Canoeist's Little Book of Wisdom: A Couple Hundred Suggestions, Observations and Reminders for Canoeists to Read, Remember and Share. (Sport) (Paperback)

by Cliff Jacobson (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
If you've read Cliff's other books, you know they're packed with useful outdoor tips, gained the hard way by the sweat of pack and paddle. Here, along with considerable humor and frequent philosophy, Cliff shares 359 of canoeing's best ideas.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Here's a sample of what you'll find.... A dam site is no place for a canoe. Odd gets the nod when it's time to portage. One, three, or five packs are better than two or four. The wilderness would be a better place if every one learned to tie quick-release knots. If you don't use it every day you probably don't need it. Get even with the river. Rapids look much larger when viewed from above. Make it known throughout the land that you will not lend canoes or camping equipment to anyone who is not a rabid canoeist. Messing around with canoes is an appropriate form of entertainment. You can learn to turn a fact canoe, but no amount of learning will make a slow canoe fast. Shy away from a partner who proudly says, "I've never tipped over!"

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: ICS Books (January 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1570340404
• ISBN-13: 978-1570340406
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 4.5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,862,785 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Canoeist's Little Book of Wisdom, August 31, 2005

By	John F. Marshall - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I took this book along on a three day canoe trip. Three of us sat in camp howling with laughter at Cliff's humor. I find this book highly entertaining, and has a lot of useful information. Its great to have along while you are doing a shuttle or driving to the put-in.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A big disappointment! , August 16, 2006

By	ZoneIII (USA) - See all my reviews

First, be aware that this is a tiny book. It could fit in a large shirt pocket. In all fairness, though, it is called the "Canoeists LITTLE Book of Wisdom." Each page has several little bits of advice in very large print. I just read the entire book in 20 minutes and I was reading slow and I was also disracted by phone calls. I am baffled at how another reviewer said they read this booklet over a period of several days and laughed at it's humor. The entire book would fit on a restaurant placemat! And it's humor, if you can call it humor, was as lame as it it gets. This book is simply a rip-off.

But it is not the size of the book or it's lack of humor which is so disappointing. It's the fact that it contains no useful information whatsoever. Much of the information presented is such common sense that it should not even be in the book. Much of the rest is either wrong or totally contradictory. For example, it advises you to not take anything on a canoe trip that you don't absolutely need. Then it goes on to list all kinds of frills and totally unnecessary things that you should take! If you took everything that it says you must take, you wouldn't be able to even fit in your canoe. In addition, it tells you that you absolutely have to know certain knots or techniques but it doesn't tell how to do them. A simple picture of the knot would have taken less space in the book than it took for the advice to learn to tie it. On top of that, most of the information is just plain useless and frivolous. I could find several examples of this on any page of the booklet! OK, let me try this: I am going to open the book randomly right now and see what the first bit of "wisdom" is. Here it is: "Give someone who loves canoeing a canoe book for Christmas." How enlightening! Here's another randomly chosen "gem": "Canoes should show some battle scars. Shows you're a canoeist not a canoer!" Or, how about this one: "No one likes a mile bagger or a river bagger or a rapids bagger." After a few minutes of reading this nonsense you will be angry if you paid money for this booklet

I am an experienced canoeist myself and I find this book to be virtually useless. I would never even think of recommending this to a beginning canoeist or anyone else, for that matter. For a beginner, it would not only be worthless, but it is filled with misinformation and I cannot imagine an experienced canoeist finding anything of value in this booklet at all. If I had one hour to come up with useful advice for canoeists, I could come up with vastly better advice than that contained in this book. In fact, I did not find one single bit of useful information in this book. That is not an exaggeration.

This booklet is lame. Don't waste your money. If you still want to read it, see if your local library has it or find it in a bookstore. You can read the entire thing while you stand there. I get the strong impression that the author of this booklet just got the idea one day to write some junk down, have it published cheaply, and hope buyers who couldn't actually see it before buying it were suckers.

1 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Canoeist's Little BOok of Wisdom, March 7, 2005

By	Theodore L. Crockett "tlc10598" (Yorktown, NY USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Beware- I ordered books totaling over $25 for free shipping and they split it nto two orders with identical dates and charged me for shipping. This is as dirty a game as there is. After several years of good service Amazon has decided to stoop to a new low. Almost immediately there is no way to fix the order or to lave a complaint.