Reviews - Unfamiliar Fishes

555 reviews for:

Unfamiliar Fishes

Sarah Vowell

3.57 AVERAGE

seest12's review

2.75

funny informative lighthearted medium-paced

perfectly fine and informative, but very familiar... a little too familiar. felt like any of the mentions of the trail of tears was a little cringe-worthy, like "oh by the way one of my relatively was on the trail of tears", but you're left wondering how that connects, other than the overall narrative of colonialism. maybe it is a little too glib for the subject matter..

mharrison13's review

4.25

funny informative lighthearted reflective medium-paced

A history of Hawaii whose center point is the Americanization and annexation there of. The story was very interesting and sometimes shocking. Sarah Vowell made the whole thing entertaining.

coleycole's review against another edition

3.0

Good, but I didn't enjoy it as much as I liked The Wordy Shipmates. As always, I love her voice and listening to this on audiobook was great.

sharonsueg's review

2.0

I enjoyed the history provided in the book. I read it prior to a trip to Hawaii. The author's opinions come across strongly which may put off some readers.

elexa's review against another edition

3.0

Things I liked: Reading about the history of Hawaii is really fascinating. It's incredible that shortly after the development of written Hawaiian, the literacy rate of Hawaii was one of the highest in the world. It's also frustrating to read about how "Manifest Destiny" and pursuit of naval power robbed Hawaii of its right to self-govern. The material in here is constantly fascinating and it's clear that Hawaii is a really complex place. 4.5 stars

Things I didn't like: Sarah Vowell's writing makes me feel like I just learned how to read. To be clear, I know how to read. I read a lot. I read all kinds of stuff with different types of written dialogue and levels of difficulty. Something about Vowell's sentence structure has me reading and re-reading the same sentence over and over. She tries to cram so much information into each sentence that I felt like diagramming each sentence just to figure out what was going on. I get it - a lot of things relate to one another. But is making a super complicated sentence to express that really the best way to get that across? I thought that maybe if I got the audiobook, this would alleviate my sentiment, but it was really clear from the sample on Audible that this wouldn't be true. Sarah Vowell reads really really slowly and intensifies my feeling that I am not fluent in English. (English is my only native language.) 2 stars

Average: 3 stars

stacykozisek's review against another edition

3.0

Based on other reviews, it sounds like I picked the wrong Sarah Vowell book to start with. I did enjoy learning about Hawaiian history that I had very little prior knowledge of but I had a hard time with this book. I listened to the Audible version of the book and often times had a hard time following along, often getting lost on what the time period was and who exactly was being talked about. Featuring different actors to read a sentence or two here or there felt contrived and I almost always focused on trying to figure out who was talking and completely missed what they actually said.
Overall, just an okay book, learned a few things but probably not as much as I should have in the 7.5 hours dedicated to it.

readra's review

3.0

adventurous funny informative lighthearted reflective sad medium-paced

Clever and funny, I liked her style and the way she was able to breezily fly through the history of Hawaii. Occasionally she dove a bit deep into a side story that I had a hard time following, but I still finished with a new knowledge and appreciation of how modern day Hawaii came to be.