I enjoyed attending a virtual author event hosted by Alta Journal's California Book Club featuring author, William Finnegan, discussing his 2016 Pulitzer Prize–winning memoir, "Barbarian Days".
I have not read Barbarian Days by William Finnegan yet. But I now definitely want to do so after hearing the author speak about his life as a surfer. As a native Californian, I have lived the majority of my life near the Pacific Ocean. So reading a nonfiction book about surfing sounds like a must.
Below is a blurb about the Alta Journal's California Book Club virtual author event featuring William Finnegan:
"Barbarian Days" author William Finnegan joins author and former pro-surfer Jamie Brisick and CBC host John Freeman for a free, hour-long discussion.
For New Yorker staff writer William Finnegan, surfing has always been more than a matter of recreation; rather, it is an existential act. In his Pulitzer Prize–winning memoir, "Barbarian Days," he describes the ocean as a capricious deity and explores not just its beauty but also its vast indifference, the dangers that exist beneath the surface of its swells. Tracing a line from boyhood—he learned to surf when he was 10 and honed the art as a teenager in Hawaii—to the present, Finnegan writes of his experiences with a journalist’s nuanced eye. At the center of the book, however, is his own growth and development, in which surfing functions less as metaphor or mirror than as a sort of crucible.
Have you attended any virtual author events recently?
It would be interesting to learn more of the surfing culture in California.
ReplyDeleteI agree.
DeleteI have not attended any virtual events. I do listen to podcasts with authors occasionally. They add another level of understanding to their books that I read.
ReplyDeletePodcasts with authors are wonderful to listen to and you are correct in gaining a new level of understanding from them.
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