Barbarian Days

This epic surfing memoir has been on my radar for a long time, as people here and there kept recommending it. Like many people, I have a secret obsession with the surfing world. I’ve always harbored delusions of having grown up in California and becoming a professional rider, complete with sponsors and fame. It's a little embarrassing, to be sure, but all that to say that this book satiated my life-long fixation with catching waves. Finnegan—a staff writer for the New Yorker—offers much more than surfing. You’ll bounce back and forth with him and his family from Los Angeles to Hawaii during his childhood and then onto his epic journey around the world that took several years. Samoa, tiny uninhabited islands off Fiji, and South Africa are just a few of his stops. Of particular interest are the cast of friends, girlfriends, traveling buddies and the like that are threaded throughout this captivating memoir.