Friday 5ive- May 8, 2020

Welcome to the Friday 5ive, a blog post about five things that caught my attention this week. It seems like every week is either a day or a month, nothing in between.

1)  We have decided that since we will be home, we should jazz up the balcony a little bit. We found these plants at a nearby Home Depot and they do brighten up our outdoor area. Now we just need the warm weather to stay. The bottom photo is the view we had from our balcony on Sunday night.

2)  We also made a stop at Costco, where we scored a 30 pack of toilet paper and 12 pack of paper towels. A swing by the meat department found it completely empty, and a sign limiting people to 3 packages of meat per person.

3)  Many of you know of my family's love of Peleton bikes. I'm so glad we have one, especially now that most gyms are closed. I was very excited to see the Peleton truck making a delivery to someone in the neighborhood, I know that Peleton has sold a lot of bikes in the past two months.

4)  Two shows that we like to watch have returned- Billions on Showtime, and Ozark on Netflix. Billions is about a hedge fund billionaire, played by Damien Lewis and his nemesis, a former US Attorney, now Attorney General of NY, played by Paul Giamatti. It's a very intense show, and there are a lot of moving parts. Frequently we look at each other and say, wait, who is that and what are they talking about? The other thing is that Paul Giamatti speaks very low and quietly, and you have to turn up the volume to hear him. 

Ozark is back for a third season, and we've heard it's the best one yet. Jason Bateman and Laura Linney play a couple who have gotten involved with laundering drug money for a Mexican cartel. Each year, they get in deeper and deeper. The acting is fantastic, and Julia Garner won an Emmy last year for her role as a tough, smart young woman who works for Jason Bateman. 

5) I finished one book, Jenny Colgan's Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend, which is perfect for fans of Bridget Jones' Diary. It's about a young London woman who goes from high society to living with four guys and cleaning their bathroom. It's funny and a little rough around the edges compared to Colgan's other books. My full review is here.

I'm in the middle of Colum McCann's Apeirogon, about two men, an Israeli and a Palestinian, who each lost a young daughter to violence. It's a remarkable, stunning novel and I am reading it slowly to ponder and savor it. The power of his words just knock me out. I can tell this will be one of my favorite books of the year. 

I hope you all stay safe, healthy and home. 

Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend by Jenny Colgan

Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend by Jenny Colgan
Published by William Morrow ISBN 9780062869586
Trade paperback, $16.99, 341 pages

I'm a big fan of Jenny Colgan's books, having loved her most recent ones, The Bookshop on the Corner  and The Bookshop on the Shore. They are charming and sweet, and I love the Scottish island setting.

I recently read one of her earlier books, recently republished- Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend, which is a little different from her newer books. It's set in London, and the story is a bit rougher-around-the-edges. It's also very funny.

Sophie Chesterton is a gal-about-town, she spends her days shopping and getting her nails done and her nights out on the town with her two best friends and her boyfriend, whom she hopes will pop the question soon.

Life is good for Sophie until it is not. A tragic event forces her to leave her father's mansion and make her own way in the world. She ends up living in an apartment in the dodgy end of town with four young men, who take in her in with the understanding that she will clean their disgusting apartment as part of the rent. One of them even calls her "Cinders", short for Cinderella. (The scenes where she cleans the bathroom may be too much for some germophobes to even read.)

Sophie wants to be a photographer, and she manages to find a job as a photographer's assistant. She knows the photographer as a fashion photographer, who shoots the most glamorous women. On the side, however, he shoots scantily clad women for the tabloids, and the small, shoddy studio where he does this is where Sophie gets a job.

The characters in the book are terrific; the young women who work as tabloid models had me laughing out loud.  The "boys" Sophie live with are interesting- James (the military man), Wolverine (whose name perfectly describes his canine appearance and actions), Cal (who brings home a different woman every night) and Eck (the sensitive artist). Even Sophie's stepmother, who could have been one-dimensional, has more shades to her.

Sophie is the best character however. I love her salty language (you'll learn a lot great British slang in this book), and attitude. She could have just given up, but Sophie pushes on, even in the face of severe embarassment from her former friends.

There is a love triangle here between Sophie and two men, and the ending came as a bit of surprise, but a welcome and logical one at that. If you liked Bridget Jones' Diary, Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend is a perfect read for you.