If you can't find the words to describe Hawai'i, chances are an author has done it for you.

When we asked four bloggers at www.HawaiiReaders.com to suggest a local book to give as a gift, they singled out titles that collectively offer a sense of Hawai'i through the Islands' history, legends, experiences and people — yes, even the people you meet at Longs.

This year, local publishers have released dozens of books that offer a glimpse into Hawai'i from every sort of angle, and in several genres. Wayne Moniz takes on seven all by himself, and even manga is represented — in a biography of Saint Damien de Veuster.

The literary offerings were plentiful: The late author and University of Hawai'i professor Ian MacMillan's last novel "The Bone Hook" was released, while MacMillan himself was honored in the latest issue of the Bamboo Ridge Journal (No. 94), a volume that also includes the Editor's Choice awards for poetry, prose and new writers, along with excerpts from works in progress by some familiar local authors.

Of course, Hawai'i authors and authors writing about Hawai'i have offered a number of finished books to choose from, including:

• Novels from Chris McKinney ("Mililani Mauka"), Gaellen Quinn ("The Last Aloha"), Bob Dye ("Humble Honest Men"), Tom Gammarino ("Big in Japan"), Michael F. Nason ("Ku'uipo") and Bob Hogue ("Sands of Lanikai");

• Short stories from Wayne Moniz ("Under Maui Skies and Other Stories," seven stories in seven genres), Michelle Skinner ("In the Company of Strangers") and Lisa Linn Kanae ("Islands Linked by Ocean");

• Literary anthologies, such as "Ho'okupu: An Offering of Literature from Hawaiian Women," compiled and edited by Miyoko Sugano and Jackie Pualani Johnson, or "Buss Laugh: Stand Up Poetry from Hawaii," edited by Lee Tonouchi.

• Nonfiction collections, such as "Talking Hawai'i's Story: Oral Histories of an Island People," published for the University of Hawai'i's Center for Oral History and Center for Biographical Research; "Le Kawa: Fire Rituals of Pele," mele translated by Taupouri Tangaro; and "Stories of Aloha" by Jocelynn Fujii.

This year, a number of books celebrated the canonization of Saint Damien, including "Father Damien: Hawaii's Saint," a manga-style biography with a cover painting by the late artist Peggy Chun. Remembering Mother Marianne Cope, also on the path to sainthood, Sister Mary Laurence Hanley and O.A. Bushnell wrote "Pilgrimage & Exile: Mother Marianne of Molokai." Mother Marianne was beatified in a ceremony at the Vatican in 2005.

Important figures in Hawai'i's secular life are also remembered: Madeleine McKay, widow of actor, novelist, playwright and restless adventurer Gardner McKay, shaped her husband's unfinished memoir and extracts from 200 journals into "Journey Without a Map" — his words, her dedication. The Honolulu Academy of Arts released "Hawaiian Idyll: John Melville Kelly" by Natasha Roessler Drucker, a monograph that includes photos from the Kelly family and reproductions of more than 100 of the artist's prints.

The list goes on. In the same year former Gov. Benjamin Cayetano's "Ben: From Street Kid to Governor" offered readers an insider's perspective on local politics, historian Tom Coffman revised his "Nation Within: The History of the American Occupation of Hawai'i," the story of Hawai'i's resistance to annexation.

In "The SuperFerry Chronicles: Hawai'i's Uprising Against Militarism, Commercialism and the Desecration of the Earth," Koohan Paik and Jerry Mander offered one of many reminders that while annexation might be part of history, the resistance remains active.

Some books are more practical, such as Jodi Fukumoto's "Hawaiian Style Origami," Noa Kekuewa Lincoln's "Amy Greenwell Garden Ethnobotanical Guide to Native Hawaiian Plants & Polynesian Introduced Plants" and Jim Denny's "A Photographic Guide to the Birds of Hawaii: The Main Islands and Offshore Waters."

Others are meant to be inspirational, such as David Heenan's "Bright Triumphs from Dark Hours" and Sulak Sivaraska's "The Wisdom of Sustainability: Buddhist Economics for the 21st Century."

Find these books at local bookstores and online, and read more about them at www.HawaiiReaders.com.