
Kook
What Surfing Taught Me About Love, Life, and Catching the Perfect Wave
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Narrated by:
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Mike Chamberlain
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By:
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Peter Heller
With grit, poetry, and humor, Peter Heller, acclaimed author of The Whale Warriors, recounts his remarkable journey of discovery - of surfing, an entirely new challenge; of the ocean's beauty and power; of the strange surf subculture; of love; and, most of all, of how to seek adventure while crafting a meaningful life.
Having resolved to master a big - hollow wave - that is, to go from kook (surfese for beginner) to shredder-in a single year, Heller travels from Southern California down the coast of Mexico in the company of his girlfriend and the eccentric surfers they meet. Exuberant and fearless, Heller explores the technique and science of surfing the secrets of its culture, and the environmental ravages to the stunning coastline he visits.
As Heller plumbs the working of his own heart and finds joy in both love and surfing, he affords listeners vivid insight into this fascinating world, with all of its perils and pleasures, its absurdity and wonder. Exhilarating, entertaining, and moving, Kook is a love story between a man and his surfboard, a man and his girlfriend, a not-so-old man and the sea.
©2010 Peter Heller (P)2016 TantorListeners also enjoyed...




















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Surfing journey fun
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Useful but long winded and hard to believe
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Call it Average
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Give it a try, I think you will like it
🤙🏼
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but the story on a whole is great.
really wjat you meed whem you camt get out and surf, or are just startimg out.
also good lessons on patience and love, life.
good book.
Great book, makes you want to paddle out
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With respect to the narrator, I will say only that his nasal, sometimes unpleasant voice doesn't enhance the experience of listening to this book. Alas, de gustibus non est disputandum. On a less querulous note, his rendering of Spanish words and phrases is amateurish, and that beautiful language deserves better.
I chose to listen to this book on account of my interest in the author's experience of learning to surf in the middle of his fifth decade. There are many parts of that story that are enjoyable and enriching. What I did not expect or want from Kook is something that the author provides in unwelcome abundance: a soft-headed, ego-centric telling of his evolving romance with his girlfriend and (later) wife, and a muddled hectoring melange of environmental mumbo jumbo that emerges in the most awkward moments against the backdrop of a story supposedly about surfing.
In this last regard, it is not that the author mistakes the gravity of the situation we face with respect to the health of the world's oceans. Rather, it is that he contributes nothing new on this topic, has an off-putting pietistic style, and mistakes one objective good (e.g., global economic growth of 2%) as being fundamentally in conflict with another (e.g., clean and healthy oceans). His thinking on these topics is lazy; his writing sophomoric; his tone hectoring - all hollower than the waves he is looking to surf.
Proceed with caution,
Hollower than the waves he is looking to surf
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No, save you money
Narrator....
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Disappointing
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