Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life | 
pick⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫 Picked this up from an Audible sale a few months ago and really liked it. This is a memoir told through a lifetime of surfing exploits, from first rides in childhood through a multi-year quest through the South Pacific, apartheid South Africa, and back to San Francisco and New York. This could have been insufferable, but was told from a point of emotional maturity and using excellent writing.
pickNot the tagged book. 🙄 William Fennigan‘s adolescent daughter, Mollie, became interested in climbing. William, an avid surfer, showed a genuine interest in his daughter‘s new passion. As a writer and journalist, William wrote this short story, Climbing with Mollie, about rock climbing and their father-daughter relationship.
Full review for Climbing with Mollie at https://abookandadog.com
pickI love surfing although not good at and just a two-hour-once-a-week-surfer so this book had my attention for a while. I relate to those surfing life as described in this book a lot but feel those barbarian days as described in this book unimaginable. I wished I had such surfing life but not sure if I could handle the barbarian days. Maybe I am bias but I like and recommend this book. 🤟🤟😂
I just bought this for a friend‘s birthday, but I‘m thinking of getting myself a copy because it looks really good. Any first-hand feedback on this? #TeamReadNosedReindeer #TBRReads @StayCurious
Reading about surfing on a cold, dark and windy beach day. We are all wrapped in beach towels and wraps. At least it has stopped raining - for now
pickCalming escape and adventure in the waves. He paints a wild, romantic picture of barefoot, beachfront childhood in California and Hawaii, a world wide journey of young adult adventures in the Pacific, and a winding down with family in New York. Surfing, idyllically and frantically, until the end.
Today I celebrated Solstice/ early Christmas with my family. I got a couple of books. On the right is my Jolabokaflod book- Barbarian Days - and chocolates from my niece. Initially we planned to open the Jolabokaflod books on Christmas Eve as per tradition. We realized that none of us will see each other that day and decided to open those gifts together.
pickDespite its subtitle of A Surfing Life, this is part discussion of surfing theory, combined with travelogue, buddy road trip, and memoir. Finnegan covers a lot of his life, starting in his pre-teen years and ending in his 50s. Through it all, surfing is the one constant. Definitely worth the praise. But be prepared for some long paddles out before the roar of the wave takes you.
Full review http://www.TheBibliophage.com
#thebibliophage2019 #NFNov
pickWilliam Finnegan's Climbing with Mollie is a tender tribute to father-daughter relationships and to support children's interests, even when they don't match our own. I loved Finnegan's tribute to his surfing life, Barbarian Days, and jumped on this Audible Original, a short examination of his daughter Mollie's discovery and pursuit of climbing. ⬇️
I‘ve seen this on so many “best memoir” lists. It‘s time to dive in!
Here are my #top6reads of 2019 so far. These books made such a huge impression on me and are ones that I keep thinking about and/or find myself constantly recommending. Happy halfway, everyone!
pick“Barbarian Days is William Finnegan‘s memoir of an obsession, a complex enchantment. Surfing only looks like a sport. To initiates, it is something else: a beautiful addiction, a demanding course of study, a morally dangerous pastime, a way of life.“ 🏄 What are you reading this summer on the beach?
“The newly emerging ideal was #solitude, purity, perfect waves far from civilization.”
#QuotsyMar19
#31DaysOfNonFiction
pick⭐️⭐️⭐️ Thanks to his father‘s career as tv/film producer, Finnegan grew up in California & Hawaii becoming an avid reader with surfing fixed in his soul. After earning degrees in Literature & Creative Writing, he traveled around Australia, Asia, & Africa writing freelance & surfing. He then became an English teacher in apartheid South Africa which provided substance for his first book published in the mid-80s. 👇🏻
pickGreat Read!! Wonderfully written memoir of surfer/journalist William Finnegan. A really nice surprise for me.
pickBeing newly introduced to and completely smitten with surfing, this was the perfect book for me right now. William Finnegan‘s writing is incredibly beautiful, never describing a wave (characters in their own right) the same way twice. And there are a lot of them, but never a dull moment. It‘s one of those books that I‘m sad to have finished; I would be ok if it went on forever.
On Sundays the curfew was in force all day long. On a couple of occasions when the surf looked good, I had found the #ban hard to accept. Surely we could slip out for a few quiet rides, far from shore, and offend no one. #QuotsyJan19
pickI am reading outside my comfort zone. I read this ebook along with listening. (read by the author). I am not a surfer and my only surfing knowledge comes from Gidget re-runs and old Frankie Avalon movies. I really thought this book would be lost on me. I really enjoyed his story getting sucked in immediately, traveling the world with him and finding I was able to follow his surf talk as if I always knew it. Good read.
#hawaii
"Bryan, meanwhile, was assailing my equanimity with his testiness...One night, lit with kava courage, I announced that I was sick of walking on eggs around him. He announced, astonished, that HE was sick of walking on eggs around ME. We hiked back to camp under a gibbous moon in a jolly mood. I said I hoped his tent was full of scorpions. He hoped I fell out of my hammock. The expression, anyway, was walking on eggshells, not eggs."
so-soIt was well written but I found my mind wandering during all the surfing descriptions. I think I would like to try some of the author‘s other books.
CALLING ALL LITTENS!!!
I need gift recommendations for my hippy surfer uncle! I bought him the tagged book last year and he loved it, said it was the best thing written about surfing that he‘d ever read.
Any really good books you can think of about:
surfing, Jimi Hendrix, counterculture in the ‘60s, Woodstock (he was there!), the Grateful Dead, the band Mastodon, anything that an aging hippy might find groovy
Lemme know any ideas you got.
Day 31 #UncannyOctober #BestofOctober 🎃Stats are still coming as it isn't quite noon here but these are my October Best.📚No Five⭐️ reads this month, but these three books, two non-fiction & one fiction, stood out to me for different reasons. Barbarian Days drew me in with the author's passion for an amazing sport, The Sound of Gravel made me mad & sad & kept me fascinated, & CALBSB 🎄brought back some beloved characters like Neil the puffin. 💜
pickA bit of a slow read for me but not in a bad way-more in a relaxed, zen-like way. Although I'm not nearly graceful enough to surf, I admire the sport & this memoir captures the obsession people have for it. I especially enjoyed his youth in Hawaii but found the whole book engaging & even though there are a lot of details about surfing there is humor, adventure & beauty that transcends the basics. With a surfer-popular Aloha Friday Acai bowl.🌺🏄🏻
Finally Friday for a crazy week with work projects & being 😽nurse after Max's dental surgery Wednesday. He was doing very well this morning (thanks for all the kind thoughts & 😽❤️) so I snuck out to the coffeeshop for a bit for a coffee press, avocado toast & a few pages of this library e-book before getting some work done & taking Max to a quick Vet follow up that will make me very unpopular with him again.🙀😾#catownerwoes #tgif #needabreak
#UncannyOctober From my TBR a #NFAboutACountryYoudLikeToVisit 🇦🇺 William Finnegan‘s memoir about his lifelong surfing obsession, when he and a friend are bumming around #Australia in the late 1970s, looking for perfect waves 🌊 Finnegan also traveled through #Asia and #Africa and the #SouthPacific. I'm curious to read this memoir and would love to visit all those places☀️ 🤘🏼🏄🌊🏄🏻♀️
pickI was born and raised in California, but I didn't live near the ocean and have never surfed. Didn't know what to expect from this surfing memoir. It's a fascinating look at one person's life as they travel the world to remote places in decades past, chasing waves. LOTS of details about waves and tides (maybe too much for me?), and was sometimes annoyed with him during his angsty years. But also beautiful writing about his obsession with surfing.
And now I'm reading this. 20 pages in so far so good. Did not think I would like a surfing memoir, but this isn't half bad.
Lunch 🥑. And more #bookmail!
Has anyone read these?
pickEnjoyable read even for people (like me) who have never wanted to surf. Finnegan's prose style is very fluid, immersing readers in many unique aspects of surfing culture. I did begin to tire of the many descriptions of individual waves, but the quality of the other components greatly outweigh the minor moments of disinterest.
I just picked this up on Audible this week. Seems like a good fit for #sweetsummerstack. Thanks @Liberty for the chance at that great giveaway!
pickBeautiful writing with interesting locales and a completely foreign subject (surfing) made this memoir a fabulous read for me. One of my favorite books this year despite the fact that I rarely ever see the ocean and the closest I usually get to a body of water is the pond behind our house (see pic above). The author has had an amazing life and damn can he write! 5⭐️
Awesome #dailydeal alert! This has been on my TBR for ages! #audible
This book is a surprising delight to me, especially as I was born and raised in Missouri as landlocked as it gets. The writing is wonderful and I find all the discourse on surfing to be fascinating and completely foreign. I hope it keeps up, as this could be one of my favorite books so far this year if it does!
pickA little long but William Finnegan makes you want to go to the beach and watch some surfers. A really interesting memoir! A great one to read in the summer.
pickI fell hard for this book which was surprising since it's so not in my wheelhouse. It's about a man's relationship with his first love, and how it changes with time. Impromptu tea party with a friend since book group was cancelled bc of thunder snow. Almond butter bars, chocolate chip cookies and world peace cookies while chatting about surfing.
#FunFridayPhoto // my shelves are even more packed than usual because the Christmas decorations are still up.
pickAmazing book, whether you surf or not
So... there was an Amazon Gold Box sale on biographies and memoirs yesterday, and I am weak. I also convinced my husband to buy "Hillbilly Elegy" by J. D. Vance, and Ron Chernow's bio of George Washington, which I will, of course, borrow from him. ?
The particulars of new places grabbed me and held me, the sweep of new coasts, cold, lovely, dawns. The world was incomprehensibly large, and there was still so much to see. Yes, I got sick sometimes of being an expatriate, always ignorant, on the outside of things, but I didn't feel ready for domestic life, for seeing the same people, (...) each day. I liked surrendering to the onrush, the uncertainty, the serendipity of the road
Finally!! A book that's "sticking" - fingers crossed- reading slump over! I hope! I hope!
