We've all got them—the books we pull off the shelf and hand to a curious child, a first-time visitor and that friend who couldn't be bothered, but suddenly is. They're Hawai'i nei's early texts, histories, novels, pidgin classics, poems and plantation stories.
Repositories of basic and arcane knowledge, books are where bodies and cultures and adventures are buried, only to be exhumed each generation—if lucky readers know where to look. That's why HONOLULU decided to create this list. It occurred to us that if we could pool our favorite and most influential titles, we'd be doing a favor to readers of the future.
