ISLE PAGES
New releases by Hawaii authors
"Double Lives -- Stories of Extraordinary Achievement"
by David Heenan (Davies-Black, $24.95)
"Essential Guide to Oahu, Waikiki and Honolulu"
by Virginia Wageman (Island Heritage, $15.99)
"Mosaic Moon, Caregiving Through Poetry -- Easing the Burden of Alzheimer's Disease"
by Frances H. Kakugawa (Watermark Publishing, $16.95)
Reviewed by Burl Burlingame "Double Lives -- Stories of Extraordinary Achievement"
bburlingame@starbulletin.com
Campbell Estate trustee Heenan is fascinated by folks who use both sides of their brains, and here examines the impact of balancing creativity and common sense, of flexibility and control, of following a muse and blazing a trail. His examples include statesman/painter Winston Churchill, astronaut/tennis player Sally Ride, doctor/writer Tess Gerritsen and mortician/poet Tom Lynch, as well as several Hawaii overachievers. For those of us without even a single talent, the idea of juggling multiple outlets is a bit daunting, but, as the book shows, it's not impossible."Essential Guide to Oahu, Waikiki and Honolulu"
Former Honolulu Advertiser art critic Wageman has turned her eye to a much bigger canvas, the entire island of Oahu. Aimed primarily at footloose tourists, this volume is crammed full of basic knowledge, well-illustrated with maps and color photographs, and assembled in an attractive, well-printed package. If it remains in print, I hope it's regularly updated. The all-in-one package necessarily skims; for example, only four museums are listed in that section, but others pop up elsewhere as "attractions." The landscape drawings are particularly nice and provide a sense of scale."Mosaic Moon, Caregiving Through Poetry -- Easing the Burden of Alzheimer's Disease"
The folks who contributed to this didn't meet to create a book -- they were members of a workshop to help deal with the stress of having a relative with Alzheimer's, and their outlet was writing poetry. Because of the intense nature of the source material, much of what is in here feels naked and highly personal -- the normal boundaries are down. Poet Kakugawa trailbossed the writers, and Watermark created an attractive package. Not for everybody, but for somebody, the words here will strike a resonant chord.
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