Tupaia: Captain Cook's Polynesian Navigator by Joan Druett

Tupaia: Captain Cook's Polynesian Navigator by Joan Druett 2011

This book is why I prefer to read non-fiction, because you just can't make this stuff up. This book brings to life a Tahitian who is largely forgotten in the history of early South Pacific exploration but actually made a huge impact.

The large amount of research shines thru in this book but doesn't weight it down. I actually found the book quite humorous, though usually at the expense of the ignorant Europeans.

I am amazed at what she pulled together of early Tahitian life since they had no written record.

In a nutshell, Captain Cook's first voyage goes to Tahiti where they offer Tupaia a ride to Europe. Along the way he pretty much keeps the local Maoris and Aborigines from killing them. And sadly, he dies a painful death in Indonesia/Batavia. I always find it so tragic that these boats will make it thru cannibal infested waters of Melanesia but then so many people die in the malaria and cholera wasteland that was the Dutch owned Indonesia of the 1800's.

Tupaia was a master navigator, high priest, artist, politician and translator. The cover of the book depicts one of his watercolors from the trip and he also drew a famous map of Polynesia.

I just wonder if the Maori's minds where blown when he showed up and they could communicate. It is very telling that their legends speak of Tupaia rather then Captain Cook.

I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in exploration of that area, it is a quick read and not too long either.

Yankee Whalers in the South Seas by A.B.C. Whipple

Yankee Whalers in the South Seas by A.B.C. Whipple 1954

I picked up this book at a library book sale about 4 years ago. I was a little torn buying it since I never gave much thought to whaling but I did already own In the Heart of the Sea in the Bibliotiki, which is about a doomed whaling voyage (not read yet). But I looked at the map and thought it looked interesting.

This book turned out to be pretty interesting. It has 12 chapters of stories about ships, including some stories that overlaped. I learned many things like if someone died at sea they usually tossed you overboard but with the officers they put you in a barrel of rum to preserve you. Kinda gives new meaning to "aged rum."

In the chapter about wives and children on ships it talked about six year old Laura Jernegan who kept a ships log while her father sailed the Roman on October 29, 1868. The very cool thing about our modern age is her is a link to her log. Fascinating stuff.

I rather enjoyed the last chapter where we find out the author is completely obsessed with maritime history and drags his wife and children to museums and libraries. I liked this quote as a cautionary tale to other martime fanatics " ...the Seaport Store can be counted on to provide for about half and hour of uninterrupted research; whether or not it is an expensive half hour depends upon how well you have brought up your wife." hmm

I wasn't loving the illustrations in the book, not really my kinda style.

But I did like the cute whale hiding under the dust jacket.

Breadfruit Trilogy by Celestine Vaite

Breadfruit by Celestine Vaite. 2000

Frangipani by Celestine Vaite. 2004

Tiare in Bloom by Celestine Vaite. 2006

We were on vacation in Australia when I saw Breadfruit at a local bookstore. I came back home and interlibrary loaned it since it wasn't published in the US yet. The author is Tahitian and you don't see many women Tahitian authors who wind up with a successful book trilogy. Sadly, I can't seem to find anything new the author has been working on and her website link doesn't work anymore.

The books are based on Materena Mahi the family matriarch and professional cleaner. She is raising a child, trying to get her drunk boyfriend to marry her and likes to sweep a lot. I wouldn't call these "chick lit" but they are on the lighter side of fiction. It does give you a interesting window into modern Tahitian society. I probably liked the last book the best because it had more of the male character which at times was a more interesting character then Materena.

If you are a fan of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency then this is for you. Fun, light and exotic reads. Only wish the author would write something new!

If anyone has any good suggestions for contemporary modern Polynesian authors, please leave them in the comment section.

Castaway by Lucy Irvine

This book is a little out of my focus area of for the Bibliotiki since it is about a small island in the Torres Straights by Australia and within Melanesia. However, I do like to collect books by women authors for the collection. Though I usually don’t need them naked on the cover.

I also had to buy this book because it kept popping up in my life. A few weeks before our last Hawaii trip, we were in a small Californian college town and I saw they had a bookstore when looking for parking. This bookstore was a sad little affair where they hardly had any books but they had this book in hardcover for $4. I am kinda funny about the format of my books. For the Bibliotiki, if it is really old I like it with a dust jack and hardcover. If it is from about 1980 to present I rather have paperback. I prefer paperbacks since I commute on the bus and I am kinda tough on shoving books in my bag. I usually don’t like to travel with my older books since they are more delicate and heavier. So since this book was from 1983 and about Melanesia, I didn’t want it in hardcover. I told my husband this and he just called me cheap!

Flash forward a few weeks when we were in Oahu at a musty book and record store called Jelly’s. We were in Hawaii for a week and I had only packed one book. I have realized lately that I have been packing too many books for trips so for this trip I thought 1 would do me. It was a 450 page book but I was having trouble getting into it and was feeling a bit dumb not having a good book for my beach vacation. But there on Jelly’s shelf was a $2.98 beatup paperback copy of Castaway. The price and format were right so I suddenly had a beach book.

What a strange book. It is the nonfiction story of a British woman who accepts an ad in the newpaper for a man looking for a wife since the Australian goventment required this of them to live on uninhabited island. On the front of the book it says it was a best seller, I guess because she is always talking about being naked and there are some topless photos of her.

Also there is a great debate between her and her husband “G” about having sex. They had sex before they arrived on the island but then she didn’t want to anymore and he grew embittred and his health deteriorated. Not to imply that his health deteriorated due to lack of sex but I'm sure some men could make a case for it.

I must say if I had any dreams about being dropped off on a desserted island they where shattered reading this book. Between them running about out of fresh water to their near stravation and many infections, um no thanks. I’ll just stay at the Hilton thank you very much. They were saved by nearby islanders who adopted them once they discovered that G could fix their motors.

I found the book interesting until she broke down and finally had sex with him then it just got weird with all his sexual fantasies and their role playing. Ugh, please go back to talking about making your own fish hooks, that was more interesting.

While flying home from Hawaii we watched an old Hammer horror movie, the Curse of the Wearwolf with Oliver Reed. I am a fan of Oliver Reed so once we were home we were looking on netflix streaming and saw he was in a film called Castaway. Could it be based on the book I just read? Why yes! The movie was pretty close to the book as in she was naked a lot and G was a horny old bastard. Since it was Oliver Reed we did wonder how much was just drunken adlibbed.

This strange coicisdence had us learning more about Oliver Reed including watching a strange visit on Letterman and reading the book Hellraisers. Good lord those old British actors could drink.

Back to Castaway. Served its purpose as a good beach read and I got to learn more about Oliver Reed then I needed to know (a tattoo of a bird claw on his manhood??).

In closing, I do think it is ironic that G moved to this island to write a book about living on an island and here this young woman turns out a best seller were his book is like 1 cent on Amazon. Wonder how he felt about that?

Tahiti Landfall by William Stone

Tahiti Landfall by William Stone. 1946

I found this book in the early days of the Bibliotiki and probably paid too much for it. Upon reading this Tahitian slice-o-life tale, I thought it was kind of a snooze. Mr. Stone talks about moving to Tahiti and his two live in helpers Teuru and her brother Tavae. Teuru is a teenage girl who appears topless in some of the photos included in the book. I did like that Quinn’s makes an appearance but if you are living in Tahiti in the 1940’s it better be. Eddie Lund also gets a mention.

Each chapter has a small pen and ink illustration, some nice, some unfortunate. Actually many unfortunate.

And has many cheesecake shots, er I mean photos of the natives.

Strangely, when I was trying to find out more about this book I saw that it was made into an Ester Williams movie called Pagan Love Song. The strange part is, that a day or so later I found this movie on VHS for sale at Goodwill. While the movie is not so great and doesn't follow the book that close (maybe not such a bad thing), it does have Charles Mauu, who is a famous Tahitian actor and musician. The movie also has Rita Moreno, playing a young Tahitian girl, which is just odd.

Another interesting fact, is one of the photos included in the book the adze man was also done in velvet by Leetag who was Stone’s neighbor.

From the book Leetag of Tahiti

Six Months in the Sandwich Islands by Isabella Bird

Six Months in the Sandwich Islands : Among Hawai'i's Palm Groves, Coral Reefs and volcanoes. By Isabella Bird 1881, 1998

I decided a while back that I wanted to keep an eye out for books by women who travel to the South Pacific. I kept seeing this book but it was always for more then I wanted to spend. I eventually found it in paperback for $4 at a local bookstore.

I started to read this while on our vacation to Kauai since she visited Kauai. I made it to about page 20 then spent the next four months reading it off and on. While it was an interesting book, sometimes it was a bit of a slog with the tiny type and detail.

Isabella was an unmarried English woman who liked to travel. She wound up in Hawaii in 1873 at age 42 at the advice of her doctor to help ease her depression and back pain. She explored the islands in a way that is not possible in modern day. She traveled by horse which at first we might think "ok, yeah, I could see that." But remember that the ladies where suppose to ride sidesaddle. I have only ridden a horse a few times, but sidesaddle just sounds totally uncomfortable. In Hawaii the women rode like men which she soon adopted and wouldn't you know, her back pain was greatly improved.

The book is composed of letters to her sister in Scotland and are incredibly detailed. Often with humor especially when she is crossing paths with native cockroaches.

Some chapters are totally gripping like the one where her and a local woman are crossing torrents on their horses. I can't belive they weren't all killed. Or her on trails on the palis with the horse. She found in Hawaii that it was perfectly safe for a woman to travel alone and she often did. She would just hang out with the locals, sleep with them and only speak Hawaiian. Total imersion. But of course in a book this old you will get some observations from her that aren't PC by modern standards.

She made it to Oahu, Maui, Molokai, Kauai and the Big Island. She loved to explore the volcanos on the Big Island.

One thing I found interesting was she was obsererving Hawaii before it was annexed by America but not that long after the missionariers took hold.

If you are interested in Hawaii history, this is really a fascinating book. Not too many illustrations though. She talks about taking photos but I wasn't able to find any online. They would of been great if they could of been included in the book.

National Geographic October 1958

The National Geographic Magazine. October, 1958.

I LOVE National Geographic. My dad use to have a subscription that I would read when I was young. The last few years I realized that they sometimes cover the South Pacific so I started to pick them up when I found them cheap. At one thrift store the more recent ones are 50 cents and older ones are $1.50. I scored a bunch of old ones cheap at Half Price books the other year because the cashier didn't know how to ring them up. Then next time I went to that Half Price Book they had them priced at $7!

I not only love the NG for the in depth articles on the South Pacific but for the old ads and other articles.

I debated if I should include them in my Bibliotiki site since they aren't books but I think they still fall under my mission statement due to great articles and nifty illustrations

In this issue, you get an article about Iraq and Bryce Canyon. I have always wanted to go to Bryce Canyon and the nice photography in this issue only added to my desire.

I scanned some of the ads. I like this one for a South Pacific cruise and a dinosaur skeleton for a whole $1!

This page and half on Africa I really like. I would love to go to Ethiopia and eat. The ad for South Africa with the kid and the pot is kinda odd.

Last but not least is the article on Fiji by Luis Marden. Mr. Marden spent a lot of time in the South Pacific for NG. NG bills it as " The Islands Called Fiji- With 2 Maps and 33 illustrations, 28 in color."

I have scanned some rather nice color ones.

I love the house in this shot. The colors remind me of the paintings in Head Hunting in the Solomon's. The article starts off with a Captain Bligh's reference to sailing through Fiji and staying the hell away from the cannibals. My apologies for not scanning the photo of Sanaila, age 96, the last cannibal.

Of course the article talks of kava but also of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philips visit, with a photo of them looking young and trim.

I can't imagine being a housewife in 1958 and reading this article and seeing the exotic photos, how it must of really felt like a far away mysterious land. I would like to go to Fiji one day but would probably be worried if I could get a wireless signal for my iphone while drinking a Miller lite. At least I have my old National Geographic's to take me back when foreign travel was more rare and real cannibals still existed.