Road trip recollections
Lorraine Parish’s new book, “Miles to San Miguel,” is part confessional memoir and part road trip journal, from the Vineyard to her new life in Mexico.
Parish opens with a prologue where she is on...
The 2023 Vineyard literary list
Most of the 2023 year-end book lists we’ve been reading are categorized by genre. Not this one. This impressive list of books published in 2023 will be sorted into categories that those of us...
Smitten scribes
The thoughtful and inspiring new book “Black Love Letters,” by Cole Brown and Natalie Johnson is an extraordinary read. Brown, a seasonal Vineyarder, met Johnson when they were summering here as kids. While conceived...
A serene Sunday morning becomes a nightmare
You could fill a long shelf with books written about Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor 82 years ago, and yet Marc Favreau of West Tisbury has found a niche not taken. “Attacked!” is...
Around the Bookstore
Here it is, right in front of us, the Great American Feast, Thanksgiving, the beacon that next comes the gift-giving holidays, a sharing of things we hope others will love as much as we...
A whole new world
Guinevere Turner begins her memoir, “When the World Didn’t End,” with a punch: “On Jan. 5, 1975, the world was going to end. All the World People were going to be wiped off the...
Ties that bind
When you’ve worked for newspapers as long as I have, you're bound to have congratulated more than one colleague on their new book. This is my turn to applaud Bill Eville’s “Washed Ashore.” Like...
Under observation
“What else?” James W. Jennings asks in the opening paragraph of his debut novel, which is based on his experience as a substitute teacher in the New York City school system, as a writer...
Writing and poetry at Pathways
The Chilmark Tavern, Pathways’ winter gathering space, will once again be hopping on Tuesday nights. Ron Slate has arranged an impressive array of readers for this year’s Writing and Poetry Tuesdays lineup. As always,...
Scientific progress
For those who remember Peter Kramer’s landmark 1993 book “Listening to Prozac: A Psychiatrist Explores Antidepressant Drugs and the Remaking of the Self,” it is hard to believe that it burst on the scene...
A walk to remember
There’s nothing like traveling on foot through breathtaking scenery to give you the emotional space to start thinking, as seasonal resident Kathy Elkind does about her past, present, and future in her new book...
Finding love
Seasonal resident Lynda Cohen Loigman takes readers back in time in her novel “The Matchmaker’s Gift.” The book is set in 1994.
Loigman intertwines two stories. One is about 10-year-old Sara, who is on a...
An unconventional woman
Emily Franklin takes us into the very heart and soul of Isabella Stewart Gardner in her engaging historical fiction novel “The Lioness of Boston.” In Franklin’s writing, Gardner is headstrong, sensitive, and in a...
Measuring standards
“Renegade Teacher: Inside School Walls with Standards and the Test” is a memoir about working with students and teachers, standardized testing, and how schools can work better to raise the level of learning. This...
Riveting writing
Elizabeth Benedict has, in the past, moderated panel discussions focused on writing about sex and writing about grief at The MV Times’ sponsored writers’ festival, Islanders Write. In May, Benedict’s memoir, “Rewriting Illness: A...
Saying goodbye
“I suck at goodbyes, separations, and transitions. Sometimes, I sneak to bed to avoid saying goodnight to my family. When our oldest daughter, Maggie, headed off to college — a big transition — I...
Between the lines
The poet Richard Michelson writes about life even when reflecting on death. In his new book of poems, “Sleeping as Fast as I Can,” he tells us that “L’Chaim” is a Hebrew toast meaning...
Museum as muse
It is fitting that the stately white clapboard building that is home to the Martha’s VIneyard Museum has a storied history. The U.S. government chose the site overlooking Vineyard Haven Harbor to build a...
Around the bookstore
According to the Macmillan Dictionary, a beach read is “a book you can take on holiday, which is good enough to keep you engaged, but not so serious it will spoil your holiday.”
It seems...