1) Even though the weather has been colder than usual for April, we do have signs of spring. We took a walk on Sunday and found some welcome sights of lovely flowers to brighten our day.
2) The only place I go to on a regular basis is the laundry room in our building. I go at 6:45am and I'm the only there. Items that have been found in the machines are tacked up on a bulletin board. This week I saw this tacked up on there and have to wonder if the person who lost their "Here Comes The Madness" underwear will ever claim it. It's been a week and so far no takers. At least it give us all a well-needed chuckle.
3) We are all starved for live musical entertainment so it was great to watch a concert that was filmed in January before we all had to social distance from each other. CBS televised Let's Go Grazy: A Grammy Salute to Prince and it was fantastic. They had great performances from H.E.R and Gary Clark Jr. (Let's Go Crazy), Sheila E (The Glamorous Life), Beck (Raspberry Beret), Princess, featuring Maya Rudolph, (Delirious) and the great Mavis Staples with the Revolution (Purple Rain). The best concert I ever saw was Prince during his Purple Rain tour, and who can forget his Super Bowl concert when he played in the pouring rain? If you missed it, the link is here. Be prepared to dance.
4) I'm missing getting to attend book signings and hearing authors talk about their books, and this week I watched two Facebook Lives with Adriana Trigiani talking to Erik Larson about his Winston Churchill book, The Splendid and the Vile, and Colum McCann speaking about his novel Apeirogon, about two fathers, one Israeli and one Palestinian, who each lost a daughter. Both discussions were so fascinating and made me immediately go online to a local indie bookseller to order both books. If you like smart, interesting conversations about a wide range of topics, go to Adriana Trigiani's Facebook page here and watch them. Erik Larson here, and Colum McCann here.
5) I read three books this week. Melissa Hill's The Summer Villa, about three young women who meet when they share a vacation villa in Positano, Italy. It will take you away and there were a few interesting twists that I didn't see coming. I enjoy being surprised. My full review posts Monday.
The Secrets of Love Story Bridge is a wonderful novel by Phaedra Patrick about a lonely young widower with a 10 year-old daughter who rescues a woman who fell off a bridge. When the woman disappears after that, he becomes involved with the family in trying to help find her. I enjoyed Patrick's The Library of Lost and Found, and this one was just as good. She writes lonely people so well. My full review publishes next Wednesday.
I also read an early review copy of Curtis Sittenfeld's novel Rodham, which poses the question what if Hillary Rodham never married Bill Clinton? It's an intriguing concept, and I liked the last half of the story better than the first. Sittenfeld also wrote American Wife, which was a fictionalized account of the life of a woman very similiar to Laura Bush. I'm curious to know why Sittenfeld didn't use a fictional character to represent Hillary Clinton, as she did with Laura Bush. You have to remember that this is fiction, not nonfiction, although she weaves in many factual events into the book in a clever manner. My full review will post soon.
I hope you all stay safe, stay healthy and stay home.
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