The Friday 5ive is back! I've been traveling recently and so have missed a lot of Fridays, I will try to do better. Now let's get to the important things, like when is this rain going to end? The last 20 of 21 weekends have seen rain on at least one of the weekend days and it is wreaking havoc in New York City. Here are five things that caught my attention this week:
1) On the local news this week, New York City "elected" an honorary Dog Mayor, and the winner by popular vote was a basset hound named Sally Long. Sally is the first female dog elected mayor of New York, it's too bad we've haven't elected a woman as the real mayor of New York City. We used to have a basset hound named Malcolm, and he would have made an excellent mayor.
2) You never know what you'll see walking around New York City. We have a lot of new restaurants that recently opened, and in my neighborhood I saw a new Jello Shot store. That's right, if you find yourself strolling and think, "you know what I could really use right now- a Jello Shot", well here is your place, called Spoonable Spirits.
3) I love a good bookish podcast and one of my favorite authors, Adriana Trigiani, has a new one called "You Are What You Read". Adriana, who is one of the best interviewers in the business (her Facebook Live shows featuring authors from all genres are wonderful), interviewed Sarah Jessica Parker on the premiere broadcast, and it was a fascinating discussion. I love hearing stories from Sarah's childhood and how her mother insisted that each of her children never leave the house without a book. I'm looking forward to the discussions with cookbook author Lidia Bastianich and Jacqueline Woodson. You can find it here.
4) I watched the first three episodes of Lessons in Chemistry on Apple TV+ this week. Based on Bonnie Garmus' debut novel, Brie Larson is picture-perfect as chemist Elizabeth Zott who battles sexism in her 1950's workplace, and ends up hosting a hugely popular television show where she shares recipes and the science behind cooking. If you liked the book (it has been on the bestseller list for a long time), or if you enjoyed the Julia Child miniseries on Netflix, you'll want to watch Lessons in Chemistry. It's very well done. 
5) While visiting Bookstore1 in Sarasota, I picked up a copy of Abraham Verghese's 700 page doorstopper of a novel, The Covenant of Water. Set in the southern Indian coast from 1900-1977, we meet three generations of family who has lost members through drowning. We live alongside these characters, through good times (marriages, births) and bad times (monsoons, illness, untimely deaths). We also learn about the history of India during those years, something I knew little about. The characters propel this fascinating story- from a 12 year-old girl who is married off to a 40 year-old man and becomes the matriarch of an important family, to Digby, a Scottish doctor who ends up working at a leper community, to Elsie, a artist who wants desperately to be allowed to create her art, to Mariamma, who trains to become a doctor trying to discover why her family members die from drowning- all of their stories intersect until the surprising ending that had me gasping. It's a true commitment to read this novel, but so worth it. 
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