WL Rating
Waves, from former Surfer Magazine editor Steve Hawk, has been out for a few years, but the images and writing are timeless. In this book, Hawk has managed to gather some of the most striking surfer-less photos from locations like Hawaii, Tahiti, Australia, California, Indonesia and the Maldives. While the book is long on photos and short on prose, the writing doesn’t get in the way of the book’s visual pulse. In fact, Hawk’s insights are appropriate and thankfully brief, being just long enough to add value but short enough to be consumed politely by a guest sitting on your couch. Hawk also manages to deftly avoid the common surfer-writer pitfall of sounding like a self-absorbed, metaphysical loon when describing the surf. The words, like most of the waves in the book, are clean, simple and easy to digest. This is a great gift book for anyone who surfs and definitely worth a place on your coffee table. (October 2009)
