A collection of legends of the various Hawaiian Islands.

I like my women like I like my whiskey: embroiled in a magical war Ten years ago I fought for the Witch Queen of London in a mystical showdown against a King Arthur wannabe with a shaved head and a shotgun. Back then, the law did for him before he could do for us. I don’t think we’ll get that lucky again. As if the mother of all wizard battles wasn’t bad enough, fate or destiny or a god with a really messed-up sense of humor has dropped a weapon that could rewrite the universe right into the middle of London, and anybody with half a sniff of arcane power has rocked up to stake their claim on it. Last time this happened, the city went to pieces. This time, it might just go to Hell. Also, still dating a vampire. Still got an alpha werewolf trying to get in my pants. Still sharing a flat with a woman made of animated marble—only now apparently there are two of her. But you know what they say: the more things change, the more they stay the same crap that’s been trying to kill you your entire life. This book is approximately 96,000 words

How and why branded bottles of water have insinuated themselves into our daily lives, and what the implications are for safe urban water supplies. How did branded bottles of water insinuate themselves into our daily lives? Why did water become an economic good—no longer a common resource but a commercial product, in industry parlance a “fast moving consumer good,” or FMCG? Plastic Water examines the processes behind this transformation. It goes beyond the usual political and environmental critiques of bottled water to investigate its multiplicity, examining a bottle of water's simultaneous existence as, among other things, a product, personal health resource, object of boycotts, and part of accumulating waste matter. Throughout, the book focuses on the ontological dimensions of drinking bottled water—the ways in which this habit enacts new relations and meanings that may interfere with other drinking water practices. The book considers the assemblage and emergence of a mass market for water, from the invention of the polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottle in 1973 to the development of “hydration science” that accompanied the rise of jogging in the United States. It looks at what bottles do in the world, tracing drinking and disposal practices in three Asian cities with unreliable access to safe water: Bangkok, Chennai, and Hanoi. And it considers the possibility of ethical drinking, examining campaigns to “say no” to the bottle and promote the consumption of tap water in Canada, the United States, and Australia.

Mythology flows like a subterranean stream throughout Hawai‘i. Rita Knipe has selected a number of characteristic myths and mythological figures from the rich pantheon of Hawaiian deities. As she retells their stories, illustrated by Hawaii artist Dietrich Varez, the transposition of such primal drama to the pages of this book becomes poetic theater. The dramatic plots are myths and legends chosen from the oral traditions of unique island people, but the underlying themes and symbols are archetypal and eternal. Drawing parallels between Hawaiian mythology, universal patterns, and individual behavior, the author illustrates certain basic Jungian concepts and explains how we express them in the drama of our own lives.

"How ancient Polynesian explorers found the Hawaiian Islands, the most remote in Earth's largest sea; how they navigated, how they viewed themselves and their universe, and the arts, crafts, and values by which they survived and prospered without metals or the fuels and inventions believed necessary for life today." -- Amazon.com viewed August 7, 2020.