If you are an armchair traveler or if adventure stories get your adrenaline going, try picking up Barbarian Days. It chronicles, in amazing detail, the life of the author and how surfing dominated his world. As a young child growing up alternately in California and Hawaii, William Finnegan caught the surfing bug and never looked back. His travels took him to all major surfing venues around the world (Indonesia, Australia, Portugal, Puerto Rico). He never entered contests or did it for fame, although many around him did. It was the challenge and the thrill of catching a good wave, sometimes a very large wave, and oftentimes a failed attempt at both. There is a coming-of-age theme throughout the book, and the author does share about his relationships with family and friends, school days, and his writing life as well. This book won the Pulitzer Prize for memoirs in 2016.
Surfing is not for the faint of heart and every surfer has had their fair share of scary episodes, sometimes life threatening. Finnegan explains the different mindsets and philosophies of surfers. He also explains what they are doing out there, studying the waves, counting the swells and timing them. Surfers often survey the area from surrounding cliffs for many days before ever going out, so they understand the tides, where the reefs or sandbars are, which direction the waves break. I learned more about surfing from this book than I ever imagined I would and it just might make you want to pickup a board or enroll in surf camp!
Joan Dudzinski
Information Services Supervisor
Cumming Library
#WeKnowBooks
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