Reader's Digest New Zealand - August/September 2025

BOOKS The Martha’s Vineyard Beach and Book Club By Martha Hall Kelly Mari Starwood arrives on a tourist ferry, but she’s not on vacation. Instead, a mission: to learn why her momaimed tomeet reclu- sive artist Elizabeth Dever- eaux. The book is mostly spent inWorldWar II–era Martha’s Vineyard as De- vereaux tells a tale of teen- age sisters who founded a book club as a counter- point to the ritzy yacht club’s. The bonds formed and lessons from the clas- sics help the pair navigate a world in which loved ones are drafted overseas and amysterious stranger washes ashore. The tale, Starwood learns, is more family history than local legend. — WendyWilson Change the Recipe By José Andrés Spain’s most beloved global export, chef and humanitarian José An- drés, dishes up some common sense and life lessons in this bite-sized memoir. The World Cen- tral Kitchen founder shares dispatches from his parents—who taught him that good food is less about the best ingredi- ents and more about making the best with what’s available—as well as stories from decades of feeding people at high- end restaurants in his adopted hometown of Washington, D.C., and in disaster zones in Haiti, Gaza and Ukraine. It’s a hearty banquet of com- fort food we can all enjoy. — Debby Waldman I Love Dad By Jackie Corley Writer Jackie Corley has done us all the great fa- vor of curating an ode to daddio to reflect on this Father’s Day. Her trea- sury is rich with quotes on fathers and father- hood from timeless luminaries. (Hello, Mark Twain, Carl Jung, Pope John XXIII, Leo Buscaglia, Fred Rogers, Denzel Washington, David Beck- ham and more.) But dads currently in the paint will know better than to rely on pithy proverbs alone. As inventor and busi- nessman Charles F. Ket- tering said, “Every father should remember that one day his son will fol- low his example rather than his advice.” — CF ECCO (CHANGE THE RECIPE). HATHERLEIGH PRESS (I LOVE DAD). BALLANTINE BOOKS (THE MARTHA’S VINEYARD BEACH AND BOOK CLUB). THE NOUN PROJECT (BOOK ICON) 117 The RD List READERSDIGEST.CO.NZ