First You Have to Row a Little Boat: Reflections on Life & Living | 
 enlarge | Author: Richard Bode
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Category: Book
List Price: $17.99
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Avg. Customer Rating:  28 reviews
Sales Rank: 39884
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 224
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5 x 0.7
ISBN: 0446670030
Dewey Decimal Number: 158
EAN: 9780446670036
ASIN: 0446670030
Publication Date: June 1, 1995
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Condition: Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More.
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Product Description
Written from the point of view of a grown man looking back on his childhood, and reflecting on what the experience of learning to sail taught him about the lessons of life,First You Have to Row a Little Boat has the makings of an inspirational classic. With each brief chapter telling the story of a young man's initiation to adulthood, the bay on which he sails becomes a universe of sorts, teaching him new lessons about making choices, adapting to change, and becoming his own person with every journey he takes. Filled with the spiritual wisdom and thought-provoking discoveries that marked such books as Walden,The Prophet, and the Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,First You Have to Row aLittle Boat is a wondrous and magical book that will enchant both sailors and non-sailors alike, but most of all, anyone who seeks large truths in small things.
Download Description
Written from the point of view of a grown man looking back on his childhood, and reflecting on what the experience of learning to sail taught him about the lessons of life, First You Have to Row a Little Boat has the makings of an inspirational classic. With each brief chapter telling the story of a young man's initiation to adulthood, the bay on which he sails becomes a universe of sorts, teaching him new lessons about making choices, adapting to change, and becoming his own person with every journey he takes. Filled with the spiritual wisdom and thought-provoking discoveries that marked such books as Walden, The Prophet, and the Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, First You Have to Row aLittle Boat is a wondrous and magical book that will enchant both sailors and non-sailors alike, but most of all, anyone who seeks large truths in small things.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 23 more reviews...
 Favorite Book April 20, 2008
I love this book. It has a lot of good advice and metaphors for living. When life gets me down, and I feel lost, I often reread this book to help me through. I originally got this book as a hardback as a gift. I lent it to someone who never returned it and had to repurchase it. Unfortunately, I could only find this paperback version. Although not a religious book, this is a good complement to the Bible for advice on life.
A+ September 28, 2007
I've looked for this book for years and finally found it. It was sent promply and in perfect shape. Good job, guys!
Great book. August 12, 2007
This is a great book. The book really isn't about sailing. It's about life. The writing is outstanding. To all the fools who reviewed this book as a sailing instruction guide really missed the point. Too bad because there are few very poignant lessons in the text. It's not a book for caveman though. It's probably read better by either men who have some sensitivity or romanticism. I highly recommend this book.
 Mitch Ablom Goes Sailing February 25, 2007
I'm a rower, so this book may have fallen into my hands by mistake. But I enjoy sailing one-man boats, too. There are some sweet stories in this book. I didn't hate it or anything. But the overall emotional effect seemed contrived or prepackaged. I don't object to the hokeyness--I LIKE hokey!--but very chapter is a pat lesson from sailing that maps perfectly to life. Give me a break. The effect is charming at first, but eventually it's cloying and a little silly.
Contra one of the blurbs on the cover, I suspect one's enjoyment of this little book will be inversely related to one's familiarity with sailing. The less you know the more you may like it. (This is not borne out by a quick scan of the reviews, but only a small percentage of readers write reviews. I suspect a microscopic percentage write negative ones.) There's a rowing book that comes to mind here: MIND OVER WATER. It just didn't seem that deep to me. It didn't seem as if the guy really knew that much about rowing.
Books like this create a nice illusion of emotional depth, in my opinion. There's a market for that, which is fine by me. Bad breath is better than no breath at all.
An Excellent/Must Read, even if you do not sail . . . December 5, 2006
My favorite quotation . . . "For the truth is that I already know as much about my fate as I need to know. The day will come when I will die. So the only matter of consequence before me is what I will do with my allotted time. I can remain on shore, paralyzed with fear, or I can raise my sails and dip and soar in the breeze." This is much more than a book about sailing. Bode's words ring of honesty and truth. This book inspired me to "raise my sails" back in 1997 and they are still up today.
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