Unfamiliar Fishes

De: Sarah Vowell

Narrado por: Fred Armisen, Bill Hader, John Hodgman, Catherine Keener, Edward Norton, Keanu Reeves, Paul Rudd, Maya Rudolph, John Slattery

Sarah Vowell thinks of Hawaii as the most American state. She argues that it’s “breathtaking in its beauty, sometimes hideously developed, overwhelmingly religious, impoverished (except for pockets of staggering wealth), crass and spiritual all at once.” In Unfamiliar Fishes, she will explore the exceptional history of Hawaii with her personal reporting and trademark smart-aleckiness to find out the odd and emblematic history of Hawaii, and how it got to be that way. She will explain how Hawaii is Manifest Destiny’s plate lunch.

There will be cannibalism. There will be incest. There will massacres. There will be con men and dreamers. There will be racism. There will be Theodore Roosevelt. There will be history and Obama and America and opportunistic missionaries and warring whalers and kings and queens. And there will even be lepers. And therefore it will be a great and entertaining story of American history, told in Vowell’s inimitable voice and in her unconventional style.

Unfamiliar Fishes is a vacation into a colorful and riveting period in history with America’s favorite historical travel companion, Sarah Vowell.

Sarahs great as the goth girl on the incredibles.

I appreciate the amount of research sarah does on everything. she is a great writer. I guess Hawaii dosnt do it for me? well worth the history and sarahs take on it.

if you want to learn history

if you want to learn history, Sarah Vowell is always the way to go. informative, funny, and some great voices along the way

Enjoyable, but celeb narrations are distracting

At first, I found the author's voice a bit distracting, but over time, I came to enjoy her voice, especially when she was doing dead pan irony. What became painful as the book progressed were the celeb readings of a sentence to a paragraph. There would be a lead up to a quote, a lengthy pause and then a quote read by a celeb. Sometimes the pause seemed to go on and on with a tiny section (7 words or so) read by the celeb. These became so distracting, and were often times difficult to hear due to difference in volume, that I just tuned them out. The use of celebs to read quotes seemed to be too gimmicky.

All in all, I enjoyed the book and the author's voice. I have stopped listening to a small number of books because of painful narration. The negative reviews seem too harsh especially the ones that complain of "America is always the bad guy." Looking back at this period through modern perspective makes it hard to justify our prior actions. One just needs to accept the difference in perspectives and move on.

Honest attempt falls short

This book should not have been read by the author. She sounds like she loves the culture of Hawaii but cannot pronounce the names and has a grating voice. She would draw more people to her opinion if the recording were warmer - like the islands.

Not for Tourists

From the arrival of Captain Cook, to the missionaries, to the businessmen and politicians who orchestrate the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy, Vowell's book is a fascinating and upsetting in-depth look at the Americanization (and eventual annexation) of Hawaii. This is not your typical tourist fare.

I knew what to expect from Vowell's reading, and don't have any issues with her voice (if you're not familiar with Vowell, definitely check out the sample to see if it'll be too much for you).

The supporting cast is generally fine, but Keanu Reeves is shocking great as David Malo. I think I could listen to him read Malo's Hawaiian Antiquities and be content.

Definitely worth checking out if you're at all interested in the history of Hawaii.