Reviews

The Most Fun Thing: Dispatches from a Skateboard Life by Kyle Beachy

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katellison's review

4.0

really enjoyed the essays that braided reflections on skateboarding with personal narrative and literary criticism. i am a sucker for a dfw essay and beachy's skating in the midwest/ pale king piece works.

also loved the essays on Verso and Dylan. that are basically critical analyses of skate parts - maybe this writing exists elsewhere, but this is the first time i've encountered it, and they gave me quite a thrill.

just learned on ig that grand central opted not to give this a paperback release. major party foul!

though the collection is a little uneven and i'd edit out a few of the less rigorous recycled blog chapters, it still rips enough to deserve a softcover run.

hreed7's review

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challenging emotional hopeful reflective slow-paced

I would be very hard pressed to recommend this book to someone who wasn’t like really interested in skateboarding, which is a shame because it’s also literary and about more than just a toy with four wheels. However, it is also literary and about more than just a toy with four wheels in a very specific way that requires a reader to be truly committed to abstract thinking about concepts (love, truth, fun, etc) and to skitch along for Beachy’s ride for hundreds of pages. There are portions of this book that are truly revelatory and many many passages worth committing to memory (or at least easy reference). It is also probably too long and a creative writing professor would presumably know that. Nevertheless, I have literally already passed along a chapter to a friend and what does that say about a book except that it redeems itself.