
Ask a Bookseller: 'Unfamiliar Fishes' is delightful and informative
If you’re a history lover with a desire to escape the Minnesota winter weather, Pat Banning of Bookends in Kailua, Hawaii, has a recommendation for you. Banning says "Unfamiliar Fishes" by Sarah Vowell "blew her out of the water" with its carefully researched and highly readable Hawaiian history.The title comes from a quote by a Hawaiian scholar describing unfamiliar fishes blown from the deep who devour the little ones they find. This is a warts-and-all history of Hawaii's Americanization, told in a nonlinear fashion and interspersed with contemporary diary entries as well as Vowell's…
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