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Titcomb’s Bookshop remains a family-run business after 40 years. A statue of English Renaissance poet and playwright Ben Jonson greets visitors. |
Shelf Life
Still fresh in Sandwich
In the summer of 1969, Nancy and Ralph Titcomb settled in East Sandwich with their eight children and opened a used-book store next door.
Today Titcomb’s Bookshop on Route 6A will celebrate its 40th anniversary with cake, ice cream, and 40 toppings. Among the 40 authors lined up for visits through the fall are Jeanette Walls, Mary Oliver, and Wally Lamb.
“We managed to survive by changing with the times,’’ said Nancy Titcomb. As prices for used books fell in the age of Internet sales, the business evolved to focus on new books.
Ralph Titcomb said he misses the thrill of discovering rare books at dealers he visited from San Diego to Seattle on working vacations. He liked holding in his hands finds as precious as a book by Mark Twain that the author had inscribed to a young girl.
Titcomb’s is still very much a family affair, employing two daughters, including manager Vicky Uminowicz, and a grandchild. Son Ted Titcomb’s statue of Ben Jonson, the English Renaissance poet, playwright, and voracious reader, has stood outside the shop since 1973. A three-cornered hat sits on Jonson’s head, his right hand holds a cane, his left - what else? - a book.
Gates, Cambridge’s pick
Well before the recent confrontation between Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Cambridge police Sergeant James Crowley ignited a national debate about race, “Colored People,’’ a memoir by Gates, was selected by Cambridge Reads, a program of the Cambridge Public Library that encourages city residents to read the same book and discuss it.In the book, published in 1994, Gates looks back on his youth during the 1950s and ’60s in a segregated West Virginia mill town. Gates is scheduled to lead a discussion of his memoir at Sanders Theatre in November.
Longfellow’s many friends
Edgar Allan Poe, Abraham Lincoln, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. were born in 1809. Each, too, had a connection to Cambridge resident Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the most popular poet of their time.On the lawn of Longfellow’s house next Sunday at 4 p.m., historians Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Jill Lepore, and other Harvard faculty will read poetry written by these iconic figures. Longfellow was an early supporter of Lincoln and a friend of Holmes and Tennyson. After Longfellow visited Tennyson in 1868 on the Isle of Wight, Tennyson wrote that “we English and Americans should all be brothers . . . and some of us, come what may, will always be so.’’
Longfellow didn’t have such an easy go of it with Poe. Early on, Poe was an admirer of Longfellow’s poetry. Later he was a harsh critic.
Coming out
“Something Incredibly Wonderful Happens: Frank Oppenheimer and the World He Made Up,’’ by K.C. Cole (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)“Making Friends: A Guide to Understanding and Nurturing Your Child’s Friendships,’’ by Elizabeth Hartley-Brewer (Da Capo)
“That Old Cape Magic,’’ by Richard Russo (Knopf)
Pick of the week
Darwin Ellis of Books on The Common in Ridgefield, Conn., recommends “The Blue Notebook’’ by James A. Levine (Spiegel & Grau, $23): “How could Levine, a doctor and medical researcher at the Mayo Clinic, capture the hidden life of a 15-year-old Indian prostitute? This fictional journal of Batuk, a precocious girl sold into sexual slavery, reveals a life few could imagine and depicts the power of youthful imagination to escape an intolerable reality.’’Jan Gardner can be reached at JanLGardner@yahoo.com. 
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