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4.0 AVERAGE
4.0 AVERAGE
Finally finished this...all 1100+ pages. My first James Michener. Fascinating historical fictionalized story of Hawaii from the 9th century (if you exclude the earlier geological era prelude) Polynesia settlers who became the Hawaiians, through New England missionaries, Chinese and Japanese immigrants. It evolves into the rise of Hawaiian colonialism and capitalism from a fairly liberal point of view about race and class. With so many characters, the book is really several novel-length stories of adventure, personal striving, romance and all the rest. Never have been to Hawaii; book makes me want to visit.
This story of the birth of Hawaii is worth reading and re-reading.
-Lori G.-
-Lori G.-
A stunning epic book. Hard to believe this was published in 1959. It has aged so well. I learnt so much about Hawaii from its stories; learned to care for its histories too. As a Chinese person, it was also impressive to me how movingly and faithfully Michener had rendered his Hakka protagonists too.
A necessary book.
A necessary book.
This was interesting and often extremely engaging, if a little inconsistent in terms of story and character development. The race and gender generalizations were key to the story and reflect a book with this kind of scope written in the 1950s, but were still a bit hard to take. Overall I'm glad to have read it though.
A great story woven into a fascinating history. Just so much here! A 5 star epic!
Why are the sentences so long? So much happened and yet nothing happened. At a certain point it was just word salad.
challenging
informative
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I added this book to my reading list as it seemed to have been marked as a classic. I found this book to be just ok. I didn't find it very compelling or intriguing, left if after giving it a good try. Decided to reserve time for a more compelling reads.
I started reading this before my son's wedding in Hawaii because I realized that the only thing I knew about the state was that Obama came from there and there is surfing. I was amazed by the number of Asians I saw on the streets of Honolulu and the Japanese tour buses. I had known about the Koreans after reading Black Flower by Young-Ha Kim (an amazing book which included information on Koreans who fought in the Mexican Revolution) but I didn't know about the Chinese and Japanese. This is a wonderful with much information. I have two major complaints. The first and foremost is that Michener wrote about real people and companies but because he reconstructed fictional conversations and intuited motivations to them, he changed all the names. This is so frustrating because you know the characters are based on historical people but you can't wiki them. Some of the people have been identified, but others you just have to do your own research to try to figure out who they are. If Wolf Hall could use real names, why not Hawaii? A different time I'm guessing when people were more concerned about libel suits. Second complaint: it's a little racist in spots, but Michener really does mean well and you have to put it in context. Also the ending was weird. Otherwise, a must read especially if you are planning to go to Hawaii and everyone should.
There is no doubt that meticulous research went into this book. Divided into sections, each section focuses on a different ethnic group and their impact on Hawaii. My version of this book had 1,130 pages and by about page 850 I was done. It’s impossible to keep track of who is related to who, although Michener does give genealogical charts. I liked the section on the missionaries best as at least in that section there is some exploration of depth of character.
If you’re reading this in today’s world, this book contains an awful lot of racial slurs and some awful stereotyping of races.
I couldn’t wait to finish this so I could read something else!
If you’re reading this in today’s world, this book contains an awful lot of racial slurs and some awful stereotyping of races.
I couldn’t wait to finish this so I could read something else!