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Honolulu
- Narrated by: Ali Ahn
- Length: 15 hrs and 27 mins
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Publisher's summary
Set in the 1920s and 1930s, Honolulu explores the stark contrast between the image of the glamorous Hawaiian paradise portrayed to the mainland and the harsh reality of life on the island. With characters as vivid and richly descriptive as the history of Hawaii itself, this novel is sure to enthrall listeners.
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On any particular day, thousands upon thousands of people pass through New York City's Grand Central Terminal, through the whispering gallery, beneath the ceiling of stars, and past the information booth and its beckoning four-faced clock, to whatever destination is calling them. It is a place where people come to say hello and good-bye. And each person has a story to tell.
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Grand Central: Memories
- By ZacharyKindle Customer on 05-03-17
By: Melanie Benjamin, and others
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GI Brides
- The Wartime Girls Who Crossed the Atlantic for Love
- By: Duncan Barrett, Nuala Calvi
- Narrated by: Tania Rodrigues
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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The "friendly invasion" of Britain by over a million American G.I.s bewitched a generation of young women deprived of male company during the Second World War. With their exotic accents, smart uniforms, and aura of Hollywood glamour, the G.I.s easily conquered their hearts, leaving British boys fighting abroad green with envy. But for girls like Sylvia, Margaret, Gwendolyn, and even the skeptical Rae, American soldiers offered something even more tantalizing than chocolate, chewing gum, and nylon stockings: An escape route from Blitz-ravaged Britain.
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Wonderful true stories of very brave women
- By Cindy on 05-12-15
By: Duncan Barrett, and others
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The Patriots
- A Novel
- By: Sana Krasikov
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren, George Guidall
- Length: 22 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Florence Fein grows up in Brooklyn in the 1930s, in a family that is gaining a foothold in the middle class. At City College she becomes engaged politically with the left-leaning student groups, and eventually, in the midst of the Depression, she takes a job with a trade organization that has a position for her in Moscow. There, she falls in love with another expatriate American and has a son. Soon after, Florence is sent to a work camp and her son to an orphanage.
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Point of View of characters, past and present collide
- By Angela Adams on 01-29-19
By: Sana Krasikov
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The Postcard
- By: Leah Fleming
- Narrated by: Elaine Claxton
- Length: 13 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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2002, Australia. When Melissa discovers a postcard addressed to 'Desmond' among her recently deceased father's effects, she is determined to discover this person's identity and his relationship to her father. She soon embarks on a journey that will take her across oceans and into the past...
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Meh
- By Summer Layne on 03-06-15
By: Leah Fleming
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The Quilter's Apprentice
- Elm Creek Quilts, Book 1
- By: Jennifer Chiaverini
- Narrated by: Christina Moore
- Length: 8 hrs and 40 mins
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An engaging tale full of warmth and wisdom, The Quilter’s Apprentice is the first novel in best-selling author Jennifer Chiaverini’s Elm Creek Quilts series. Sarah McClure takes a job helping elderly Sylvia Compson prepare her family estate for sale. Sylvia, a master quilter, agrees to share the tricks of the trade with Sarah. As the two women grow close, Sylvia shares her family’s tragic past, compelling Sarah to look at her own life more closely.
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A Mixed Bag
- By Potato Potato on 09-19-13
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Saints for All Occasions
- A Novel
- By: J. Courtney Sullivan
- Narrated by: Susan Denaker
- Length: 15 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Nora and Theresa Flynn are 21 and 17 when they leave their small village in Ireland and journey to America. Nora is the responsible sister; she's shy and serious and engaged to a man she isn't sure that she loves. Theresa is gregarious; she is thrilled by their new life in Boston and besotted with the fashionable dresses and dance halls on Dudley Street. But when Theresa ends up pregnant, Nora is forced to come up with a plan - a decision with repercussions they are both far too young to understand.
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The narration ruined it
- By Janis Reynolds on 06-12-17
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Destiny's Embrace
- By: Beverly Jenkins
- Narrated by: Shari Peele
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Set in 19th-century California, Destiny’s Embrace introduces listeners to ranch owner Logan Yates, who must come to terms with his true feelings for Mariah Cooper, his beautiful, headstrong housekeeper. But just as Logan decides to make Mariah his own, her former lover reenters her life. Now Logan will have to show Mariah that the passion they share has been written in the stars.
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Good Story. Okay narration.
- By CourtneyE on 07-17-13
By: Beverly Jenkins
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The Women in the Castle
- By: Jessica Shattuck
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 12 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Set at the end of World War II, in a crumbling Bavarian castle that once played host to all of German high society, a powerful and propulsive story of three widows whose lives and fates become intertwined - an affecting, shocking, and ultimately redemptive novel from the author of the New York Times notable book The Hazards of Good Breeding.
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Skating On The Thin Ice Of Life
- By Sara on 04-29-17
By: Jessica Shattuck
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
- By: Maya Angelou
- Narrated by: Maya Angelou
- Length: 10 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local “powhitetrash.” At eight years old, Maya is attacked by a man many times her age - and has to live with the consequences for a lifetime. But years later, she learns about love for herself and the kindness of others, her own strong spirit, and the ideas of great authors.
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Emotional & Powerful
- By Miss Toni on 06-30-13
By: Maya Angelou
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Before We Visit the Goddess
- By: Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
- Narrated by: Sneha Mathan, Priya Ayyar, Vikas Adam
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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The daughter of a poor baker in rural Bengal, India, Sabitri yearns to get an education, but her family's situation means college is an impossible dream. Then an influential woman from Kolkata takes Sabitri under her wing, but her generosity soon proves dangerous after the girl makes a single unforgivable misstep. Years later, Sabitri's own daughter, Bela, haunted by her mother's choices, flees abroad with her political refugee lover - but the America she finds is vastly different from the country she'd imagined.
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Absolutely Worth a Credit
- By Texastanya on 08-27-16
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The history of Hawaii may be said to be the story of arrivals - from the eruption of volcanoes on the ocean floor 18,000 feet below, the first hardy seeds that over millennia found their way to the islands, and the confused birds blown from their migratory routes to the early Polynesian adventurers who sailed across the Pacific in double canoes, the Spanish galleons en route to the Philippines, and the British navigators in search of a Northwest Passage....
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Hawaii
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The saga of a land from the time when the volcanic islands rose out of the sea to the decade in which they become the 50th state. Michener uses individuals' experiences to symbolize the struggle of the various races to establish themselves in the islands.
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The Hawaiian kingdom was tiny, and the big world was huge. The 19th century was the high water mark of Western imperialism, worldwide, and the great powers were planting their flags across the Pacific. Hawai'i was in their sights. By late in the century, two strong American currents were running: one east from the islands, one west from the continent. Sugar plantations had become Hawai'i's biggest moneymaker. And many of the biggest names in the business were of American blood - the sons of missionaries, devout capitalists.
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In 1866, 12 men and women and one small child were forced aboard a leaky schooner and cast away to a natural prison on the Hawaiian island of Molokai. Two weeks later, a dozen others were exiled, and then 40 more, and then 100 more. Tracked by bounty hunters and torn screaming from their families, the luckless were loaded into shipboard cattle stalls and abandoned in a lawless place where brutality held sway. Many did not have leprosy, and most of those who did were not contagious.
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Interesting
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What listeners say about Honolulu
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- brooke
- 01-24-23
This is a great listen
A friend recommended this book to me and I usually don’t listen to book with less than a few thousand reviews. I gave it a chance though and it is a great book and a great listen. Definitely going to be expanding my horizons!
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- Buy Now Nutjob
- 09-27-23
fun story, unfortunate narration choice
I enjoyed the story as a light read/listen. If you can tolerate the offensive mispronounced words it's worth a listen
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- marlynn Bayer
- 04-18-24
Fantastic narration!
The story was beautiful and insightful it gave me all the feels, happy, sad,frustrated and now excited to go on my trip to Oahu as I now know so much more about the culture.
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- T. Arcangel
- 05-31-13
Place names - oh, why don't readers ask?
Would you listen to Honolulu again? Why?
Probably not. I rarely listen to books twice.
What was one of the most memorable moments of Honolulu?
I was fascinated by the entrances of historical figures into the story. Detective Chang Apana and Henry Kahahawai were already familiar names to me. Even after living in Hawaii for almost 40 years, I had not heard of "Panama Dave" Baptiste and May Thompson, who were also real residents of Honolulu.
What aspect of Ali Ahn’s performance would you have changed?
Ali Ahn was a good reader, but her mispronunciation of Hawaiian place names drove me to distraction. Like most mainlanders, she pronounces the name of this city, "Hahnahlulu" instead of "Honolulu". Ewa is pronounced "Ehvah", not "ee-wah". When she read "Palama" and "Waimanalo" I had to pause to figure out where she was talking about. How I wish readers would ASK a local resident how to pronounce place names.
If you could rename Honolulu, what would you call it?
The Picture Bride
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7 people found this helpful
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- Dubi
- 02-11-17
Not Really Honolulu
The most important thing to know about Honolulu, since the title may be why it has hit your radar, is that is not about Honolulu or Hawaii. Hours 11-13 are about a series of crimes and trials that proved pivotal in the social history of Hawaii, but otherwise, Hawaii functions solely as a generic setting -- any locale with plantations, factories, and exploited immigrants would have sufficed.
The book would have been better had it stayed in Korea, where it begins. Hawaii only enters into the equation when the protagonist/narrator elects to go there as a picture bride, paid to marry a man she has never met in order to escape a culture that devalues women and to emigrate to what promises to be a land of paradise and wealth but is not. It is an interesting story and would have been better told within Korean society, as an historical novel of Korea.
Other than the two hours about the Massey trial, there are virtually no Hawaiians in the story, and few Americans (haoles). The characters are almost all Korean or other Asian ethnicities. The non-Asians are merely placeholders for the trial phase. Even that section is out of place -- other than telling us about it and how she felt, the narrator's story does not advance during that part. It reads like the Wikipedia page about the trial (yes, I read the Wikipedia page).
The main character. She is a saint. Seriously, she's up there with Mother Teresa. Hard to dislike her, she does go through some hard times (paling in comparison to typical historical dramas, cf. The Joy Luck Club). But you need a little moral ambiguity to drive character development. There is scant conflict to drive the plot, even fewer plot complications -- what little there is usually resolves quickly with positive outcomes. Her tale is charismatically read by Ali Ahn, though others point out her poor Hawaiian pronunciation. Alan Brennert's writing annoyingly forces her to use I and we instead of me and us in the objective case to make her sound foreign.
None of this makes this a bad book. It's just slightly above average, but falsely advertised as being about Hawaii. Not that I wanted a sanitized story from the tourists' eye view of Hawaii, not that oppression and discrimination did not take place, but this depiction of Hawaii as hell does not jive with the reality that I've seen and studied. Nor does it jive with the protagonists' real story except as a location.
If Hawaii is what you want, I recommend The Descendants or Hotel Honolulu, or one of a number of books, fictional and non-fictional, about the Massey Trial. Even James Michener's Hawaii. Or, as an alternative, try Brenner's Palisades Park -- an excellent book that lives up to its title, a similar story (solid if unspectacular) about an immigrant family and social and racial injustice, set around the amusement park once located on the cliffs overlooking the Hudson River and New York City (where I went as a child).
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6 people found this helpful
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- Daryl
- 07-19-13
A great introduction to Brennert
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
Yes. I enjoyed the look into both Korean and Hawaiian culture. Brennert is a skillful writer, depicting the feelings and thoughts of women, the moores of Korean culture, and the ups and downs of female friendship with grace and skill.
As other reviewers have said, knowing that the place names are mispronounced does take away from the joy of the narration, but the narrator otherwise did a very good job.
I have purchased Moloka'i, and look greatly forward to reading both is, and Brennert's new book Pallisades Park. I recommend Mr. Brennert's work to any of my friends who have interest in Hawaiian history, historical fiction, and character-driven plots.
Have you listened to any of Ali Ahn’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
I first heard Ali Ahn in Heather Gudenkauf's These Things Hidden, where she has one of three narrative parts. Honolulu was a better narrative performance by far.
Who was the most memorable character of Honolulu and why?
With the exception of Gin, I have to say Ahn's portrayal of Beauty, as a kind but flighty woman, was well-done. Brennert's portrayal of many types of female characters are skillful. I wish Gin's husband had been more drawn-out, but I did like how he grew throughout the book.
Any additional comments?
Great book, great introduction to a talented author.
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2 people found this helpful
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- pems-integ-tests
- 05-31-21
One of the best!
Alan Brennert never disappoints. It was very difficult to put this book away. I loved it so much I am sad it ended. Brennert is an outstanding writer and sets the scene so the reader feels like they are there. Brilliant and no words good enough to describe his talent.
The performance was wonderful and Ahn did a great job. Keeping me intrigued the entire time.
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- Arthur Ratliff
- 08-06-21
Another hit by Alan Brennert
This is my third book by Alan Brennert. I love how much detail that he putsinto his research. He is able to keep your interest from beginning to end. Spoiler alert, although there is hardship in each novel, there is always a happy ending.
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- Kimberley
- 07-20-20
Great Book
I Really enjoyed the book. My mother in law is from Korea born in 1935. It really helped me to understand her better
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- Donna Greaney
- 02-22-20
Meh
This book is a dry read....tedious at times.
I struggled to finish it but I did!
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