hey I finished reading something
Jul. 21st, 2011 07:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
in_the_blueHold the presses, I read a book. A non-fiction book. For reasons that make deep and meaningful sense only to me, I read The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks, and Giants of the Ocean by Susan Casey. If you think that title is a mouthful, you should see what she's tackled. Casey, a former pro swimmer, decided to chase down hard evidence of the (not exactly) mythic 100-foot wave and along the way she talks to a lot of scientists about oceanography, about climate change, about weather forecasting and physics and wave patterns and behavior, about shipping and shipping insurance by Lloyd's of London, about ships lost at sea, about the most dangerous oceans in the world, about the biggest waves on record. All that's well and good; she takes a subject that could be incredibly dry and doesn't quite bring it down to layman's terms, but she does a decent enough job.
The meat and heart of the book, though, has nothing to do with science and everything to do with extreme surfing and the people who search those elusive giant waves for sport. If there's a star of her book, it's big-wave surfer Laird Hamilton, who has to be one of the most intense (and most daredevilish) people ever to have graced the planet. What are big waves? Well, people like Hamilton paddle out when the waves are only 40-50' high. Anything higher, they get towed out on the backs of jet skis. Extreme surfing, anybody? I did not know about this stuff! I didn't know people werecrazy driven enough to follow the weather all over the world just for a chance to ride the behemoth waves out there! It's amazing.
The surfer portion of the book was, in my increasingly humble opinion, more fascinating than the scientific portion although I see why Casey felt the need to balance one with the other. In the end I felt she was less in pursuit of the waves themselves than of the people who follow the waves or try to understand them, the people who try to surf them, and the people who foolishly defy them. The business of surfing? I could care less. The people who contain this fundamental need to not conquer monster waves but to experience them in their own way? Amazing. Whether that means the scientists trying to understand the chaos of the ocean or the surfer trying to outrace an eighty-foot wall about to crash down on his head and pin him beneath the water, well, I'm not going to play favorites in a book review. But I will tell you that she covers both with a nearly equal fervor, and the end result is kind of like the ocean: choppy, unpredictable, but ultimately pretty fucking cool.
(This is also the first and only book I've bought for the Kindle Istole reclaimed from my sweetheart when he got his iPad, so really, I'm not responsible for all the Borders stores closing. I just bought three actual physical things there this week! Don't look at me that way.)
The meat and heart of the book, though, has nothing to do with science and everything to do with extreme surfing and the people who search those elusive giant waves for sport. If there's a star of her book, it's big-wave surfer Laird Hamilton, who has to be one of the most intense (and most daredevilish) people ever to have graced the planet. What are big waves? Well, people like Hamilton paddle out when the waves are only 40-50' high. Anything higher, they get towed out on the backs of jet skis. Extreme surfing, anybody? I did not know about this stuff! I didn't know people were
The surfer portion of the book was, in my increasingly humble opinion, more fascinating than the scientific portion although I see why Casey felt the need to balance one with the other. In the end I felt she was less in pursuit of the waves themselves than of the people who follow the waves or try to understand them, the people who try to surf them, and the people who foolishly defy them. The business of surfing? I could care less. The people who contain this fundamental need to not conquer monster waves but to experience them in their own way? Amazing. Whether that means the scientists trying to understand the chaos of the ocean or the surfer trying to outrace an eighty-foot wall about to crash down on his head and pin him beneath the water, well, I'm not going to play favorites in a book review. But I will tell you that she covers both with a nearly equal fervor, and the end result is kind of like the ocean: choppy, unpredictable, but ultimately pretty fucking cool.
(This is also the first and only book I've bought for the Kindle I
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Date: 2011-07-22 02:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-22 02:49 am (UTC)p.s. I love you too! Just saying.
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Date: 2011-07-22 02:59 am (UTC)Yay, new Red Sox tee! Yay, new writing!
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Date: 2011-07-22 03:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-22 03:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-22 03:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-22 03:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-22 03:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-22 03:14 am (UTC)I forget what its called but it was beautiful and fascinating and something I just picked up from the library.
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Date: 2011-07-22 03:30 am (UTC)And it is a pretty neat book. I liked it. I only heard of it because my sister recommended it, and I'm not sure why she read it, I think it was recommended to her.
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Date: 2011-07-22 03:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-07-22 03:34 am (UTC)