Most young boys dream of growing up to be football players or rock stars. I spent my youth wanting to be a writer. More specifically, I wanted to be Ernest Hemingway.

By the time I was 14, I had read every novel, every short story, and every newspaper article he had ever written. I didn’t stop there. I read his biographies and his wives’ biographies. I had become totally obsessed and consumed by all things Hemingway.

It wasn’t just his writing that exerted a magnetic pull on me. His lifestyle worked its magic as well. He was the consummate outdoorsman, particularly adept with a fishing rod in his hand, whether it be on a trout stream in the Pyrenees or trolling for Marlin off Cuba.

It was easy for me to relate to that. Growing up surrounded by beautiful rivers and lakes, I fancied myself a pretty decent angler even in my younger days. Standing in the midst of a trout stream up in the mountains that surrounded my home town in Pennsylvania, it was easy to fantacize that Hemingway and his good friend Gary Cooper were fishing in the pools just around the corner.

As I got older, my tastes in books expanded accordingly. The non-fiction portion of my library starting gaining mass and the fiction books took on a very international flavour.

But at least once a year I pull down one of the Hemingway classics and dive head first into a world where short, punchy but brutally honest sentences paint the most amazing pictures.

And by the way, I’ve never given up fishing either.