Friday 5ive- February 3, 2022

Welcome to the Friday 5ive, a weekly post featuring five things that caught my attention this week. The cold weather finally hit NYC today, it was bitter outside while running errands.

1) I love getting book mail and today I received my Stories & Suspects Mystery Box from Bantam Publishing. This one has some terrific books, including Parini Shroff's The Bandit Queens, a book everyone has been buzzing about. It's a debut novel about a young woman in India who is falsely rumored to have killed her husband. But soon other women come to her asking for her help and she has a new side hustle.  Liv Constantine's upcoming The Senator's Wife is a suspense novel about a DC philathropist whose employee appears to be plotting to steal her life. Heather Darwent's literary suspense The Things We Do To Our Friends, is another debut set in at a university that looks like it will appeal to Donna Tart's The Secret History fans (like me). You know I like a cozy mystery set in a bookshop, so Ann Claire's Dead and Gondola will be at the top of my TBR list. C.J. Tudor's The Drift about three people fighting to survive in a snowstorm where something deadly is occuring is a timely read for this frigid weekend. I read Lisa Lutz's The Accomplice last year and loved the story of two friends-Owen and Luna- who met in college and became best friends. Owen's college girlfriend dies in an accident casting doubt on him and then 20 years later his wife (and Luna's friend) is murdered. What secrets are Owen and Luna keeping from each other and everyone else? They also included a container of Republic of Tea Earl Greyer blend, which will come in handy over the next few days.

2) Speaking of tea, we visited The Spice & Tea Exchange in St. Armand's Circle in Sarasota and I picked up a new blend- Cranberry Apple Tart. It was delicious and warmed me right up after running errands in 20 degree weather today. 

3) We found a new restaurant called 1592 Wood Fired Kitchen & Cocktails located on Main Street in Sarasota last week. It's got a Mediterranean menu and a really cool looking interior. They hung old doors to separate the bar area high top tables from the dining area and the lighting was visually appealing too. I ordered Zucchini Beignets, friend zucchini in the shape of beignets (donuts found in New Orleans) served over a tzatiki sauce that was very tasty. We will return. 

4) I love a good comedy special and Amazon Prime Video has a new Nate Bargatze special -Hello, World. Nate is a very funny comedian, hailing from Tennessee. I laughed from beginning to end at this one, with jokes about growing up in a conservative Christian family, getting older, and golfing with his wife among his best. He is a clean comic, and if you like Jim Gaffigan, give Nate Bargatze a try.  

5)  I read two good books to start off Black History Month. Sadeqa Johnson's immersive historical novel The House of Eve  is set in 1950's Philadelphia. When 15 year-old Ruby Pearsall falls in love with a Jewish boy whose family owns a local coffee shop, her dreams of being the first person in her family to go to college are in peril. In Washington DC, Eleanor Quarles finds herself far from her small-town Ohio roots when she attends Howard University, where she falls in love and marries William, the son of a well-to-do Black family. They are a loving couple who want to have a baby, only to be disappointed. Ruby and Eleanor both have challenges that keep them from achieving their goals, and Sadeqa Johnson writes characters that are three-dimensional and realistic (I liked that the men in their lives are loving and supportive). You get a true feeling for the hardships that women at that time faced. The ending is particularly pleasing, it made me smile. 

Goldie Taylor's memoir The Love You Save is for fans of Tara Westover's Educated and Sarah M. Broom's The Yellow House. Taylor shares her story of growing up in a tough East St. Louis neighborhood in the 1970's. Her mother leaves a young Goldie at her Aunt Gerald and Uncle Ross' house, where there are several other relatives living at any one time. Goldie's saving grace is her thirst for an education and her talent for speech that earns the attention of a few good teachers who encourage Goldie. The memoir shares the resilency of the human spirit and how it can overcome obstacles. I truly loved this, and my full review can be found here. 

Stay warm and safe until next time.

The Love You Save by Goldie Taylor

The Love You Save by Goldie Taylor

Published by Hanover Square Press ISBN9781335449375

Hardcover, $28.99, 298 pages

Goldie Taylor's coming-of-age compelling memoir The Love You Save shares Goldie's story growing up in a tough East St. Louis neighborhood in the 1970s. After Goldie's father was murdered and her brother beaten and robbed, her grieving mother took Goldie and her two older siblings from their home near family in a mostly Black East St. Louis community to a mostly white St. Ann.

Her mom worked long hours at a hotel, and Goldie and her siblings were left alone for long periods of time. When she was eleven years old, Goldie was raped by a neighborhood boy and found little comfort from her mother.

She was sent to live with her Auntie Gerald and Uncle Ross back in East St. Louis. Gerald and Ross' home was filled with all kinds of relatives, many of them younger. The younger children had to scrounge for space to sleep on the floor and food to eat before it was all gone.

Auntie Gerald was a deeply religious woman who kept a clean household, but she had a temper that she frequently took out on Goldie. Ross was kind to all the children, he gave them the love many of them didn't get from their own parents. They did their best to keep everyone on a good path in trying circumstances.

Goldie's saving grace became the gifted classes she was put into at her middle school. The school was falling apart and at times violent, but a few of her teachers took Goldie under their wing and believed that she had a special talent, especially in the area of speech, for which she won many awards.

While the rest of her life was chaotic and sometimes dangerous, Goldie shined in her classes. She taught herself math from her older sister's books, and her refuge was the many books she borrowed (and appropriated) from the library, Jane Austen a favorite.

Eventually Goldie became entranced by James Baldwin. His writings spoke deeply to her, and she hungered to learn about him and others like Toni Morrison and Martin Luther King Jr. 

Taylor's writing is striking and she pulls the reader in from page one with her vivid portraits of Auntie Gerald and Uncle Ross. She makes the city of East St. Louis come alive on the page, and shares its history of how Blacks moved there from the deep South for work in factories and the white flight that followed that. The scourge of crack cocaine in the 1980s left many families and neighborhoods broken.

 Goldie Taylor shows us the resiliency of the human spirit, and how education can be a lifeline for those who reach for it. Readers of such books as Sarah M. Broom's The Yellow House, Jesmyn Ward's Men We Reaped and Tara Westover's Educated should put The Love You Save at the top of the TBR list. I read it in one sitting and found it incredibly moving. It makes a great book for Black History Month.

Thanks to TLC Tours for putting me on Goldie Taylor's tour.