jessicaellenmonk

Like any big festival, 4th of July is about first losing yourself, then finding yourself in the crowd. It’s an experience that can sometimes result in moments of meaningful transcendence when individuality […]

Did you know that F. Scott Fitzgerald was distantly related to the man who composed “The Star-Spangled Banner?” That, in fact, he was named after him?

I didn’t – Though, of course, Fitzgerald geeks are […]

Gone are the days when literature fans were ranting traditionalists, decrying other media besides quill and parchment.  These days we’re as much dependent on the screen to feed our reading habits as anyone […]

The title of the documentary about the making of I Am Cuba doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue: I am Cuba, The Siberian Mammoth seems to bear an especially obscure relationship with the country. For the puzzled […]

Strictly speaking, Les Misérables is not a Literary Adaption: it’s based on the musical – not the Victor Hugo novel. The story has travelled far since it was first published in France. It’s always been a big, […]

In these days of instant information, it’s not often that readers get to indulge their fascination with physical books as objects of desire. At first glance, the 36th Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair […]

From Proust’s Madeleines to William Faulkner’s Mint Juleps, great literature has always influenced readers’ experiences of food. What literary geek doesn’t drink a Papa Doble and think about Hemingway’s famed […]

Halloween is big in the Northeast – a liberating blast of Pagan thrills before the bleak snows and Puritan thrift of winter. As the festival approaches, New England’s colors turn from fresh blues and greens to the […]

Located on the waterfront in Salem, Massachusetts, The House of the Seven Gables is a higgledy-piggledy pile of secret staircases, parlors and garrets – an eccentric collage architectural styles that has borne the […]

Linda Olle’s alter ego Parsley Cresswell is an intriguing character. Glamorous, yet frugal, evasive, yet conspiratorial, she’s the perfect guide to New York’s Upper East Side. Like Parsley, Olle is an avid birder, […]

It is here at Eastham beach on Cape Cod that Henry Beston found his first refuge, in a house that he had built for himself after returning, weary, from WW1.  One September in 1926, Beston came to this retreat […]