Unfortunately, there aren’t a ton of options for wave-riding bookworms. But that doesn’t stop me from finding nearly every one of the newly released titles that are even tangentially related to riding waves.

It’s the end of another year—and a decade—and now seems to be as good a time as any to share my favorite things about surfing and being a surfer on the Texas coast.

The holidays are now in full swing, and some of us might have waited until the last minute to procure gifts for our fellow surfer friends and family members.

I started surfing in 1985, the same year that James Fulbright opened his surf shop in the garage under his home on 37th Street in Galveston.

While checking the surf the other day at the Pleasure Pier, I watched a lone figure guide his longboard into the small breaking waves, paddle furiously to catch one and then jump to his feet before falling almost immediately into the whitewater.

The Texas Gulf Surfing Association, the sanctioning body for competitive surfing in the Lone Star State, announced this week that it plans to hold its first wave pool competition on Dec. 7.

The last few days notwithstanding, this fall has been mostly a bust wave-wise for upper coast surfers.

This week, when I heard the news that ABC was seeking participants to compete in a surfing reality show, I checked the calendar to make sure it wasn’t April Fools’ Day.

Ihave an unscientific theory, hypothesized the other morning during coffee cup introspection, that surfers love riding waves because the act itself connects us with our true nature.

As of Thursday, the beach water temperature in Galveston was hovering at around 65 degrees at the Pleasure Pier, a precipitous drop from just a few weeks ago. Combined with colder air temperatures and stiff offshore breezes, neoprene coverage will be the name of the game for the next five months or so.

Our daily lives can be tough.

As my early-morning flight ambled its way across the mountainous West and into Los Angeles this week, I was reminded of a saying I’ve heard quite often: “You can never really go back.”

The World Surf League’s championship tour has hit the homestretch as the best competitive surfers in the world battle it out in the final three events of the season.

It’s early morning, the pinks and purples shimmer against puffy clouds as the sun begins its climb across the Texas sky.

Stephen Hadley is a longtime surfer who lives and works in Galveston. If you have an idea for this column, email him at stephendhadley@gmail.com.

James Fulbright was 10 years old when his mom brought him to Galveston to surf for the first time.

In this age of social media saturation, I often find myself pondering a question again and again: If you don’t post about a surf session on Instagram or Facebook, did it even happen?

Most long-time surfers understand the virtues of having a local craftsman shape a board that will work well in our conditions here on the Gulf Coast.

The Southern Spears Surf Shop team continued its dominating season and won the coveted Wes Ellsworth Team Ratings Champion Award during the TGSA’s state championships at Bob Hall Pier in Corpus Christi.