Welcome to Litsy!

Mahalo @DebinHawaii for such a generous #500kgiveaway box!
The treats all look delicious. Mark Twain is one of my favorite authors. This is Paradise sounds very good. The Familiar is on both of ours list. A wonderful joy to open heading into the weekend!

Mahalo @Eggs for the #WondrousWednesday tag!

1️⃣ Some, mainly cookbooks & local authors. My fave is the tagged book. I did a book tour review & 9 months later, met Kristiana at a writing workshop & mentioned it. She said “Fish Tacos!” remembering my blog recipe post which was cool.🌮

2️⃣ Not really with print, but I would with Kindle books if Amazon didn‘t alert me!🤦🏻‍♀️

3️⃣ Molly Harper‘s Half-Moon Hollow to hang out with Jane & friends!🖤

Stories of mostly family and a few obnoxious tourists in a very real Hawaii.

This is a great collection of short stories. The native Hawaiian perspective offers a great intimacy with her subjects, Hawaiian or non alike. Some stories are haunting and others are inspiring. Having a familiarity with the islands and the different settings also enhances the stories.

My amazing aunt sent me a box full of books!! So excited to start reading them all!

My new jigsaw puzzle: “readers paradise”. 😍 🧩 🧩

"He wanted to ask if she had forgiven him or just stopped counting the myriad ways he had disappointed her. Maybe they were the same thing."

"...Sarah remembers what it felt like to be twelve, deep in the recesses of her first crush, and pining for Gordon with such earnestness she felt as if she were in mourning."

"Understand that your grandmother is in heaven now, and heaven has fighting cocks and Heineken, poi and dried ahi, your uncles‘ teasing and your aunties‘ cooking and your cousins laughing with you when you talk. Heaven is them acting like this is where you belong, and if that‘s what haole pastors call hell, then thank God you finally got here."

WOW WOW WOW!! This is so overwhelming. Tea, books, a cookbook, beautiful handmade bookmarks, chocolate covered macadamia nuts, soap, pineapple chapstick, sticky notes and tabs, magnet and some yummy Hawaiian mixes. The card was so nice. Yes, everything arrived safe and sound. So very thoughtful of you to do all of this, thank you. Off to make some yummy tea and look at recipes💕

I ❤️ love getting up early to sit by the Christmas 🎄 tree and read. This is Paradise is amazing. I found it originally looking for books 📚 set in Hawaii. It was on a Goodreads list. Then I saw it again when @DebinHawaii had her #livingaloha giveaway. I happened to have it checked out from the library. Started it and can‘t put it down. We are thinking of taking our family vacation in February to Hawaii.

🎉Congratulations @mjdowens !!!🎉 The NamePickerNinja selected your name as the winner of my #livingaloha giveaway! If you email me (see comment below) I'll get your little box of aloha out to you this week. 🌺❤️A big mahalo to all of you who entered! I wish I could send something to each of you as seeing your posts and photos made me smile which is something I needed. Littens are the best and I'm sending you all some heartfelt virtual aloha.🤗🌺

✨This is my #livingaloha post for @DebinHawaii #payitforward giveaway.
✨This is the man who raised me (my grandpa) and myself. Unfortunately, I lost him in 2014, but he is my definition of #livingaloha as he was the kindest and most compassionate man I've ever met. It is in his honor and a couple others that I lead the life I do. 💜
✨ Congratulations to Debin! 🎉👏📚

Mahalo to everyone who has shown me how you are #livingaloha. I've loved seeing your pics & posts. My heart is full! 🌺❤️ If you didn't see my Sunday post about my giveaway to #payitforward for all the Litsy love you've shown me or you didn't get a chance to enter yet, you have until tomorrow's random drawing. (Not sure when, probably over 🥑🍞😋so sometime in the AM my time.) 😆I've linked to my original post👇🏻 for the details of how to enter.

Thanks for the fantastic giveaway, @DebinHawaii ! I chose this picture to represent my #livingaloha because it unites my little family with being out in nature and enjoying the moment. ❤️

To me #livingaloha means pausing in a busy day to enjoy the beauty around you @DebinHawaii #alohagiveaway

#livingaloha I thought of our family holidays immediately after reading your post. This was taken in New Orleans last year on our honeymoon, New Orleans was the first place we went on holiday together 16 years ago and it was wonderful to go back. We‘re hopefully taking the kids with us next summer ❤️🌴🌺

This past week I hit two big Litsy milestones--200K influence points & a few days later 5,000 followers. 🤗 Mahalo to all of you for the Litsy love you have shown me & as I said in my post, I want to do a #payitforward giveaway. Part of my mission to hit the local bookstore yesterday was to pick up a couple of my favorite Hawaii-set books & I'm putting together a little box of aloha to send to a fellow Litten. To enter my Living Aloha giveaway...

I bought two ebooks to reward myself for surviving this week at work. 🙄👍

#LyricalApril #Paradise I've featured this book of short stories a few times before but between the title & the Coldplay song lyrics, this book is what immediately came to me with today's prompt. I consider myself lucky to live in such a beautiful place but amazing as it can be, you realize that it isn't always the paradise you dream of. The first story in particular tells of a young tourist who is caught in a dark & dangerous side of Waikiki.🌺🌴

I heard about this book on @bookriot 's Get Booked podcast. When I first started reading all I knew was that they were short stories about Hawaii. Most of them are about Hawaiian locals and are a bit depressing and about death, but they are so engrossing. Once I started reading I couldn't stop. I read it all in a few hours!

Day27 #readjanuary #signed I've posted about this book before because I❤️it & although my signed copy is a slightly-beat up ARC, it's special. Kristiana was keynote @ an annual writing workshop I take. I handed it to her to sign & apologized it was the ARC I reviewed the year prior. She asked the name of my blog & when I told her she said, "Fish tacos!" & said she loved my review. The fact she remembered it AND the food pairing means a lot to me❤️

Short stories exploring family relationships and the sense of home in contemporary Hawaii. Wistful, vivid, immersive. #nativebooks #IndigenousVoices

"Yoa momma, neva shy, her. Not like dem uddeh girls. She wen enta da Kona Stampede an she win roping two years in a row. Ho, I proud den."

Understand that your grandmother is in heaven now, and heaven has fighting cocks and Heineken, poi and dried ahi, your uncles' teasing and your aunties' cooking and your cousins laughing with you when you talk. Heaven is them acting like this is where you belong, and if that's what haole pastors call hell, then thank God you finally got here.

#thankfulfor a quiet morning: tea, a book and a beloved dog.

"In ancient days, Hana is a vacation spot for the Big Island Chiefs," Becky said. She always spoke of history in the present tense, which never failed to unsettle him. For Becky, the past and present existed in the same moment.

Reading serendipity: the title story in this collection is about the dark underbelly of tourism in Hawaii, and falls hot on the heels of similar themes in recently-read Here Comes the Sun. Also, title story is in multiple perspectives, all of them first-person plural. Just finished Before the Feast, told from MPV, including "we."

A fantastic collection of short stories from hapa Native Hawaiian author Kristiana Kahakauwila! See full review on my blog:

https://gamingforjustice.com/2016/11/16/book-review-this-is-paradise-by-kristian...

#somethingforsept library edition! #shortstories I've checked out and really need to just buy already. Bonus: #comics short stories in Anything That Loves!

So I already recommended this book a month ago on #recommendsday but the e-book is on sale for $1.99 on Amazon, B&N, Apple, Google & Kobo so if you were considering it before, now is the time to buy. This short story collection, set on the various Hawaiian islands, offers a glimpse of Hawaii that many don't see. Raw, moving and real. 👍👍👍

So I already recommended this book a month ago on #recommendsday but the e-book is on sale for $1.99 on Amazon, B&N, Apple, Google & Kobo so if you were considering it before, now is the time to buy. This short story collection, set on the various Hawaiian islands, offers a glimpse of Hawaii that many don't see. Raw, moving and real. 👍👍👍

#Recommendsday One of my favorite books set in the islands. Six short stories spread thru Oahu, Maui, Kauai, & The Big Island that give glimpses into the real Hawaii, digging deep into the culture. Raw & real. Reviewed it a few years ago on my blog (link to full review in comments) then met the author the following year when she was keynote & taught a session at a local writer's workshop.(She gets bonus points for remembering my blog/review!) 🌴📚

i started this collection on the way home from Kauai, to hang on to the island a little bit longer, and loved it. there is a real range here, as well as depth and atmosphere.

bedtime reading