Pretty stellar writing about the NorCal surfing experience. Duane tries to make accessible for non-surfers, but I have a feeling this resonates much louder to those who've spent the time cruising the coast up there. Very cool. Glad i finally got around to reading this one.

This book put me right back on the California coast. I got to experience all of its beauty, the descriptive language had me breathing in the pine filled air, surfing glassy days and meeting the kind of characters that shape that coastline. Well worth a read, very sensitively written.

Not for me. I love the documentary "step into liquid" but this is more a like Walden by Thoreau for surfer fans. Like I said, probably not bad, just not my taste.

As a surfer myself, I was predisposed to like this book - and maybe am giving it more credit than it's due even at 3 stars. It's just....boring...a lot of the time.

Duane has interesting side stories but often times gets bogged down in overuse of descriptors. Overall a fun read about an intelligent guy.

Suffers mightly from the fact that recently finished the vastly superior Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life.

This book is about a man who quits his mundane job and moves to Northern California to spend a year surfing. He figures out that he really doesn't know that much about surfing. He comes to learn more about the sport, about nature, and about surfing legends. It's a great story of giving aspects of your life up to enjoy doing what you love.

This is California. This book makes me long for the line-up everytime. I can feel the post nasal drip now. Duane paints an excellent picture of the real California coast, rugged, agrarian, beautiful.

This book took me a long time to read. I mean a really long time. It sat on my bookshelf for nearly 16 years, and then when I finally picked it up to read, it took me almost 2 1/2 months to read. It's mainly because the book drove me crazy. I thought it would be interesting reading about a surfer living in Monterey and delving into the life of a surfer and all that entails. There's the constant search for the perfect waves, understanding the pecking order of local surfers, and immersing into the culture and mind set of surfers. Also thrown into the mix are sections on sharks, making surfboards, surf movies, and the history of the sport. All of this would be great to read about, but the book is so friggin stream of conscious that I wanted to stop reading this book many times. Daniel Duane jumps from topic to topic, sometimes within a paragraph. Sentence structure is jumbled, thoughts all over the place, and the constant focus on nature is mind-numbing. Normally, nature completely captures my attention, but for some reason, I found it dull this time. I realize for many that this book is a classic, but it was a real chore for me to read and get through. Now I know why it sat on my shelf untouched for so long!

Nature writing, surf history, memoir. Duane's writing is beautiful and will take you on the California surf trip if you're landlocked. Any lover of nature writing will love this too.

This was the EXACT surf book I was looking for. I knew it existed, just took awhile to discover it. Am hooked 12 pages in.

"And those friends mostly nodded with forced enthusiasm when I declared my intention to move to the water; the kind of move that everyone acknowleges sounds great, but in a way that makes you know that they would never make such a mistake themselves."

"But this book isn't about how I returned to conquer the big waves - a meaningless project to begin with - it's about an impulse to take what seemed to like the last few free years in my youth (before what imprisonment, I haven't the foggiest idea) and see if the life by the water I'd always dreamed of was actually possible."

Good timing too, because I was about to give up on a good surf book having gone through a couple other duds. Won't mention which ones. :)

Extremely well-described account of a year spent surfing in Northern California. Just nails all the details. Makes you want to wax up your board and paddle out!