"The library of reflective fly-fishing memoirs is made richer by James Babb’s brilliantly written Fish Won’t Let Me Sleep: The Obsessions of a Lifetime Flyfisherman. After eighteen years as the editor of Gray’s Sporting Journal, Babb draws together his many columns into a masterwork of creative nonfiction that embraces angling narrative, travelogue, social satire and insightful human interest infused with the sharpest wit and richest humor. His unpretentious, casual voice easily achieves a lofty literary flourish or a water level observation. Babb is clearly one of our most erudite angling authors, able not only to quote deftly from literature, but to inhabit literature." —Henry Hughes, Flyfishing and Tying Journal
“Jim Babb once told me he writes ‘complicated stories about simple things.’ If he meant that few other writers have his effortless touch with historic references; literary and cultural allusions; fishing, nautical, and backwoods lore; wordplay and sly fun while still leaving an essay room to breathe, then I have to agree. Like all good books, Fish Won’t Let Me Sleep, resembles its author: eccentric, knowledgeable, opinionated, surprising, observant, eloquent, and funny.” —John Gierach, author of All Fishermen Are Liars
“Jim Babb, unlike other fly-fishing writers, never bores me. He is the master of paradox. . . . He never quits, and Fish Won’t Let Me Sleep (great title!) proves once again that he is one of the best essayists we have, who just happens to be a flyfisher.” —Stephen Bodio, author of The Hounds of Heaven
“What James Babb calls his “fish writing” is a welcomed throwback to the days when an angler was a fisherman, and when fish-writers like Ted Trueblood, A.J. McClane, and Sparse Gray Hackle were plying the trade with wit, wisdom, hard-won experience, and an admirable absence of b******t. Each of the stories in this collection is as durable and go-to dependable as a well-tied Hornberg in brook trout country.” —Charles Gaines, bestselling author of Waters Near and Far
“Jim Babb takes you fishing like no other writer can: his captivating stories are witty and soulful, full of wisdom and wisecracks. Fish Won’t Let Me Sleep is a wild boat-ride down all the rivers, and over all the ponds and seas you ever dreamt of, Henry Thoreau at the tiller, Groucho Marx in the bows passing comment.” —Charles Rangeley-Wilson, author of Silt Road
“If Mark Twain had been a flyfisher this is the book he might have written, at once realistic, penetrating, and entertaining. Jim Babb, that holy fishing fool, writes with the kind of humorous, self-deprecating critical tone that is suspicious of fads and fashions, bemused by trends and twaddle (his own included), but always capable of extolling the genuine finny virtues and obsessive truths of contemporary fly fishing. And even if Twain hadn’t written Fish Won’t Let Me Sleep, he surely would have loved reading it.” —Robert DeMott, author of Angling Days: A Fly Fisher’s Journals
"The library of reflective fly-fishing memoirs is made richer by James Babb’s brilliantly written Fish Won’t Let Me Sleep: The Obsessions of a Lifetime Flyfisherman. After eighteen years as the editor of Gray’s Sporting Journal, Babb draws together his many columns into a masterwork of creative nonfiction that embraces angling narrative, travelogue, social satire and insightful human interest infused with the sharpest wit and richest humor. His unpretentious, casual voice easily achieves a lofty literary flourish or a water level observation. Babb is clearly one of our most erudite angling authors, able not only to quote deftly from literature, but to inhabit literature." —Henry Hughes, Flyfishing and Tying Journal
“Jim Babb once told me he writes ‘complicated stories about simple things.’ If he meant that few other writers have his effortless touch with historic references; literary and cultural allusions; fishing, nautical, and backwoods lore; wordplay and sly fun while still leaving an essay room to breathe, then I have to agree. Like all good books, Fish Won’t Let Me Sleep, resembles its author: eccentric, knowledgeable, opinionated, surprising, observant, eloquent, and funny.” —John Gierach, author of All Fishermen Are Liars
“Jim Babb, unlike other fly-fishing writers, never bores me. He is the master of paradox. . . . He never quits, and Fish Won’t Let Me Sleep (great title!) proves once again that he is one of the best essayists we have, who just happens to be a flyfisher.” —Stephen Bodio, author of The Hounds of Heaven
“What James Babb calls his “fish writing” is a welcomed throwback to the days when an angler was a fisherman, and when fish-writers like Ted Trueblood, A.J. McClane, and Sparse Gray Hackle were plying the trade with wit, wisdom, hard-won experience, and an admirable absence of b******t. Each of the stories in this collection is as durable and go-to dependable as a well-tied Hornberg in brook trout country.” —Charles Gaines, bestselling author of Waters Near and Far
“Jim Babb takes you fishing like no other writer can: his captivating stories are witty and soulful, full of wisdom and wisecracks. Fish Won’t Let Me Sleep is a wild boat-ride down all the rivers, and over all the ponds and seas you ever dreamt of, Henry Thoreau at the tiller, Groucho Marx in the bows passing comment.” —Charles Rangeley-Wilson, author of Silt Road
“If Mark Twain had been a flyfisher this is the book he might have written, at once realistic, penetrating, and entertaining. Jim Babb, that holy fishing fool, writes with the kind of humorous, self-deprecating critical tone that is suspicious of fads and fashions, bemused by trends and twaddle (his own included), but always capable of extolling the genuine finny virtues and obsessive truths of contemporary fly fishing. And even if Twain hadn’t written Fish Won’t Let Me Sleep, he surely would have loved reading it.” —Robert DeMott, author of Angling Days: A Fly Fisher’s Journals
