Book Roundup

The latest bestseller lists are out and after exactly three years on the charts, Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code is right where you'd expect: lodged at Number One. Jaqmes Frey's A Million Little Pieces is still high on the paperback list, though at least the completely fradulent book My Friend Leonard has dropped down to #28. The NYT has an interesting piece on a nonfiction book about the leprosy colony in Hawaii. It's called The Colony: The harrowing True Story of the Exiles of Molokai by John Tayman. The author is finding himself estranged from the subjects of the book, whose complaints range from the book cover art (it depicts a cliff in italy instead of the cliffs in Hawaii where they were exiled) to his use of the word "leper." They find it offensive (even in a direct quote); he says he uses it only to be historically accurate in places. The fracas reminds me of the marvelous epic poem The Folding Cliffs by WS Merwin, one of my favorite poets. It tells of one family's resistance to being exiled by the white rulers of Hawaii. Gripping and romantic, it would make a terrific miniseries, sort of the Hawaiian Roots.