The Sidecar Podcast from The Cricket

This week The Book Shop of Beverly Farms owner Hannah Harlow talks with The Cricket's Oli Turner about finally getting COVID and using the time to catch up on that big list of books of hers.

Essex resident Peter Phippen is a hydrogeologist and coastal scientist who has worked for decades with The Great Marsh, a 25,000-acre coastal salt marsh estuary ecosystem that extends from West Gloucester to southern New Hampshire.  It's healthy and beautiful, and strategic in the face of climate change.  This week we talk invasives that are encroaching into this resource.

Manchester's Charlotte Lawrence has been writing the Cricket's Not So Ordinary Medicine column for more than a year now.  Kris McGinn sits down with Charlotte to talk about her more memorable guests, including author Annabel Streets, who wrote "52 Ways To Walk."

It's been a while since our last podcast.  The Cricket’s Erika Brown and Kris McGinn play catch up.  That includes a review of Kris’ stories on the Trudeaus and Wheelworks Pottery in Essex; Manchester’s tearful goodbye to Andy Shepherd; four key invasive species within the 25,000-acre coastal gem, the Great Marsh; and, the latest edition of Postcards Home.

Much of the focus of Beverly Farms is on the community’s charm and beauty, and its pockets of Gilded Age summer residents connected to greats in American history.  But, of course, the history of “The Farms,” is deeper and richer.  Nancy Coffey, a local historian, began researching the immigrant stories of families who came to Beverly Farms in the 19th Century for better opportunities and made big contributions to the neighborhood's story.  Nancy's stories go beyond the better-known tales of a summer playground for wealthy Bostonians and explores a much more expansive community story. 

Life restarts with a bang in September.  Summer’s coming to a close, and for The Book Shop’s Hannah Harlow, that means thinking about the holidays.  A lot of our buying has already been done.  In fact, she tells the Cricket’s Kris McGinn, Christmas cards have already arrived.  The big question looming this year for independent book stores is the supply chain.  Where exactly will the works get gummed up?

It’s a popular creed for people to decide that every book they start must be paged through to fruition.  The Book Shop’s Hannah Harlow tells Cricket feature editor Kris McGinn that she used to feel the same way.  Not anymore.  There’s an art, she says, to not finishing.

In this week’s chat with Manchester By The Book’s Mark Stolle, Cricket features editor Kris McGinn learns about a hidden obsession: vintage bookmarks.  They’re big with collectors.  And surprise, surprise, as the owner of a used book shop, Mark Stolle has thousands of them.  Seemingly, each has a story.

This week, Mark Stolle from Manchester By The Book contemplates the concept of “best sellers” with Cricket Features Editor Kris McGinn.  Every week he peruses the lists in the book trade magazine Publishers Weekly.  And every week he despairs.

Of the 200,000 new books published each year in the United States, three percent of them are translated into other languages.  Of those, just 30 percent of them are translated by women.  Kris McGinn, the Cricket’s features editor, talks to The Book Shop’s Hannah Harlow about this phenomenon.