Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by mcc
Hawaii by James A. Michener
Did not finish book. Stopped at 21%.
Listening to this audiobook my attention kept drifting away because I was SO bored. But I kept re-focusing because I was like 'Come on, there's some interesting historical stuff here about the settlement of Hawaii that we are interested in'. Which is wild because the idea of a book like this is that the fictional story is supposed to keep you engaged while giving you some historical stuff in the background and for me it was the opposite. The historical background stuff was the only interesting element and the fictionalized human stories were boring as can be.
I rode it out through the first book of polynesian people and then it jumped to some white evangelical Christians. First of all, I hate multi-generational epics where they make huge jumps with no connection. I HATE short stories. Maybe the connections would come later in the book, but I will get into why I couldn't stick around to find out. Especially as there was not even a satisfying arc for the first group of people that we followed.
So in Book 2 I immediately found these people insufferable which was no accident. I can understand why the author would want to make the Christian missionaries insufferable as his readership would probably identify more with this group and he needs to set them up to show how they were not 'in the right' or at all 'helpful', but I already LOATHED them before they even arrived to Hawaii and well...we can project where that's going to go. I knew there was a lot more hate and frustration coming. So I read through a few reviews here to determine if I should stick it out and after skipping by a bunch of GLOWING 5***** reviews which I honestly think are heavily 'sunk cost' biased - the more you invest time/energy into something the more your brain gotta do that mental justification that it was TOTALLY WORTH IT. I finally found a 3 *** review that I felt was more 'realistic' and where I was at and determined that it just wasn't worth going on for me. Sounds like while the stories do connect later on it winds up being convuluted and difficult to follow and with my brain already checking out this early on I could pretty much guarantee that I wouldn't put the mental energy into figuring that all out when I got there.
I rode it out through the first book of polynesian people and then it jumped to some white evangelical Christians. First of all, I hate multi-generational epics where they make huge jumps with no connection. I HATE short stories. Maybe the connections would come later in the book, but I will get into why I couldn't stick around to find out. Especially as there was not even a satisfying arc for the first group of people that we followed.
So in Book 2 I immediately found these people insufferable which was no accident. I can understand why the author would want to make the Christian missionaries insufferable as his readership would probably identify more with this group and he needs to set them up to show how they were not 'in the right' or at all 'helpful', but I already LOATHED them before they even arrived to Hawaii and well...we can project where that's going to go. I knew there was a lot more hate and frustration coming. So I read through a few reviews here to determine if I should stick it out and after skipping by a bunch of GLOWING 5***** reviews which I honestly think are heavily 'sunk cost' biased - the more you invest time/energy into something the more your brain gotta do that mental justification that it was TOTALLY WORTH IT. I finally found a 3 *** review that I felt was more 'realistic' and where I was at and determined that it just wasn't worth going on for me. Sounds like while the stories do connect later on it winds up being convuluted and difficult to follow and with my brain already checking out this early on I could pretty much guarantee that I wouldn't put the mental energy into figuring that all out when I got there.