BARBARIAN DAYS: A SURFING LIFE PDF, EPUB, EBOOK William Finnegan | 512 pages | 31 May 2016 | Little, Brown Book Group | 9781472151414 | English | London, United Kingdom Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William Finnegan, Paperback | Barnes & Noble® Barbarian Days is a beautiful memoir. Through his tale a lifelong surfer, writer William Finnegan takes you on an exciting journey across the world. Buy this book on Amazon Highly recommend. Terror and ecstasy ebb and flow around the edges of things, each threatening to overwhelm the dreamer. An unearthly beauty saturates an enormous arena of moving water, latent violence, too-real explosions, and sky. Scenes feel mythic even as they unfold. I always feel a ferocious ambivalence: I want to be nowhere else; I want to be anywhere else. Thus a ten- foot wave is not slightly more powerful than an eight-foot wave—because the leap is not from eight to ten but from sixty-four to a hundred, making it over 50 percent more powerful. It was physical, this postsurf mood, but it had a distinct emotionality too. It was a long, tapering — a very long, very precisely tapering — left. The walls were dark gray against a pale gray sea. This was it. The lineup had an unearthly symmetry. Breaking waves peeled so evenly that they looked like still photographs. Staring through the binoculars, I forgot to breathe for entire six-wave sets. This, by God, was it. Now among the most renowned in the world, the Fijian break is one of perhaps a handful in its class that Finnegan has intimate, masterly knowledge of. Still, Finnegan considerately shows himself paying the price of admission in a few near drownings, and these are among the most electrifying moments in the book. Finnegan returns to California for high school, where he discovers that surfers have become outcasts. Sixteen, Finnegan has suddenly part of a counter-culture, one that he has always known and loved. He writes about one of his close friends, who also loves surfing, being forced to drop out of the football team to surf. Finnegan attends the University of California Santa Cruz, but soon drops out, deciding to move back to Hawaii with his girlfriend in Finnegan is deeply happy back in Hawaii with a woman whom he thinks of as the love of his life; however, things become complicated when she gets pregnant and has an abortion. After the abortion, which causes some emotional separation between the two, his girlfriend leaves him to find her father, who is wandering around southern California, addicted to LSD. Devastated by the break-up, Finnegan becomes aimless, mostly following his heart and his desire to find the perfect wave. He works at the railroad for a time making a decent living but leaves to travel to the South Pacific with close friend and writer Bryan Di Salvatore. In Southeast Asia, Finnegan begins a novel, but he tires of traveling in Indonesia before the book is finished. He wonders whether to return home to finish the novel, but decides, instead, to go to South Africa, where he teaches in an all-black school. This leads him to write his book about Apartheid. After years of traveling the world and writing, Finnegan returns home to California, where he lives in foggy, cold San Francisco with his girlfriend and eventual wife , Caroline. Even in the frigid Pacific, Finnegan surfs. Barbarian Days by William Finnegan: Summary & Notes - Calvin Rosser Through the sheer intensity of his descriptive powers and the undeniable ways in which surfing has shaped his life, Barbarian Days is an utterly convincing study in the joy of treating seriously an unserious thing Barbarian Days is less an ode to independence than a celebration of deliberate constriction, of making choices that determine what you think about and who you know. As Finnegan demonstrates, surfing, like good writing, is an act of vigilant noticing. There are too many breathtaking, original things in Barbarian Days to do more than mention here — observations about surfing that have simply never been made before, or certainly never so well. Why We Swim. Beautiful on the Outside: A Memoir. Graphic Nonfiction. In Waves. Get the Book Marks Bulletin Email address:. Graphic Novels. Literature in Translation. Story Collections. Investigative Journalism. In other words, making something exceedingly difficult look easy. The gift for writing a clean line is rare, and the gift for riding one even rarer. Finnegan possesses both. The author touches on love, on responsibility, on politics, individuality and morality, as well as on the lesser-known aspects of surfing: the toll it takes on the body, the weird lingo, the whacky community. Finnegan recaptures the waves lost and found, the euphoria, the danger…the allure. This summer, New Yorker writer Finnegan recalls his teenage years in the California and Hawaii of the s—when surfing was an escape for loners and outcasts. A delightful storyteller, Finnegan takes readers on a journey from Hawaii to Australia, Fiji, and South Africa, where finding those waves is as challenging as riding them. A lyrical and intense memoir. When you buy a book, we donate a book. Sign in. The Best Books of So Far. Read An Excerpt. Apr 26, ISBN Add to Cart. Also available from:. Jul 21, ISBN Available from:. Paperback —. Add to Cart Add to Cart. Also by William Finnegan. See all books by William Finnegan. Product Details. Inspired by Your Browsing History. Lab Girl. Hope Jahren. My Family and Other Animals. Gerald Durrell. Waging Heavy Peace. Sound Man. Classic Krakauer. Jon Krakauer. The Last Pass. Gary M. Here is New York. Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl. Carrie Brownstein. If You Ask Me. Never Broken. Darkness Visible. William Styron. The Chiffon Trenches. A Very Punchable Face. Not Dead Yet. Phil Collins. Haruki Murakami. In a Sunburned Country. The Feather Thief. Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life | Literary Hub This, by God, was it. Now among the most renowned in the world, the Fijian break is one of perhaps a handful in its class that Finnegan has intimate, masterly knowledge of. Still, Finnegan considerately shows himself paying the price of admission in a few near drownings, and these are among the most electrifying moments in the book. It was as if we were suspended above the reef, floating on a cushion of nothing. Approaching waves were like optical illusions. And when I caught one and stood up, it disappeared. I was flying down the line, but all I could see was brilliant reef streaming under my feet. My memory of learning a spot, of coming to know and understand a wave, is usually inseparable from the friend with whom I tried to climb its walls. The compromises and corruption on shore fail to contaminate or alter the joy-drenched, adrenalated play in the ocean. Get the Book Marks Bulletin Email address:. Graphic Novels. Literature in Translation. Story Collections. Investigative Journalism. Social Sciences. True Crime. Lithub Daily. Buy this book on Amazon Highly recommend. Terror and ecstasy ebb and flow around the edges of things, each threatening to overwhelm the dreamer. An unearthly beauty saturates an enormous arena of moving water, latent violence, too-real explosions, and sky. Scenes feel mythic even as they unfold. I always feel a ferocious ambivalence: I want to be nowhere else; I want to be anywhere else. Thus a ten-foot wave is not slightly more powerful than an eight-foot wave—because the leap is not from eight to ten but from sixty-four to a hundred, making it over 50 percent more powerful. It was physical, this postsurf mood, but it had a distinct emotionality too. Sometimes it was mild elation. Often it was a pleasant melancholy. Barbarian Days by William Finnegan: | : Books What The Reviewers Say. I'd sooner press this book upon on a nonsurfer, in part because nothing I've read so accurately describes the feeling of being stoked or the despair of being held under. But also because while it is a book about A Surfing Life — as the subtitle states — it's also about a writer's life and, even more generally, a quester's life, more carefully observed and precisely rendered than any I've read in a long time. Through the sheer intensity of his descriptive powers and the undeniable ways in which surfing has shaped his life, Barbarian Days is an utterly convincing study in the joy of treating seriously an unserious thing Barbarian Days is less an ode to independence than a celebration of deliberate constriction, of making choices that determine what you think about and who you know. As Finnegan demonstrates, surfing, like good writing, is an act of vigilant noticing. There are too many breathtaking, original things in Barbarian Days to do more than mention here — observations about surfing that have simply never been made before, or certainly never so well. Why We Swim. In other words, making something exceedingly difficult look easy. The gift for writing a clean line is rare, and the gift for riding one even rarer. Finnegan possesses both. The author touches on love, on responsibility, on politics, individuality and morality, as well as on the lesser-known aspects of surfing: the toll it takes on the body, the weird lingo, the whacky community. Finnegan recaptures the waves lost and found, the euphoria, the danger…the allure. This summer, New Yorker writer Finnegan recalls his teenage years in the California and Hawaii of the s—when surfing was an escape for loners and outcasts. A delightful storyteller, Finnegan takes readers on a journey from Hawaii to Australia, Fiji, and South Africa, where finding those waves is as challenging as riding them.