Phil Jarratt's latest offering might not be quite the book for your surf crazed teenager but for those of us with a longer experience and interest in Australian surfing culture it is required reading.
Now this is a curious book; a treatise on marijuana smuggling told in a scholarly manner. A novelty indeed, because despite the prevalence of marijuana in Western culture a few volumes of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and a lyric sheet to Cypress Hill is about all this reader has been exposed to.
Uncharted Waters is a fan's film – straight up. It makes no pretense of being otherwise. When you're a grommet you get your idol's autograph, when you're older, and if you have the means and the talent, you make a documentary about them. And that's what Craig Griffin has done.
Bob McTavish writes like he speaks. Short, rapid fire sentences are often interspersed with one word exclamatories. Understand? Cool!
Summer's coming and mushburgers are on the menu. The waves, however, aren't the only thing taking a culinary bent. At this time of year do the short and squat grovellers with gourmet names hit the market: The Taco, the Dumpling, the Chop Suey etc.
When a book of surf photos is produced by a leading New York art publisher it raises the stakes. It is a statement of intent. It clearly aspires to a market beyond surfing, to those with broader cultural and artistic interests. And that is the standard by which it must ultimately be judged.
As the title indicates this book is concerned with the cocaine trade in Bali. It is a sad book that dwells long on the sordid sexual behaviour of its subjects while hardly sparing a paragraph to consider the victims of the criminality it describes.
Phil Jarratt has taken a conquistador's approach to his latest book. It's all there in the title. He starts by defining his target, 'Surfing Australia,'and then goes on to claim all the available territory.
The Big Juice makes sense of the big wave mindset and gives a history lesson along the way. It's an enjoyable book, but one that could do with a bloody good proofread.
There are times when, despite all my internal protestations, I realise I'm just as susceptible to marketing as any network TV watching chump. The latest example occurred while checking the Stewart surfboards website.