"LONG NIGHTS ALONE" BY MIKI FUJITA; BOOK SURGE/SELF-PUBLISHED, PAPER, $15.99

When Miki Fujita (real name: Fumiko Mori Halloran, of Ho-nolulu) was a high school student in Japan, a 10th-century diary by an aristocratic woman known only as "Mother of Michitsuna" was required reading in her classic literature class. Fujita/Halloran became so interested in the work that she studied the background of this interesting figure and has based her first English-language novel on the woman she has named Bellflower. The book tells Bellflower's unhappy story — married to a man who already has one wife (acceptable among nobility in the Japan of the time), a caring man who loves her but also loves his first wife and children, and has occasional dalliances as well (also expected of nobility at that time).

Bellflower, an inexperienced, petted and immature young woman at the book's opening, simply can't stand it that she isn't the center of his life. Unfortunately, she never really grows past that selfish phase, never grasps the nature of true love, and herein lies the book's No. 1 problem. Fiction 101 teaches us that the protagonist must change if the book is to teach us anything worthwhile. (On the other hand, Scarlett O'Hara never learns a darn thing, and that book seems to have done pretty well.)

In any case, Bellflower never learns to appreciate what she has; instead, she pours her selfish laments into her diary and into the fashionable poetry of the day while doing everything calculated to alienate her husband — and the reader. Much more interesting and sympathetic are the husband and a mysterious woman who becomes his true love. Even his first wife comes off as more attractive: she, at least, has the maturity to behave in a dignified way, mind her household and see her children well-established. In the end, it is the "long nights alone" of the mistress that seem noble and tug at the heart. Bellflower just gets tiresome, and we are sorry that it is her diary that survives.

This freshman effort has other problems: anachronistic phrasing ("I'm crazy about you," the husband says), point-of-view confusion, abrupt transitions, telling instead of showing.

Some of this may be due to the fact that Fujita/Halloran is writing in her second language; she says she wanted to do this because she believes it's important for Japanese writers to reach out directly to an English-language audience and not rely on translators.

But historical fiction set in early Japan is an established genre with many fans who will no doubt be willing to overlook the occasional, slightly clunky moments for the sake of the setting (well-described) and the insightful story.

Available at Bestsellers on O'ahu and from online sources including www.amazon.com and www.borders.com.

"THROUGH THE EYES OF THE THIRD DAUGHTER: CHINA" BY H. JANET CHUN, AND "AROUND THE WORLD IN WATERCOLOR: ITALY" BY DOUGLAS AND H. JANET CHUN; SELF-PUBLISHED, TRADE PAPER, $23

Husband and wife watercolorists H. Janet and Douglas Chun of Kula, Maui, have released two delightful, gift-suitable books that detail two very different adventures: Janet's poignant first return to her home country of China in 1995, and the couple's three trips to Italy together in the early 2000s. Janet Chun notes in "Through the Eyes of the Third Daughter" that she has long been more comfortable recording important information visually, rather than by taking notes — perhaps the legacy of her architect father. So it is that the Chuns, who took their first watercolor workshop in France in 1986, found themselves recording their holiday travels in drawings and watercolor paintings in sketchbooks they carried with them. These two are the first in a planned series of books based on those sketchbooks and the scribbled notes in them.

Janet Chun's travel diary begins with the story of her family's escape from communist rule in 1949 and documents the changes she found as she returned to her much-changed native land as a tourist. Saddest to hear is how little of her previous life she could find; even her one-time home had become a public building, but the book also shows how the trip helped her to put old hurts behind her.

The Italy book is a more typical journal, though interesting in illustrating the artists' very different styles. Both were architects; Douglas Chun now paints full time. She is the frantic on-scene sketcher; he sits nearby, takes a few photos, paints later, re-creating, or newly creating, the scene as whim takes him. Part travelogue, part arty coffee-table book, these little volumes are quite charming.

Available at www.aroundtheworldinwatercolor.com.

"ALOHA: GOODBYE & HELLO" BY JESSICA KAWASUNA SAIKI; TRAFFORD PUBLISHING/SELF-PUBLISHED, PAPERBACK, $15.30

Raised in Hilo, Jessica Kawasuna Saiki left the Islands after World War II, as did the central character of her third book, "Aloha: Goodbye & Hello." Cora Tanabe Kline leaves her home to marry the G.I. she had fallen in love with during the war and, though she finds a welcoming family in the small Wisconsin farm town where he lives, like many Island transplants, she never finds herself fully at home. The novel covers a period of intense change in Hawai'i, with Cora eventually returning to find everything — from the landscape to the political climate to her local friends — substantially altered. Still, it's home.

The writing here isn't particularly strong; dialogue, especially, ranges from right on to phony and forced. And Saiki doesn't plumb the depths of her characters sufficiently to allow the reader to connect with anyone — except, perhaps, Cora herself, and even Cora comes off as unbelievably naive.

The book's strong point is in its historical perspective, which will appeal especially to people who lived through the period.

This print-on-demand book is available at www.trafford.com and www.amazon.com.

"I LOVE YOU, BUT ..." BY BROTHER BOB (ROBERT B. DUNHAM), AUTHOR HOUSE/SELF-PUBLISHED, $13.40 PAPER, $21 HARDBACK

A sort of biography in the form of open letters that read like sermonettes, this book is by a formerly homeless, formerly hard-drinking veteran who cleaned up and began to help others like himself, working with shelters for the homeless on the Big Island. Now living in Honolulu, Brother Bob, as he calls himself, offers vignettes from his own colorful life and signs each of them with the line that gives the book its title: "I love you, but I can never love you as much as He does."

In a foreword, Dunham explains that he never intended to publish these jottings but felt moved by God to do so to share hard lessons he'd learned.

"Do not stop here and lay this book down because you think it is just another Christian book," he pleads. "If you continue to read, you will find yourself somewhere in it ... the answer to at least one of your questions."

Available at barnesandnoble .com, www.borders.com, www.authorhouse.com.