Making a nice watery segue from my last book, The Lake, my book up is... The Wave by Susan Casey! No worries, the trend stops here... tho I guess it would have been a good time to get to Water for Elephants, which somehow has not managed to tempt me after all its years on the bestseller list.
The Wave has been on my reading radar pretty since it's been published. It was one of those books that had buzz, but yet I still did not get around to it, even despite praise from two of my most trusted reading buddies, Jen and Joanna. I guess the thing is that I wasn't that interested in the subject matter. While this has never stopped me before from reading a book, it just seemed like it would be on odd mix: the science of the ocean and world of big-wave surfing. In fact, one review I read on Goodreads I think said it was like the Discovery Channel crossed with ESPN. But when it was on that recent Kindle e-book sale for $3.99, it just seemed too good to pass up.
And I am glad I had that motivation as it ended up being quite good and continually fascinating. That said, I did have some initial concerns as Casey, in my humble opinion, opened up with quite a dry chunk of material that didn't pull me in. Thankfully, that all changed when the next section - switching off to surfing - that did grab my attention... and soon enough, the science-y chapters were often trumping the thrills of the surfing stories.
The book had a lot of momentum which kind of felt like times you were riding a big 'ole literary wave. Engaging and highly readable, Casey opens readers' eyes to worlds that I am likely are unknown to the average Joe/Jane... from thrill-seeking/adrenaline junkie surfers who globe-trot the world not unlike the "storm chasers" of basic cable television to gigantic shipping vessels disappearing each and every week and seemingly unnoticed by the media/world (the comparison made is imagine a 747 going down once a week) to unfathomable waves in Alaska to on-call shipping salvage companies off the nasty waters around South Africa... the list goes on and on and on.
While perhaps too geeky in the science parts and/or too duuuude!!!! in the surfing parts for some folks' tastes, I was thoroughly entertained... if you don't think you care about waves, Casey does a very good job in proving you wrong. The Wave was not a book "on paper" that I thought I would have liked, but, in the end, it is a likely contender for my non-fiction read of year.
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