The Emperor of All Maladies is a billed as a biography of cancer and author Siddhartha Mukherjee treats his subject with all the reverence of a living subject.
“Cancer cells grow faster, adapt better,” he writes. “They are better versions of ourselves.”
Governor Deval Patrick is coming to the Island but this is not just another baby-kissing tour. On Saturday, July 23, he will be reading from and discussing his new memoir, A Reason to Believe: Lessons from an Improbable Life.
Mr. Patrick was born in Chicago in 1956 and after junior high school he won a scholarship to attend Milton Academy in Massachusetts. From there it was on to Harvard as an undergraduate and for law school. In 2007 he became the first African American Governor of Massachusetts and was reelected last year.
In the early 1970s, when the tide of summer residents would go out in September, there were always young people who didn’t want to leave the Vineyard — and they didn’t have to, because there was no particular place they planned to go. Land was still relatively affordable, or their families had land, and they built themselves homes back in the woods, had kids, a few animals and a garden, and patched together a living with the usual Vineyard hodgepodge of work or self-employment.
Eric Metaxas is the New York Times bestselling author of Bonhoeffer: Prophet, Martyr, Spy and Amazing Grace and William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery. He is also a writer for Veggie Tales, a children’s book and TV series that is both funny and grounded in themes of faith.
The poem begins with the routine event of chopping parsley, a serious and yet absurd musing on a nursery rhyme known to all — three blind mice — and quickly spins into a quiet meditation on the sneaking cynicism that prevents us from feeling, and then, in shame, makes us feel all the more.
The breeze danced across the sails of many boats tied in the Menemsha Sound but it seemed barely to sway the majestic 70-foot frame of the Relemar. Entering the yacht’s living room to shake hands with a tall, poised and enthusiastic brunette, it’s hard to shake the feeling that you have taken a step into Kitty Pilgrim’s debut novel, The Explorer’s Code.
It is the season of magic, or at least that’s what Fall seems to be, what with those cool dark nights slipping in off the ocean, perfect for that wandering black cat shapeshifter at bat-winged spellmaster patrolling the night skies.
Not feeling it yet? Well, the folks at New Moon Magick located at 4 Chapman avenue in Oak Bluffs are. This Sunday, Sept. 18, from 4 to 6 p.m. they are holding a reading by Annette Blair, author of the Accidental Witch Trilogy and artist Diane Hayes, author of The Rift Healer.
How did Tina Chang become the Poet Laureate of Brooklyn? By writing the following words:
“I walk the streets of Brooklyn looking at this storefront and that, buy a pair of shoes I can’t afford, pumps from London, pointed at the tip and heartbreakingly high, hear my new heels clicking, crushing the legs of my shadow.”
Well, actually that is a mere sampling of her work taken from her poem Duality. There is so much more to choose from.
Every jittery Vineyard beachgoer is familiar with the iconic image of the restless great white patrolling the shallows, mouth agape, in search of a fleshy excuse to close it. Stacks of shark books celebrating the more lurid aspects of their behavior, particularly their extremely rare propensity to attack humans, already fill library shelves, but in Demon Fish, Washington Post environmental reporter Juliet Eilperin makes the case that the more fearsome animal is in the mirror.
