Walk into Edgartown Books, and you know it’s a very special place. You can find the classics, contemporary works, and beach reads. There’s a section on Vineyard authors, and a cozy lounge area with hot beverages where you can curl up with a good book, or do a little work. The front porch hosts author signings all summer long, where you can meet the person who wields the pen.
Mathew Tombers, the man behind the bookstore, loves his job, and his care and dedication to his customers and staff shine through: “I’ve been so fortunate. The people who work here have so much love for it.”
Born in Minneapolis, this is not Tombers’ first career. However, the initial one did include literature, as he was a high school English teacher. Then, he says, “One night, it was 73° below 0 windchill factor in Minnesota, and I said enough. A month later, I was in Los Angeles.” In these warmer climates, he launched into his next career by happenstance: “I needed to figure out what I was going to do when I grew up, so I registered with a temp agency. They sent me to jobs I thought I might be interested in, including media at KMPC radio. The joke was that I came for a week and stayed forever. I got hired as the assistant director of advertising and promotions.”
It turns out that Tombers did not stay forever, and continued in advertising at ABC Radio, the Discovery Network, and others, eventually moving to New York. All this time, he remained friends with Jeffrey Sudikoff and his wife Joyce, whom he had worked with early in his career in Los Angeles. The couple, who had a house on the Vineyard, invited him out in 2007, and he continued visiting over the years.
The Sudikoffs bought Edgartown Books in 2012 because it was going to close. In the late winter of 2016, Joyce told Tombers she was nervous about not having good staff over the summer, and he volunteered to help. “I came over for what I thought was going to be three weeks, and stayed eight. In 2018, I had pretty much retired, and got really bored.” Tombers reached out to Joyce and asked if she needed any assistance, and he came out for the summer. “They asked me to return in 2019, and I have managed never to leave.”
He grew into the job over time, and with guidance from Joyce: “I’m a fairly well-rounded person, so I can talk to people about books, and I started as a high school English teacher. My sister breaks into laughter every time she thinks of it. She believes it’s the perfect job for my retirement.”
Tombers decides to acquire books in several different ways: “I listen to customers and note some of the trends. Things have changed over the past four years. This is one of the things I find most hopeful and interesting, at least in Edgartown Books. There are a lot of young people in their 20s, post-college, who come in, and they are not looking for beach reads. They are gravitating to the classics, and books that are challenging.” He also scours industry newsletters and book reviews in major newspapers, and takes recommendations from publishers’ reps and friends.
Reflecting on the store, Tombers says, “At night, when I leave and look around, it almost feels like it’s alive. All of us who work there put in a lot of effort to make it as vibrant a place as possible. I can feel that vibrancy in the air. When people come in, I think they feel its specialness. They feel the love that everybody who works here gives to it.” He continues, “I feel incredibly privileged to be doing this at this time in my life.”
Edgartown Books, 44 Main St., Edgartown. For more information, visit edgartownbooks.com or @edgartownbooks.
This post was originally published on here
