Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life
By William Finnegan
Winner of the 2016 Pulitzer in biography, Barbarian days is a memoir of William Finnegan’s surfing life beginning as a child to an adult working as a staff writer at the New Yorker. The author paints the successes, failures, and misadventures of his young and adult life surfing and traveling the globle. The language captures and excites even the most landlocked readers. Highly memorable for me are the anecdotes about intimidating surf at Ocean Beach in San Francisco, as well as the author’s time spent finding new waves in remote Fiji while also surviving a malaria infection. A philosophical, exciting, and pleasurable read, even if we can’t make it to Fiji this year.
Winner of the 2016 Pulitzer in biography, Barbarian days is a memoir of William Finnegan’s surfing life beginning as a child to an adult working as a staff writer at the New Yorker. The author paints the successes, failures, and misadventures of his young and adult life surfing and traveling the globle. The language captures and excites even the most landlocked readers. Highly memorable for me are the anecdotes about intimidating surf at Ocean Beach in San Francisco, as well as the author’s time spent finding new waves in remote Fiji while also surviving a malaria infection. A philosophical, exciting, and pleasurable read, even if we can’t make it to Fiji this year.
Review by Jake Kubrin