The Vice Mayormobile on West Cliff Drive. Photo by Chip Scheuer.
On the Monday after a hot weekend in town mobbed with tourists, Santa Cruz skies are solid and gray. The ocean is as flat as old beer from Cowell’s Beach to the Moss Landing power plant, and Vice Mayor Hilary Bryant looks mighty lonely paddling out on her waxy board, carrying a mesh backpack filled with books meant for the surfers who are lurking inland until they can ambush the real swell like a pack of alligators.
Which was around 6:15am, according to Bryant, and she missed it. She’s got 20 copies of Octavia Butler’s Kindred wrapped in plastic sandwich bags for the two surf school students out in yellow vests, who will soon have something better to do than mope around on waves slower than tree sap.
“My husband was saying that is the most ridiculous idea he’s ever heard,” Bryant says, zipping up her wetsuit. “That’s the worst place to have a book.”
He’s right, but World Book Night U.S. knows no boundaries in the quest for new or light readers. Kindred is a science fiction novel about time travel to the era of Southern slavery, and is one of 29 other titles being given away throughout the county courtesy of Bookshop Santa Cruz. Half a million totally free books will be handed out nationwide in the name of knowledge.
“I just started it, I haven’t finished it,” Bryant confesses, and says that the books were chosen by Bookshop Santa Cruz. “It’s interesting. For me the coolest part is it’s a style that I wouldn’t normally pick up. I’m not usually drawn to science fiction.”
Luckily it was given to her, and it got 4.5 stars on Amazon. Other titles being given away include The Poisonwood Bible, The History of Love, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings—even the much–library-wait-listed Hunger Games. People pay good money for those books.
Bryant paddles out to spread the good word to surf schoolers and instructor, and tries to persuade a batch of three kayakers to take a copy right before one flips over and nearly drowns. They seemed a little stressed out, she says afterward.
“I think it’s great,” says Santa Cruz Surf School owner Dylan Greiner as he climbs out of the surf like a bleach blond seal with his plastic-wrapped book. “I’m going to add it to my bookshelf.”
He also intends on reading it.
“I actually have people to take the extras to,” assures Bryant. “Have you heard of Operation Surf Santa Cruz? It’s a project where they have army veterans who have been injured, typically amputees, and they do a weeklong surfing rehabilitation program. I’m going to go down to the meet and greet with the soldiers with my kids and we’re going to give them to the wounded soldiers.”
