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Unfamiliar Fishes (2011)

by Sarah Vowell(Favorite Author)

3.55 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

1594487871 (ISBN13: 9781594487873)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Riverhead Hardcover

review 1: This book is a retelling of the history of the Hawaiian Islands from the time the New England missionaries arrived until annexation to the US in 1898. It took me awhile to get used to Vowell's voice, but eventually it grew on me. I liked the mixture of history and her social commentary and humor even when I didn't agree with it all. It certainly kept it lively and made me think at the same time--a nice combination. I will say that the use of multiple narrators got a little annoying after awhile when Vowell would stop reading in mid-sentence and someone else would take over. The themes that it covered--evangelism, imperialism, liberty and self-determination--are important ones even today more than a hundred years after Hawaii became a US territory and fifty years after she ... morebecame a state. Recommended!
review 2: The Woody Shipmates this is not. Which is not to say it isn't interested, it is. But it's not as compelling and perhaps not as enthralling a subject to its author, either. The occasion for the book appears to be our president born in Hawaii, but there's not as much knitting forward and backward in time to create a sense of revelation and relevance to contemporary life as delighted me in Shipmates. It feels a little labored at times and though I read every word (It's Sarah Vowell, after all, and I do enjoy her perspective on the world and her tone...), I found reading large portions of this a plow. less

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