Friday 5ive- August 13, 2021

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

1)  THE HEAT! It's been over 90 degrees for the last three days. I'm lucky we have air conditioning. I stayed in the apartment Wednesday and Friday, on Thursday I walked five blocks to work at the Book Cellar. It was so steamy hot I'm pretty sure I lost five pounds of water weight walking the five short blocks. It should be cooler over the weekend thank goodness.

2)  People have been kindly bringing us vegetables from their gardens since we live in the city. We received gifts of zucchini, eggplant, cucumbers, tomatoes, peaches, and sweet corn. I made an Eggplant Pamesan for dinner on Sunday, adapting an Ina Garten recipe. It was delicious (she adds goat cheese) and it will definitely go into the regular dinner rotation. 

Eggplant Parmesan

3)  I watched a little of the Field of Dreams baseball game between the New York Yankees and the Chicago White Sox. My husband is a Yankees fan, our younger son a White Sox fan, so that makes it interesting. If you liked the Kevin Costner movie, you would have enjoyed it even more. (Costner was in the announcers' booth during the game.) Watching the players walk out from the cornfield at the beginning of the game was pretty cool, and the ending, with a walk-off homer from the White Sox to win the game, made it cinematic. The highlights are here. 

Photo from New York Times

4) One of my favorite sitcoms returns for it's final season. Brooklyn Nine-Nine ends its eight season run with two episodes every Thursday for five weeks. It has been one of the consistently funny sitcoms in recent history, and I will miss it. The cast- Andy Samberg, Stephanie Beatriz, Terry Crews, Amy Fumero, Joe Lo Truglio, Joel Miller, Dirk Blocker and Andre Braugher (how did this man not win an Emmy yet for his performance?)- is fantastic, and the writing brilliantly funny. At least I have reruns on Peacock. 

5) I read three books this week. I love a good Irish family story, and Tracey Lange's debut novel, We Are the Brennans, is wonderful. After daughter Sunday is seriously injured in car accident in Los Angeles, her brother Denny travels there to bring her home to Westchester County in New York. She left suddenly five years ago, leaving everyone bewildered, including her boyfriend Kale. Kale and Denny own Brennan's Pub and are preparing to open a second bar. There are so many secrets that come to the surface in this book, I read it on one day. I highly recommend it.

Sara Nisha Adams' novel, The Reading List, is set in a London suburb. Mukesh is a widower mouring the loss of his beloved wife a year ago. He is lonely, and looking for a way to connect with his granddaughter Priya. Priya loves to read, so Mukesh visits the local library his wife frequented to find a book for her. He meets Aleisha, a young librarian who lives with her severely depressed mother and older brother, who has taken on the role of breadwinner. Mukesh and Aleisha bond over books and become good friends. If you love reading and libraries, this one is for you. I really liked it, and fair warning, there are some very sad parts.

Saturday Night Live's Cecily Strong's memoir This Will All Be Over Soon shares her a year in her life. In January 2021, her 30 year-old cousin Owen died of brain cancer. He was someone who was always smiling, and his death devastated Cecily. A few months later, as the pandemic ravages the world, her new boyfriend contracts COVID and becomes quite ill. Cecily heads to the Hudson Valley to wait out the lockdown and her book takes an honest look at what living through all that was like. It's an homage to her cousin and  filled with heartbreak, fear, sadness, hope and love. Strong captures the feeling of that year in her words. 

It looks like COVID is not yet done with us. Please wear a mask indoors in public, wash your hands, stay socially distant, and get the vaccine if you are able. It will be the only way to get back to normal.

Friday 5ive- March 20, 2020

Welcome to the Friday 5ive, a weekly blog post about five things that caught my attention during the week. Welcome to spring! I can't believe how drastically the world has changed in just a week, especially here in New York City. It's been a week of staying in touch by FaceTime and What's App with loved ones who live elsewhere, and hoping everyone stays smart and safe.

1)  Our doggie photo of the week is of these two cutie pie basset hounds. I see them frequently in the neighborhood, and even though we are all supposed to stay inside, these doggies gotta walk (or ride).

2)  Since Governor Cuomo announced that all restaurants must go to Pickup or Delivery only, every restaurant in our neighborhood has a sign like this one in the window of Bare Burger. People are not ordering out as they normally would, but if this goes on a long time, I hope that people will get tired of cooking and order in. I feel so badly for restaurant owners and workers, it's a tough business in the best of times. There are so many people out of work.

3)  Our local CBS NY News Channel 2 has had a difficult time with this COVID-19. They had staffers infected, and many of the on-air anchors had to self-quarantine. Our local news feed was anchored by people in Boston and Los Angeles. Many of you probably saw that the CBS Morning Show came from Washington DC and now they are in Stephen Colbert's NYC studio. Last night, the local 5pm news was anchored by Maurice DuBois and Kristine Johnson from the sidewalk in front of their building. Their scripts were on their cell phones. 

 4)  We've all been watching the news non-stop- daily press conferences by Governor Cuomo, Mayor DeBlasio and from the White House team. At night I have to have something lighter, so I have turned to old standbys Seinfeld reruns at 11pm on WPIX, and I'm so glad I have new episodes of Brooklyn Nine-Nine to add to my reruns of the show on my DVR. The standout episodes this season include "Captain Kim" and "Debbie", featuring SNL's Vanessa Bayer. She also has a role on this year's Will & Grace as Friday, Karen's assistant. I decree that Bayer must play every supporting comedic role on TV.  

5)  Since the Book Cellar is closed because the NYPL is closed, I have more time to read. I finished RaeAnne Thayne's The Sea Glass Cottage, abouth three generations of women. The young grandmother (53 years old) fell off a ladder at her garden center, so her 29 year-old daughter comes home to help out. The 15 year-old granddaughter, who was raised by her grandmother, read her deceased mother's teenage diary and now wants to find her father. Thayne writes the three generations so well, I was intrigued by all three women's stories. My review publishes tomorrow. 

The Sea Glass Cottage

Actress Kristen Johnston became famous on TV's 3rd Rock From the Sun, but she also had a terrible alcohol and drug addiction. While she was in London getting ready to open in a play, her stomach literally burst open because of her abuse, nearly killing her. She writes about this in her memoir guts. It is harrowing and honest. 

guts

I just started Kelly Rimmer's novel Truths I Never Told You, told from two perspectives- a mother of four children who has severe postpartum and her daughter Beth, who is also secretly suffering with it while she and her siblings are all dealing with putting their father in a nursing home. I can tell already that I'm going to really like this one, my full review will post on April 6th. 

Truths I Never Told You

Stay safe everyone, and stay healthy. Please be kind to those who are working in grocery stores and pharmacies, and caring for people in hospitals and nursing homes.

Friday Five- March 15, 2019 Edition

A few years ago I started a weekly post called the Friday Five, about five things that I found interesting that week. I'm going to revive this and try to be really diligent about posting, so here goes Friday Five 2.0

1)  I first discovered Paula Pell at the Saturday Night Live exhibit in NYC. They did a video interview with former head writers and she was in it. I found her so interesting, and didn't really hear too much about her until I watched the NBC sitcom A.P. Bio. She plays the school secretary and she is hilarious, especially in her scenes with Patton Oswalt, who plays the principal. Then I saw her on IFC's Documentary Now! in the episode that spoofs the famous documentary about the Broadway show Company. Pell takes on the Elaine Stritch role and she is nothing short of phenomenal. Watch part of it here:


2)  Speaking of TV comedies, I'm addicted to Brooklyn Nine-Nine on NBC. It's made by Dan Goor and Michael Schur, who did one of my all-time favorites Parks & Rec. I have no idea why it took me so long to find this, but I have four seasons to catch up on.


3)  I've seen some terrific Facebook Lives, all having to do with books. Author Adriana Trigiani has been doing them weekly, and it's like chatting with a good friend. She has some exciting movie news on this week's episode. If you like her books, check her Facebook page for these fun visits.  You can see it here.

I also watched two other recent Facebook Lives- Harper Book Studio 16 talk on Historical Fiction with author Lauren Willig and editor Rachel Kahan was the first one. They mentioned so many of my favorite books- The Thorn Birds  and Gone With The Wind. You can see it here.

The last one I watched was a Library Love Fest interview with actress Kate Mulgrew, who many know from Ryan's Hope, Star Trek Voyager and Orange is the New Black. She wrote a book called How to Forget about her parents. If it's half as good as her memoir Born with Teeth, it will be fantastic. I saw her speak about that book a few years ago at Barnes & Noble in Union Square, my post about that is here. The Facebook Live video is here.

4) As I've mentioned before, I volunteer at the Book Cellar, a used book store located in the Webster Library branch of the New York Public Library. All of the staff are volunteers, all of our books are donated, and our profits benefit the local branch libraries of the NYPL. People are very generous to us, we get some wonderful books, including rare and new books. This week we got an exciting book- an inscribed copy of Hamilton- the Revolution about the smash Broadway musical. The book is signed by Lin-Manuel Miranda, and I was so happy when I saw that signature. This is a big find for us.

5) Author Laura Lippman is trying to encourage people to read 100 pages daily for her #AlwaysForPleasure Twitter reading challenge during this Lenten season (although there is no correlation). I decided to follow her example and I finished two books- Jacqueline Winspear's 15th Maisie Dobbs book, The American Agent (which is one of her best!) and Jennifer Robson's historical novel about the women who made Queen Elizabeth's wedding dress, The Gown, which I also liked. I'm in the middle of two other books, Jennifer Weiner's Mrs. Everything and Kate Quinn's follow-up to her hit The Alice Network, titled The Huntress. I saw Jennifer Robson and Kate Quinn at HarperCollins' Book Club Girls' Night Out last year, where they talked about their books. That post is here.

Whew, this is a long post. Most of the Friday Fives won't be this long, I promise. Let me know what you've found interesting this week in the Comments section. Have a great weekend!