The wife and I will be traveling to Maui and Kauai in a few weeks and will be staying in a couple of relatively remote areas. We plan to do a lot of relaxing by the beach and probably a fair amount of reading since we aren't really swimmers. Any suggestions for books to read that are set in Hawaii? Perhaps even either of those islands? Thanks!

James Michener's "Hawaii" is the classic historical fiction book about the people of Hawaii, from natives to colonizers and more, told through the stories of several families over the years. It's looong, but pretty good. A good one to check out if you want more than a bit of history...

There is a "book" board on Fodors, you might ask this question over there.

Debi

I might suggest either "Embarrassment of Mangoes, a Caribbean Interlude" by Ann Vanderhoof or "The Sex Lives of Cannibals, Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific" by J. Martaan Troost. While neither of these books are about Hawaii, they are great warm weather reads. One is about a woman and her husband who rent out their home for two years, buy a sailboat and travel the Caribbean. The other is about a man who accompanies his wife to her two year government position in Kirabati in the South Pacific.

Hawaii by Michener was my first thought, but as miss_emery said, it's a LONG read...

Hope you don't mind my sharing some alternative choices...both are really good books to read while lounging on the beach!

"Eddie Would Go" is very good, and then you'll understand all the bumperstickers.

"West of Then" by Tara Bray Smith, is a modern day memoir about her life with her mother set in Honolulu.

Hunter S. Thompson's The Curse of Lono may be what you're looking for.

"From Here to Eternity", by James Jones (Oahu, WWII).

ALL very helpful. I'm going to head to the library the day before we take off and see if I can get them. Too bad though because it sounds like The Curse of Lono is a little too off the beaten path for the library. It would have been a nice curveball in the book collection!

Thanks you guys!

West of Then is a 'curveball' of a book. I got it on request from my library after reading a review of it in the newspaper.

Robert Louis Stevenson (Travels in Hawaii) and Mark Twain both wrote about their time spent in Hawaii, a poetic historical record of how life was like during their period. Both books are available at the drug stores and book stores in Hawaii, probably at the airport shops too.

Just finished "The Money Dragon" by Pam Chun and loved it. True story of Chun's great-grandfather who was considered the Horatio Alger of Chinatown in Honolulu. The story of his life follows his family (all five wives and their children) and the cultural differences they face growing up in Honolulu turning late 1800's through 1930s.

There is another thread with more information about books that are set in Hawaii. Click on my name and you can find it.

Check out Six Months in the Sandwich Islands by Isabella Bird. This book was first published in 1881.

From a review:
"Isabella Lucy Bird won fame in her own time as the most remarkable woman traveler of the nineteenth century, and Six Months in the Sandwich Islands, in which she describes her sojourn in Hawaii in 1873, is one of the gems of Pacific literature. It is safe to say that no other book about Hawaii surpasses it."