100 books like In Deep

Surfing has been at the center of my life since I was twelve, and no book has ever captured it quite like William Finnegan’s masterpiece. I was gripped by—and related to—his obsession. I felt like I was right there with him, riding that nearly transparent wave off a remote island of Fiji.

And the grappling with how surfing fits into adult life—yes, that too, really hit home.

The North Shore is surfing’s mecca. I’ve been making the annual pilgrimage since my early teens. It’s a heavy place — the waves, the people, the vibes.

Author Chas Smith throws himself into the task of writing unflinchingly about people, places, and things that most people are afraid to go near. There’s tremendous humor. There’s a sexy, ‘cinematic’ car. I fell in love with Chas as much as I did with the North Shore and its hairball beefiness.

I grew up reading Paul Theroux’s fiction and nonfiction. His travel books riveted me, inducing a wanderlust I’ve yet to come down from. When I learned that he’d written a surf novel, I jumped all over it.

I was not disappointed—more like enchanted. There’s the macking surf. There’s Hawaii. There’s the fascinating Joe Sharkey. And there’s a very subtle moment where Paul, the author, pokes his head through and breaks the fourth wall as it were. I loved that. And I love this book.

Matt Warshaw wrote The Encyclopedia of Surfing and he is indeed encyclopedic when it comes to surfing. My impression of this book—written after he completed his epic encyclopedia—is that he was so bursting at the seams with surf history, evolution, movements, and flashpoints that he had no choice but to pen this dance through surfing’s glorious past.

I loved the characters, and I loved Matt’s prose. Did Matt live for many years in San Francisco, pulling into tubes every day at a surf break whose name I shall respectfully not mention? Did tube riding inform his prose? Yes. Matt is eternally barreled, and you can pull into the barrel with him in this fantastic beast of a book.

I adore the passages about what happens to the mind and body when you enter the ocean. I connected to the ideas about thinking through water and oceanic literacies. All the experiences shared about being in nature felt completely relatable.

Kanaka Maoli writer Karin Amimoto Ingersoll describes dropping into a wave on her surfboard as a kinaesthetic/sensorial experience (not that I can surf, but I felt so present with the writer at that moment!). She expands on this tantalizing metaphor in the most wondrous ways.

I read this during a particularly difficult phase of writer’s block, and it gave me the vital inspiration I needed to reflect on issues of identity, knowledge, and culturally safe expansive spaces in forms not imprisoned by “academic speak.” Needless to say, my words flowed like water.

T.W. Neal grows up with parents who opt to live on a sparsely populated Hawaiian island, not wearing clothes, surfing, smoking Marijuana, and eating magic mushrooms. The family lives in a van or in housing with few modern amenities and the author attends school on the island only sporadically. Due to her mother’s mental illness and her father’s alcohol abuse, she at times, has to run the household. With difficulty she connects with relatives and a few teachers and begins to reach for a lifeline to break free from the life her parents chose. She wants to go to college and eventually is able to leave the island and pursue a mainstream life. It is astounding that a person growing up in such circumstances would have the desire and determination to forge a different life.

I’ve always wanted to learn how to surf, and I stumbled upon Diane Cardwell’s memoir Rockaway: Surfing Headlong into a New Life while we were locked down in the middle of the pandemic.

She writes of learning how to surf in midlife and how finding her balance in the ocean led to discovering balance in her life. I marvel at her ability to set her passions above her fear and discovering a home among like-minded people while building a life centered around joy.

She not only embraced but celebrated the unknown, and that led her to discover her true self. After I read her memoir, I booked my first surf lesson, and while I still have a lot to learn, Cardwell’s voice reminds me to get onto a board again.

Building your own sailboat from scratch, then sailing it from California down to Baja, camping, and surfing along the way: how can that not be a cool story? Christian Beamish manages the perfect blend of introspection and backstory with descriptions of sea, sky, land, and the people he meets along the way.

I’ve read Jaimal Yogis’ Saltwater Buddha: A Surfer’s Quest to Find Zen on the Sea countless times.

His coming-of-age story recounts his experiences after traveling, rather running away, to Hawaii as a teenager with little money and only a few belongings to learn how to surf. Riding the blue barrel waves and the salty waters, alongside wisdom from his mentor, led to him realizing the science of surfing, the formation of the ocean and its underwater typography, and the quest for enlightenment are forever meshing and melding together.

Yogis helped me to grasp the space between moments is just as important as moments themselves, and the essence of just “being” is sometimes enough.

To look at what is written about surfing, it would seem that it’s a “man’s world.” Surfing, like other pursuits and professions, is one where women are often characterized as either anecdotal or exceptional. The truth is so much richer and complex that, as a woman who surfs, I almost don’t want to share our secrets. But Easkey Britton shares some of hers from years of competitive surfing around the world and from the fierce and sustaining waters she calls home on the west coast of Ireland. Britton has surfed waves and conditions that few among us have the desire to tackle. But in discussing all these places and all these conditions, she speaks eloquently about what can be gained through immersion in the ocean that gave birth to our human form and continues to abide by our human trespasses.