On the face of it, Suellen Lazarus might seem an odd person to have started a book festival. She was a banker, not a professional bibliophile or bookstore owner or writer.

But in a way, it was her other busy life which led her to start such an event on the Vineyard six years ago. For she associates reading with downtime.

She is one of those people who always packs five or six books when she goes on vacation. Even if she doesn’t get around to reading them all, their mere presence is a happy indicator of leisure, a calming thing.

Cartoonist Is Talk of the Island

Paul Karasik is many things and an exhibit focusing on the whole man would include, but not be limited to, the following: Cartoonist extraordinaire (published in The New Yorker), development director for the Martha’s Vineyard Public Charter School, professor at the Rhode Island School of Design, author, graphic novelist, sweat lodge devotee, the list goes on and on. He is also one of the nicest, most interesting people you will ever meet.

Ultimately, war is merely the continuation of politics by other means. But intimately, it’s all about sociology and biology.

And that’s the aspect of war which engaged Sebastian Junger, in writing his book War, and making the documentary Restrepo — and also most of the overflow crowd which attended his address to the Hebrew Center Summer Institute on Thursday night.

Mr. Junger’s goal was not to explain the forces which drive the politicians who declare wars, but to explain the forces which drive those who fight them.

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.