Kiteboarding's Simple Plan

Rating:
Summary: Kiteboarding's "A litte too" Simple Plan
Review: I had a season of kiteboarding under my belt when I picked up this book. By the end of the season, I could maintain upwind ground pretty well, but actually getting upwind was still elusive. I had been reading Kiteboarding magazines feverishly and was excited to see someone had written a whole book on the subject. I was hoping for some good tips in such a concentrated source of kiteboarding knowledge.

I don't know how much money it takes to write a book that will be sold to such a small niche audience, but it seems that costs were contained by sending the book to press without it being edited. Their were-many annoying punctuation, errors not too mention sentences that were entirely to long with little continuity between paragraphs and peppered with a lot of slang probably in efforts of making the book cool. I didn't even know that this kind of thing bothers me until I picked up this book -probably because everything else I read HAS been edited fairly well.

I'm guessing that another cost cutting measure was the money saved not hiring a graphic designer to create diagrams that should have accompanied detailed descriptions of body position, wind direction and kite steering maneuvers. There were plenty of times that after I read a description of something I already knew how to do well I thought to myself "I can't see how a beginner will make ANY SENSE of this!" In the book's 278 pages I counted a whopping less than 10 diagrams.

Anyway with all that being said, if anything the book is comprehensive. It does cover quite a bit of material and the author's style is entertaining. And I did pick up some tid bits of knowledge after all. If you wanted to get into kiteboarding you may still like to have this book around. With any luck, you might even find a future "volume II" that flows well and includes many clarifying illustrations.

Rating:
Summary: lengthy but lacking
Review: Unfortunately this doesnt give enough basics and shows very little structure in its outline.Few diagramns that are really instructional.
Strong on safety and danger but little direction to the beginning kitesurfer.
It seemed more like the dialogue that a instructor would give you through a series of lessons and in that context would most likely be excellent.
I have been kitesurfing for about 5 months and can ride a board in and out - so I'm still learning alot but found the thrust of the book not really helpful.
With the amount of experience the author has,he would have a huge lot more to offer and perhaps may do next time.