Congrats, you’ve done the hard part. You’ve booked an incredible surf trip with WaterWays. And hopefully, you’ve boxed off one of life’s more fun to-do lists. Quiver is updated (and hopefully recently expanded). The appropriate warm water wax is bought (and sniffed). The extra yoga, pool or gym sessions logged (or not). What’s left? The ultimate surf trip reading list. Books to get you psyched, memoirs to ride out a flat spell, novels designed for a hammock and surf culture collections for recharging between sessions.
Best Biography
The Outside – The Story Of Larry Blair, by Larry Blair and Jeremy Goring
“I am the uneducated, handsome, blond and very lippy son of two of Australia’s most notorious criminals.” As a teenager growing up in the Sydney suburb of Maroubra surfing was Larry Blair’s only way out of following a life of crime. He did a remarkable job of it. In 1978, aged 19, he claimed the biggest-ever cash prize in surfing at the Coke Surfabout. The same year he won the Pipe Masters, a feat he would repeat in 1979, despite severe local intimidation. At the height of his fame, the flamboyant goofy appeared in TV commercials, took a role in a Shakespearean theatre production and dated Debbie Tate, the sister of Hollywood star Sharon Tate, who was murdered by Charles Manson. By mixing the grubby and fascinating world of true crime with the escapism of 1970s surf travel and the outrageous, early years of professional surfing, the book transcends the average biography. And makes your parents look best-in-class.
Best Science Book
Waves (For Surfers and Ocean Lovers) by Tony Butt
The UK’s Tony Butt has a degree in Ocean Science and a PhD in Physical Oceanography and has written books covering surf science, sustainability, and climate. He has also spent the last 40 years surfing big waves in his adopted home of the Spanish Basque Country, and further afield in Madeira and Cape Town. In a word, he’s legit. The book demystifies ocean science with 34 chapters that are a bite-sized exploration of a different type of wave or surf spot. It’s great for explaining the physics of why the backwash made you fall on the wave of the day or dropping in the Kelvin-Helmholtz wave cloud during a post-surf cocktail. It might be a little dry in some spots, but it will reawaken a fascination with waves and why they behave the way they do. And if that means focusing less on that same bloke who keeps paddling on the inside, it’s gotta be a good thing, right?
Best For Surf Culture
In Deep: The Collected Surf Writings by Matt George
“My main approach is total immersion into the story. I have a five-day rule when I profile subjects especially. I will not do it unless they agree to let me live with them for at least five days. 24/7. Sleeping on the couch. That is how you find the truth.” That was Matt George talking to SURFER about his all-in attitude towards surf journalism. It is this intensity that shines through in this collection of writing that covers his 35 years in the game. From multiple profiles of Kelly Slater—who wrote the book’s foreword—to a tsunami disaster zone in Indonesia, George is both a consummate storyteller and a shameless surf romantic. Sometimes him putting his main character energy front and centre can be grating, but it’s a book that operates as both a time capsule and a rollicking read.
Best Surf Literature
On The Java Ridge by Jock Serong
You may have first come across Jock Serong via his series A Short History Of… (thongs, seagulls, boardshorts) that featured in Australia’s Surfing World magazine. Still available online, they were some of the sharpest and funniest surf journalism ever done. Since then, he’s gone mainstream, publishing a clutch of award-winning crime novels. On The Java Ridge, in which a group of surfers on a surf charter tries to rescue a refugee boat from a storm in Indonesia, was described as having “some of the most compelling, heartstopping writing about the sea since Patrick O’Brian.” Add Serong’s compassion for modern-day immigrants, real humour and an intimate knowledge of surf culture, and this might be the rarest of surf unicorns; real literature.
Best Memoir (For A Mid-Life Crisis)
Kook, Peter Heller
“Surfers are an intense bunch,” writes Peter Heller in Kook, “and they love their coast the way they love their mothers.” That sentiment kinda sums up this book published 10 years ago. Heller’s previous book had been The River and The Whale, an acclaimed best-seller that exposed the slaughter of whales and dolphins by Japanese fishermen. This is a more memoir as he decides aged 45 to drop everything in the middle of his life, pick up a surfboard and learn to ride an eight-foot wave in six months. In doing so, can he learn to love for someone but himself, and care for the oceans, which are in crisis? That’s a lot of big questions for what was essentially a surf trip to Mexico, but he answers them with grit, poetry, and humor. The book may be a little glib, but the honest, clear prose and his exuberant fearlessness, mean you end up rooting for him. Even if he is a kook.
And Some Classics
Of course, if in doubt, you can always revisit the classics. Barbarian Days, by William Finnegan, is the best surf book, of any genre, ever written. Kem Nunn’s Tapping The Source introduced surf noir and hasn’t been bettered. Tim Winton’s Breath describes the act and art of surfing (and asphyxiation) better than anyone else. And finally, In Search of Captain Zero: A Surfer’s Road Trip Beyond the End of the Road by Allen Weisbecker, is a cult classic for a reason.