Land of Lakes and Volcanoes

Other than that, I really enjoyed Maarten Troost's (MT for short) The Sex Lives of Cannibals , a story of life in the equatorial Pacific.  He and his not-quite-yet-wife Sylvia lived on South Tarawa in Kiribatis (pronounced Ki-ree-bas) for two years while she worked for an international aid organization and he maintained a long-term flirtation with the idea of writing a novel.  While he failed at fiction, I'm pleased that he was more successful at writing an accurate yet entertaining account of their life in a place he learned to love. MT's prose is lively, conversational, and it's impossible to become bored with the book, as each chapter is almost a stand alone short story that can be devoured in little chunks.  Most chapters revolve around unique events or experiences, but what ties them all together is MT's personal narrative.  We see him change from an innocent I-Matang  (foreigner) who packs sweaters for a tropical island to someone who takes it for granted th