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.

Faery Lands of the South Seas by Nordhoff and Hall

Faery Lands of the South Seas by James Norman Hall and Charles Bernard Nordoff. 1921

After I read Lure of Tahiti, I realized that Nordoff and Hall were a big deal in the world of South Pacific literature. I picked up Faery Lands for $15, 1st edition, no dust jacket at a local bookstore. Being cheap, $15 is about as much as I will spend but I liked the cover and wanted to read something by the fellows.

This is the first book they wrote together and in a future post I will review their Bounty trilogy, which is really what they are known for.

It starts with the authors in Paris at the end of World War I, dreaming of going to the south pacific. Somehow they made this happen because the book skips right into them about to make landfall on the island of Tahiti. At that point the authors went their separate ways but had made plans to rendezvous at a distant date.

One thing that is totally charming about this book are the illustrations throughout it. The one called Landfall precedes

different sections of the book.

Also included in the book are about 29 sketches in the book that really give you that island feel.

I am also a sucker for when you get a little illustration at the beginning of each chapter.

Content wise, some of the stories were really great and some kind of a snooze. The stories that Hall wrote I liked a little better. This book is great example of classic south pacific stories, though. If you want to read it immediately (and see more of the illustrations, but not the sketches) you can read it on Google Books. Or perhaps you would like to listen to it, well you can do that here.

If you want to learn more about James Norman Hall, click on the official site about him. One day I will make it to Tahiti for visit his museum.

And lastly, do you have a spare $17,500.00? If so then you can buy the whole collection of their books here. If anyone wants to buy it for me, I will write you a very nice thank you note!

Lure of Tahiti by A. Grove Day

The Lure of Tahiti : An Armchair Companion Edited by A. Grove Day 1986

I found this at the used book store down the street (marked down 3 times to $4!). This was one of my earlier finds for my South Pacific Literature collection and would prove to yield much bounty.

This book introduced me to the world of Mutual Publishing based in Honolulu which is still in business and very active. It is nice to see when you are on vacation in Hawaii you can pick up some of their titles at the local store or gift shops. It is an inexpensive way to introduce people to Hawaiian/Polynesian culture, since most of their book are paperback.

The Lure of Tahiti is broken into 4 sections: The Sojourners, The Travelers, The Missionaries and The Explorers. Each section has a story by a different author. It includes some heavy hitters of Tahitian fiction like James Norman Hall and W. Somerset Maugham. But also has some historical accounts by William Blight and Louis Antoine de Bougainville.

My favorite thing about these compilation books by Mutual, is that before each new story they give you a little background on each author. The other good thing about comps, if you aren't into the story you can skip to the next one.

Overall, it is a good collection and a great introduction (list price $5.95 from Mutual, still in print) if you want to get a taste of some classic Tahitian focused stories.