Friday Reads: Barbarian Days, A Surfing Life

We're going to get back to semi-regular Friday Reads now that we're into a new academic year! To kick us off, our Cataloging & Acquisitions Librarian, Adam Pellman, tells us about trying something different for him -- Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life, by Willam Finnegan.

It seems a bit strange to me that I would choose to read a memoir focused on surfing. I don't read many memoirs, and I've never tried surfing, or ever really had any interest in it. I do, however, love great writing, so this book turned out to be the perfect choice. Finnegan has spent time all over the world chasing waves and working as a war journalist, and he is, unsurprisingly, an avid reader, so the book is as much a travelogue and intellectual history as it is a book about his devotion to surfing. Or, perhaps "obsession" is a better word than "devotion." Finnegan writes evocatively about the places he's traveled and the waves he's surfed, and he writes just as beautifully about surfing's undiminished attraction for him:


"A bruise-colored cloud hung over Koko Head. A transistor radio twanged on a seawall where a Hawaiian family picnicked on the sand. The sun-warmed shallow water had a strange boiled-vegetable taste. The moment was immense, still, glittering, mundane. I tried to fix each of its parts in memory. I did not consider, even passingly, that I had a choice when it came to surfing. My enchantment would take me where it would."