Maybe I would like this book more if I was a surfer... The writer is able to describe being out on the water in such a way that you feel you are there, but how many times can I read the same thing over and over and over and over...... I skimmed the last third or so cuz I was bored of it and ready to move on.

How did it happen? Sure, I thought the sport was cool. Yes, I wanted to get good at it. But how did it take over? And why am I 30 years old and only working part-time just so I can go to the beach everyday? These are questions that many surfers find themselves asking at one time or another. Daniel Duane does more than answer them in Caught Inside. He does so with the impeccable observations of a poet and nature-writer. Perhaps I’m biased because Dan happens to be writing about my favorite stretch of coastline in California – the one between Santa Cruz and San Francisco – but I think Caught Inside is one of the best surfing books ever written. He certainly inspired me to write Saltwater Buddha: a surfer's quest to find Zen on the sea

I was very excited to start reading this book. It started great and then about 35 pages in I felt like I was reading a book written by someone with ADHD. It became so random / scattered / overly descriptive with run in sentences that I didn't know up from down. Completely lost my interest, unfortunately and I gave up.

In an alternate universe, I am a surfer and wrote a book like this.

Gave some great perspective on surfing and nature, but not super engaging.

Great piece of journalism

When you spend enough time in the water you start feeling like one of the scenes from the ocean that this author describes in detail - which I believe is the main theme of the book. The descriptions of the Santa Cruz/SF coastline are numerous, and they’re a pleasure to read, especially for a Northern-California surfer. In addition to the seasonal ocean descriptions, a big chunk of this book is dedicated to surf history and summarizing popular surf culture, like classical surf movies, including Gidget and The Endless Summer. I personally haven’t watched or read Gidget, so I skipped what looked to be a few-pages-long full summary of the story to avoid any spoilers. The rest of the surf history in the book is kinda cool, but there are also extended passages about explorers (non-surfers) from hundreds of years ago sailing past the Santa Cruz coastline and the SF Bay without noticing them, in what feels like kind of an unrelated, forced history lesson. I didn’t care for that as much. I mostly liked the the author’s own personal surf story, the friends he made while surfing and the places he surfed, described on the book cover as “A Surfer’s Year on the Central Coast”.

A bit of a snorefest. Unnecessarily descriptive at times.

It was good but Duane was occasionally trying to hard with his writing. On some occasions, he was obviously trying to be florid or overly descriptive with his language and would fall flat. Overall, however, it was an interesting and informative take. I would recommend Barbarian Days, which covers much of the same ground but with better writing, over Caught Inside, however.

I'm not a surfer so a lot of the lingo used was unfamiliar to me, but Duane has a very distinctive voice that keeps the narrative moving along and interesting.

I tried. And realized that I just couldn't give a darn. Had to put it down.

I bought this at City Lights bookstore in San Francisco. I relate to it because he pulled a modern day Thoreau "live deliberately" move and became a surf bum. Kinda like me in this ski town. Extremely well written.