Kathy Scott’s Brook Trout Forest is a simple, journal-style essay book covering a year in the life of the author, and Scott focuses on the themes of teaching, bamboo fly rod building fly fishing and nature.

Her essays are shorn of the self-affected posturing cluttering so much of today’s fly fishing literature, and those who believe fly fishing adventure exists only when a former soviet republic is involved will probably want to look elsewhere.

Instead, Scott simply pens a sweet, simple straightforward account of her year in fishing and bamboo rod making. There is little conflict or drama, a fact which is likely the book’s greatest strength and perhaps its biggest weakness