Friday 5ive- June 18, 2021

Welcome to the Friday 5ive, a weekly blog post about five things that caught my attention this week.

1) On Thursday night, my husband and I heard what we hoped was fireworks. We went out on our balcony and sure enough, there was barge in the East River shooting off fireworks. It was a few days too late for the Back to Normal celebration that New York State organized earlier in the week. Maybe it was practice for the Macys 4th of July Show?

2) My husband and I put together our new wine rack from Wine Enthusiast on Saturday. (Well, I held it together while my husband screwed in the 100 screws.) Thank goodness we had a cordless drill, we were able to finish in less than two hours. It's been awhile since we had to put furniture together.

3) I received the cutest invitation for our Beach Club Book Club meeting next month. The book is Jennifer Ryan's The Kitchen Front, about a cooking contest in England during WWII. I can't wait to read and discuss the book, if it's half as much fun as the invitation, it will be a great time.

4) We watched the hugely popular French TV series, Lupin, on Netflix this week. It tells the story of a man, Assane Diop, who sets about to avenge the false imprisonment and death of his father. Assane is a "gentleman thief", inspired by the French literature character Arséne Lupin, and it's a combination of Ocean's Eleven  and Sherlock Holmes. Omar Sy winningly portrays Assane Diop, a big man with a charming smile. It's fun to try and put the puzzle together as to what is happening. I forsee future Lupin tours of Paris, similiar to the Sex and the City tours in NYC. 

5) I read two terrific books this week. I stayed up late to finish in one day Laura Lippman's latest mystery, Dream Girl. Lippman has recently paid homage to books she loved Wilde Lake  (To Kill A Mockingbird), Sunburn (the novels of James M. Cain) and now she salutes Stephen King's Misery in Dream Girl. When writer Gerry Andersen is seriously injured in a fall at his Baltimore condo, he is bedridden and dependent on his young assistant Victoria, and the nurses and therapists who come to his home. He begins to get threatening phone calls from a woman who claims to be the character of his most famous book. Are these calls real or a figment of his imagination? It's a twisty mystery that goes back and forth in time through Gerry's life, and he has to take a look at how he has lived his life. and treated others, particularly the women, in his life. It's a fantastic, meaty mystery.

Julie Metz's nonfiction Eva and Eve, looks at the life of her mother, who escaped from Vienna with her parents during WWII. Metz and her mother had difficulties, and Metz hopes by visiting Vienna and Italy, where her mother spent nine days before boarding the ship to America, she will better understand her mother. If you only know about Austria's history during WWII from The Sound of Music or the brief mention of the Anschluss (annexation) of Austria by Germany in your high school history book, you'll learn so much more about that important moment in history. It also has relevance in today's world if you look at what Russia is trying to do with the Ukraine and other neighboring countries. It's an enlightening book. My full review publishes June 28th. 

Our apartment building has lifted all mask requirements for vaccinated people, and it seems like teh whole world has changed for the better. I hope all is well in your part of the world as we get back to normal.