneself

I got this for Christmas. I've always been a big Hemingway fan; even have a picture of him in my dining room. This was a great collection, and for every fan of fishing or of Hemingway, it's a must have.

Very enjoyable for me to read. I am a fisherman and this is as close as a person can get to fishing without actually having a pole.

I was a fan of part 2 the most, if the whole book was just like letters and newspaper articles about fishing i woulda given it 5 stars. Some of the short stories in part 1 fell flat for me and part 3 had stuff I had already read. Will be adding Islands in the Stream to my tbr though.

Hemingway becomes less enjoyable to me as I age...

I've read most of the fictional short stories in this collection -- the Nick Adams stories, for example, but it is fascinating to read the non-fiction -- journalistic writings where Hemingway's obsession with fishing -- first trout, then deep-sea fishing -- becomes apparent. I've always loved Hemingway's sparse, iceberg writing style. So many readers get hung up on the machismo image and bravado of Hemingway's personal life that they can't appreciate what a great writer he is. We can't ignore one of the major stylists of the 20th century because we disagree with his politics and prejudices!