Welcome to the Friday 5ive, a weekly blog post featuring five things that caught my attention this week. Can you believe it's only one week until Christmas? I hope you have your shopping nearly done (and your gifts have been delivered).
1) On Saturday night we watched the magnificient Andrea Bocelli live in concert at the Teatro di Parma in Italy. The concert was streamed for one night only, and he sang some of our favorites- Amazing Grace and You'll Never Walk Alone. One of the highlights was him singing Hallelujah with his young granddaughter Virginia. This is a link to YouTube with that performance.
2) I took a walk through midtown to see some of the holiday displays. It was strange to see so few people on Fifth Avenue, and there was no one at the Rockefeller Plaza Christmas tree. These are some of my favorite sights from that day.
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| The Rockefeller Plaza tree |
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| The Roosevelt Tram in Saks windows |
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| A food truck display in Saks windows |
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| A bejeweled ballerina in Bloomingdales windows |
3) My husband bid on and won a virtual wine tasting with a sommelier at a charity auction, and we participated in it last night with some friends and fellow wine lovers. We tasted three Barolos from the Piemont region of northern Italy. The sommelier Maria gave us an interesting overview on the region and history of Barolo wine and winemakers. It was a fun and informative evening, and we are planning another virtual wine tasting in the near future. If you enjoy wines, I would recommend a virtual wine tasting from your favorite winery.
4) Netflix is running a new movie every Friday in December, and I watched The Prom. It was originally a celebrated Broadway show, about a group of Broadway performers who travel to Indiana after their show flops to help Emma, a young woman who wants to go to prom with her girlfriend in a place where that is not welcomed by the community. Meryl Streep, James Corden, Nicole Kidman, Keegan Michael-Key, Andrew Rannells and newcomer Jo-Ellen Pellman star (she is marvelous as Emma). It's a wonderful movie that will fill your heart with joy (and will make you tear up more than once). The music is great, and it made me wish I had seen the Broadway production, which I heard was amazing.
5) I managed to finish one book and I'm halfway through another this week. Shuggie Bain is Scottish writer Douglas Stuart's debut novel, about a young boy who lives with alcoholic mother after his father abandons the family. It's a heartbreaking story of how poverty, alcoholism and mental illness beat down on this family, how people are cruel to anyone different from them, and it's based in part on Stuart's life. It's brilliantly written, and Stuart won the prestigious Booker Prize for his first novel, along with ending up on just about every critic's Best of 2020 list.
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5) I managed to finish one book and I'm halfway through another this week. Shuggie Bain is Scottish writer Douglas Stuart's debut novel, about a young boy who lives with alcoholic mother after his father abandons the family. It's a heartbreaking story of how poverty, alcoholism and mental illness beat down on this family, how people are cruel to anyone different from them, and it's based in part on Stuart's life. It's brilliantly written, and Stuart won the prestigious Booker Prize for his first novel, along with ending up on just about every critic's Best of 2020 list.
I'm in the middle of another book that critics loved, White Ivy, the debut novel by Susie Yang. Ivy is the daughter of Chinese immigrants who move to this country for a better life, although things don't always go their way. Ivy's mom pushes her to study hard, her grandmother teaches her to shoplift. Ivy has eyes for Gideon, the scion of a wealthy Boston family, and pursues him as her way to achieve the American dream, no matter what. One of my favorite bookish friends loved this book, and I can see why. Ivy is a riveting character. 
I hope you are stay safe, socially distant, wash your hands and wear a mask. And Merry Christmas to all!
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