by James Michener
Lordy, where to start with this one. I liked this in some ways, hated it in others. I learned a lot of Hawaiian history that was new to me, but Michener’s writing style drives me a bit nutty. Any book that starts off with “millions upon millions of years ago” and ends in the 1950’s is guaranteed to get on my nerves after awhile. It ends up being a bunch of short family stories within the grander epic story, which left me feeling like I really didn’t care about any of them very much. Michener handles this format by making apparently everybody who ever lived in Hawaii related to the same three or four families, which I’m sure isn’t quite the case.
At any rate, I finally finished it. I almost threw it into the recycle bin a few times, but now I can move on to something more enjoyable, preferably less epic.
937 pages.
