Friday 5ive- May 22, 2020

Welcome to the Friday 5ive, a blog post about five things that caught my attention this week. There seems to be more and more people out and about in NYC as this shelter-in-place continues on. Grocery and drug stores have honed their customer policies and in general people seem to respect the rules. (The exception was last weekend when young people were congregating outside bars at night on the Upper East Side- that was a problem.)

1) We got to spend time with our kids, and one night we played a game called The Contender that my daughter-in-law bought for us all to play. It's a card game similiar to Cards Against Humanity, but geared towards presidential politics. Cards have quotes from presidential candidates, and you have to come up with the best answer from your five cards. What I found interesting was that there were many names of candidates that I was unfamiliar with, and our family follows politics closely. It's a great game for fans of history and politics, entertaining and informative. We had so much fun! (There were a lot of LBJ and Nixon quotes as those two are very quotable.)

2)  While upstate with our kids, we celebrated a belated Mother's Day with a barbeque. The day started with my son's girlfriend making me Avocado Toast and it was so delicious! I can't pick out a ripe avocado to save my life, but she has the knack for choosing the best ones. 

Avocado Toast

For dessert, the kids picked out a wonderful vanilla cake with blueberries and strawberries and whipped cream frosting. They found it at DeCicco & Sons  grocery store. They also picked up some rainbow cookies that were tasty too. My crafty daughter-in-law made me a beautiful card with her Cricut. It's so pretty!

3)  On Wednesday night I watched the concert performance of Bombshell by the cast of the NBC's gone-too-soon show Smash. The show, about the mounting of the Broadway show Bombshell based on the life of Marilyn Monroe, ran for two seasons in 2012. In 2015, a concert performance of Bombshell, with the original cast was held in NYC and that was streamed last night as a benefit for The Actors' Fund. The performers, including Katherine McPhee, Megan Hilty, Christian Borle, Brian d'Arcy James, and Leslie Odom Jr. are amazing. Watch it here for a limited time.

4) The Book Expo that was scheduled for this week was cancelled this year due to COVID-19. One of the opening events is the Editors' Book Buzz, where a selection of editors share one of the books they are most excited about publishing. Cameron Esposito hosted a Zoom event on Wednesday with six editors and it worked wonderfully. Usually we are in a packed room with hundreds of people and it is difficult to hear, but on Zoom, we could see each editor clearly and up close as we listened to them talk about books. I loved the format! I will post about the event next week, and every book there has been added to my TBR list.

5) I'm a big fan of J. Courtney Sullivan's books, and her upcoming novel, Friends and Strangers, is another home run for her. It's about a woman (who with her husband and new baby moves from Brooklyn to a college town community upstate) and the young college student she hires to care for her son while she writes her next book. There is so much in this book- class, economic equality, marriage and family issues- it's fantastic. Fans of Kiley Reid's Such A Fun Age will enjoy it, I liked it even more than Reid's book. A full review will post soon. 

I just started Hannah Mary McKinnon's Sister Dear about a young woman who finds discovers a family secret that sets off a dangerous chain of events. My full review will post on Tuesday. 

I hope you all have a safe, healthy and happy Memorial Day weekend.