The Wave
I read a book I loved on vacation: Susan Casey's The Wave: In Pursuit of the Rogues, Freaks, and Giants of the Ocean.
It's a well-written blend of ocean science and surfing. The science develops the case that rogue and freak waves are anything but unusual and that the world's shipping and oil rigs aren't built to handle reality. Two to three dozen giant shipping vessels that simply disappear, every year, testify to the fact that ship construction hasn't begun to catch up with the chaos science of freak waves.
Meanwhile the surfing chapters focus on big wave riding, surfers hoping for waves between 40 and 100 feet tall, or bigger. Laird Hamilton, arguably the world's foremost big wave surfer, comes across as a real-world Doc Savage, complete with a workshop in which he invents gear no one else has imagined. In fact, if you're a fan of pulp fiction and you're not going to read the whole book, just go to a bookstore and skim the chapter called Egypt. You'll see precisely what I mean by the Doc Savage quip.
The Wave was the first book Lisa ever bought on Kindle. She read pieces aloud to me while I was driving. Then Lisa got busy writing and researching her own book and I went ahead and blitzed through her Kindle purchase. I didn't realize The Wave had turned into a bestseller. I admit that some sort of garage band literary principle sometimes makes me *less* likely to read bestsellers. If you're anything like that, skip the principle. The Wave is an excellent read. And it probably shows exactly where the oceans are headed in the era of global climacide.