Finished the Sex lives of Cannibals

I finished the Sex lives of Cannibals - Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific (Audiobook). It is a 2004 travelogue by author J. Maarten Troost describing the two years he and his girlfriend spent living on the Tarawa atoll in the Pacific island nation of Kiribati. In the book Troost describes how he came to discover that the tiny sliver of land in the South Pacific, barely known to the outside world, was not the tropical paradise he thought it would be. Nevertheless, he and his girlfriend Sylvia build a home for themselves in Kiribati, alongside a host of colorful local characters, all the while having new encounters with the bizarre and unfamiliar.

The audiobook was ok, but it wasn't close to Eat Pray Love. The trick to an incredible memoir is to put yourself completely out there. Jump off a cliff. Hide nothing. Elizabeth Gilbert has the balls of an elephant.

The next thing is this....the narrator...had a British accent. The author is a Canadian that migrated to the U.S. The definition of a Canadian is someone that writes like the English ("Colour" vs. "Color") and talks like Americans (minus "Aboot"). It is kind of distracting to listen to someone claim to be American...with a British accent. I got over it..but still. It is like if you were reading a memoir by Madonna and the narrator was a man. Ten minutes into it you are lik...ok this isn't working for me.

J. Maarten Troost just pokes fun at everyone and himself, but there is nothing deep. I guess when you are married you can't admit too much for fear of pissing off the other.

It was worth reading. Definitely not how I imagined living in the South Pacific would be like. Sounds like hell. I love food (Kiribati diet is fish all the time everytime). I love animals (They kill kittens and dogs all the time). I love to read (there is very limited reading material available). However, I do like to windsurf. You can do that forever.


The sex lives of cannibals came from the fact that on a certain island many people were missing their noses because everyone was fooling around with each other and jealous spouses would bite each others noses off.

....gross. Great...now you are married to someone without a nose. Take about cutting your spouses nose off despite his face.