Book Suggestion: "A Fine and Pleasant Misery"

When it comes to books about camping, you have missed one of life's little pleasures until you read Pat McManus. Now, I admit that I am somewhat biased, because I grew up in the same little Idaho town as Pat did. He was just a bit (well, about 10 years) older than I was, so I never knew him when I lived there; but I sure knew where most of the places that he wrote about were at.

Pat writes about his camping and fishing trips as a boy growing up in the years after WW2. Money was short, and people had to put things together out of what they had. The stories that Pat writes about camping will have you rolling on the floor. Here is an excerpt from one of his books, "A Fine and Pleasant Misery". It will give you a small taste of the McManus talent, and maybe even inspire you to get a book to read when you are sitting in the house this winter daydreaming about spring.

http://us.macmillan.com/excerpt?isbn=9780805000320

 

...that will definitely be on my winter reading list.

 

Dancer, I discovered the amazing world of Pat McManus when I was in the hospital with a seriously broken leg from a bad horseback riding accident. They had me so doped up on painkillers I could hardly think; but I badly wanted something to read. I was grumbling about that when my friends, Joy and Norma, came to visit me. Joy came back and brought me her ten-translation version of the Bible. That thing was probably a foot thick, and all tiny print besides. Now, you have to realize, I could barely look at pictures, let alone try to read that Bible!!

So, the next day, my friend Norma came in with one of her husband's Pat McManus books, and said "Here, Vonnie, this will make you happy."

That book was so funny that I almost fell out of the hospital bed from laughing (more than once !) , and every time the nurse came to check on me, I was sitting there smiling and chuckling. They must have thought I was the happiest patient they had ever had. Maybe I was?

Anyway, that was the start of my love affair with Pat McManus books, and I am sure that you will enjoy reading about Pat's adventures (and mis-adventures), too.