Friday 5ive- May 19, 2023

Welcome to the Friday 5ive, a weekly-ish post featuring five things that caught my attention this week.

1) Mother's Day was Sunday, I hope you all had a lovely day. We had dinner at my son and daughter-in-law's, and my charming and talented daughter-in-law made us a delicious dinner that is a family favorite from way back- Mr. Food's Oregano Chicken. I put the recipe in a cookbook that I gave both our sons for Christmas one year and it makes me happy to know that they use it. I hope it makes them smile as much as I did when I wrote it. I also received some beautiful flowers with a very heartfelt card with meaningful sentiments that I will keep forever. All in all, a great way Mother's Day!

2) I am a big Bruce Springsteen fan and a Peloton rider so I was excited to take my favorite instructor Jenn Sherman's Bruce Springsteen series 45 minute ride. The playlist was fantastic- No Surrender, Thunder Road, Tenth Avenue Freezeout and  Hungry Heart were the highlights- and the energy and enthusiasm of the riders and Jenn made this ride a bookmarked one for me. I will be taking this one frequently. 

3) I enjoy listening to the Smartless podcast hosted by Will Arnett, Jason Bateman, and Sean Hayes. The three friends are hilarious and they have interesting guests. This week it was Paul Anka, who happens to be Jason Bateman's father-in-law. Anka was fascinating as he recalled his 60+ year career beginning when he had his first hit song at the age of 15- "Diana". He told stories about his days of hanging the 40 year-old Rat Packers- Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr.- when he just a teenager. Anka also introduced the Beatles to their soon-to-be American managers in the early 1960s after he saw them perform in Europe when he lived in Italy. It was a great discussion and if you want to hear all about the early days of the Vegas mob, find this podcast and downoad it. 

4) I watched the Hulu documentary about Brooke Shields titled Pretty Baby. Brooke Shields has been part of the American consciousness since the 1970s and this documentary was so well done. The title comes from the controversial movie of the same name featuring a 12 year-old Brooke playing a young girl works as a prostitute in 1917 New Orleans. It goes through her entire career- the ups and downs, like her Calvin Klein ad (also controversial), the movies like Endless Love and Blue Lagoon and her TV show Suddenly Susan. Her personal life kept her in the news as well- attending college at Princeton, her relationship with Michael Jackson, her stormy marriage to tennis superstar Andre Agassi- for her entire life. It is her relationship with her single mother Terri that drives her life. Terri was the ultimate stage mother, driving Brooke's career. Terri was also an alcoholic, and Brooke is brutally honest about what that was like. She loved her mother, but they had a complicated relationship. Seeing how people, mostly men, used this woman from a very early age, is something to be reckoned with as a society. It's a thought-provoking and heartbreaking documentary and I found it powerful. 

5) I've been looking forward to reading J. Ryan Stradal's new book, Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club and I happily dug in this week. Stradal sets his books (Great Kitchens of the Midwest, The Lager Queen of Minnesota) in Minnesota, and that alone makes his books unique. This begins with Betty dragging her young daughter Florence from one unfortunate living situation to another. When they meet a kind man named Floyd in a coffee shop, he offers them a place to live and a job on the property where he owns a supper club in a small town. Betty takes to the club and Floyd right away. Young Florence befriends Archie, who lives in another small cabin on the property, and spends her evenings playing cards with Floyd and Archie. Floyd marries Betty, and as Florence grows up she works at the supper club and sees her dreams for her life slipping away. I found the concept of the supper clubs so interesting. The supper club is the hub of small towns and Saturday is the night when everyone goes there for dinner. The book spans four generations of women in Betty's family, and what they owe themselves and their family forms the basis for this wonderful book that I tried to savor as long as I could as I didn't want it to end. I highly recommend it. 

Have a  safe, happy week. Until next time.

Friday 5ive- October 7, 2022

Welcome to the Friday 5ive, a weekly-ish post featuring five things that caught my attention this week. Like everyone else last week we were glued to out TV sets watching Hurricane Ian as it headed for south Florida. We have been thinking about everyone who lost so much, it was just devastating.

1) After reading Madeline Martin's fascinating novel, The Librarian Spy, set in WWII Lisbon, Portugal, I felt it necessary to look for a local Portuguese restaurant that makes Pastéis de Nata. I walked by Le Réveil Coffee & Bakery, and ordered a few of the tasty custard-filled breakfast pastries. They were everything I expected after reading (drooling) about them in the book. I will be back.

2)  I completed two virtual bike rides on Conqueror Challenges in the last few weeks. The first one was a long one- 828 miles along the Ring Road in Iceland. It took me 107 days from start to finish on my daily Peloton bike rides, only missing a week or two due to vacation and illness. The second one was a short one, the 125 mile Florida Keys ride, which only took me two weeks. Next up are two England rides.

3)  Speaking of Peloton, I took a hugely entertaining spin class featuring music from the Broadway show Moulin Rouge. Bradley Rose and Sam Yo teamed up to lead the class, which I have taken three times so far. For me, the best classes feature music I can sing along to. The music from that class has been on repeat on my Apple library while I work on my computer. (It's on now as I type and yes, I am singing.)

4)  I started watching Reboot, a sitcom on Hulu. The co-creator of Modern Family Steve Levitan's new project is about the reboot of sitcom from the 1980s. Rachel Bloom  (My Crazy Ex-Girlfriend) stars as the new showrunner and leads a brilliant cast consisting of Paul Reiser as the executive producer from the 1980's version who wants back in, and Keegan-Michael Key,  Judy Greer, and Johnny Knoxville as the original cast members who reunite after some tough years. I laugh from beginning to end of each episode, and whenever there is a scene set in the writer's room featuring the original writers from the 1980s version and the new generation of young writers, I laugh even harder. Those scenes are so inappropriate and hilarious. Don't miss this one. 

5) I've tried to be better about reading every night, but sometimes I'm just too tired. I finished three good books in the last few weeks. Carter Bays, co-creator of How I Met Your Mother has written a creative novel titled The Mutual Friend. I bought this one off the Staff Recommends shelf at Bookstore1 in Sarasota, Florida. A group of people living in New York City are interconnected through various relationships, and the book is narrated by a narrator not revealed to the reader until the end. There is a lot here about the dangers of social media and our obsession with the constant presence of our phones. It took me awhile to get into this one with its multiple characters, but once I did I was hooked, and the end will make you smile.

 Moving from the big city to a small town in Texas, I read Bobby Finger's delightful 

The Old Place because it has garnered so many rave reviews. Mary Alice is a teacher forced into retirement who lives for her morning coffee sessions with her neighbor, Ellie. Ellie and Mary Alice have a special connection as they both lost their teenage sons. Mary Alice is determined to make life miserable for Josie, her replacement at school, a young woman from New York City who married the scion of the town's wealthy family. Anyone from a small town will enjoy the setting and relate to the characters living there. The preparations for the big town festival fundraiser had me laughing and nodding my head in recognition. Although billed as a humorous story, there is some sadness here, just like in real life.  

I never miss a book from author Anne Leigh Parrish. Her previous novels  (Our Love Could Light the World, The Amendment, A Winter Night) have dealt with families living in the Finger Lakes region where I'm from, and have contemporary settings. Her latest novel, An Open Door, is an historical novel set in the aftermath of WWII. The main character is Edith, a young woman working at the UN in New York City and married to a man studying to be a lawyer and living in Boston. Edith enjoys her freedom in New York living with her husband's widowed aunt, so her decision to return to her husband in Boston is fraught with complications. She feels stifled with her life as a housewife, and when an opportunity to buy the neighborhood bookstore along with two other people comes along she sees this as a chance to do more with her life. No one writes characters better than Anne Leigh Parrish, and Edith is no exception. Parrish takes the reader into the heart and head of her characters so brilliantly that we relate and understand them, even when they do things with which we disagree. My full review posts here on October 18th. 

Have a safe, healthy week, and don't forget to get your flu shot. 

Friday 5ive- October 22, 2021

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

1) The new Target store had a soft opening this week for their new store on 86th Street. It's in the space formerly occupied by my beloved Barnes & Noble store, where I spent many an evening listening to fascinating authors talking about books, and heard Broadway performers sing songs from their shows.

The store is much bigger than the Target on 3rd Ave., and they have a much better selection of some things, like groceries, which takes up most of the lower level. I overheard someone saying the layout is odd, and I have to agree with that. The floors haven't been finished, and the Up escalator wasn't working, so they still have some work to do. 

2) You don't see too many Halloween decorations on the Upper East Side, but I did see this display set up tucked in between two buildings. 

3) They say you can find anything in New York City, and while walking to Target, I saw this COVID-19 Testing van set up on 3rd Ave. Get your groceries at Target, get your COVID test on your way home.

4) We started watching Dopesick on Hulu. Based on the book by Beth Macy, it tells the story of the opioid crisis from the perspective of a DEA agent, two DOJ lawyers, the Sackler family who own Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, a pharmaceutical rep from Purdue, and a doctor and his patients in coal country. Michael Keaton is astonishing as the doctor who cares for his patients, and Kaitlyn Dever is just as powerful as a miner who gets addicted after a back injury. If you want to know how we got to where we are today, this is must-see TV. It's heartbreaking, and I'm definitely going to read the book now. 

5) I read two book this week, both of them big ones. 1000 Perfect Weekends from National Geographic has 720 pages of suggestions to spend a weekend across the globe. There's history, beautiful photos, and fun Top Ten Lists. It would make a great gift for the travelers on your holiday gift list. (The Finger Lakes region gets a two page spread!) My full review is here. 

The second book is Amor Towles' new novel, The Lincoln Highway. Set in 1954, 18 year-old Emmett Watson returns home from a juvenile detention center to his eight year-old brother Billy after their father passes away. The bank is foreclosing on their farm, and Emmett plans to take Billy and go west to start over. He runs into trouble in the forms of Dutchess and Wooly, two other young men from the detention center who ran away. The four set off on an unplanned road trip to New York City, where they meet with various adventures and people, good and bad. The writing is exquisite, Towles builds this incredible world around these four boys and the reader truly cares about these characters. I loved this book, even more than his A Gentleman in Moscow, which I adored. This will be one of my Top Ten books this year, and it's this month's Read With Jenna pick. 

Stay safe, continue to wash your hands, wear a mask indoors in public, stay socially distant, and please get the vaccine if you haven't yet to protect others. 

Friday 5ive- October 8, 2021

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

1) On Saturday and Sunday there was a loud band playing on the roof of Sotheby's Art Auction House, which is one block down the street from us. The band played both days from 11am-5pm with very few breaks. I don't mind music, but this was so loud, and there is a hospital and a nursing home directly across the street from Sotheby's. I don't know what was going on, but there was a statue of a horse outside the entrance and a person in some sort of costume to match. 

2) Speaking of art, at the Book Cellar, the used bookstore where I volunteer, one of our customers created an art piece that she put up on Instagram. We all loved it, and the artist florabai, gave us a print to put up in the store. We were all very touched by her tribute to our little shop. (You can see more of her art if you click on her name above.)

3) If you are a True Crime podcast fan, give a listen to Finding Lauren, about the disappearance in 2011 of Indiana University student Lauren Spierer.  Lauren disappeared after a night out drinking with friends, and there is still no answer to what happened to her. Host and producer Kyra Breslin was a student at IU in 2012, and as a former student she shares a unique perspective that elevates this podcast. She puts you right on the campus where Lauren was last seen. 

4) Speaking of true crime podcasts, I'm enjoying the Hulu series, Only Murders in the Building, about three people who live in a fancy New York City apartment building near Central Park who are addicted to true crime podcasts. When a tenant in the building is foudn dead, they create their own true crime podcast to discover who murdered the young man. Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez play the trio, and it's a fantastic combination of humor and whodunit. It's fun to spot Broadway vets like Nathan Lane, Jayne Houdyshell and Jackie Hoffman, in the cast as well. 

5) I read two books this week. Billie Jean King's autobiography (written with Johnette Howard and Maryanne Vollners), All In, tells the story of her life, starting with her love of tennis as a child, through her rising up the tennis ranks to become the number one player in the world, through her longtime marriage to her husband and business partner, to her coming out as a lesbian when she is 51. All the tennis highlights are here- her Wimbeldon wins, the Battle of the Sexes match against Bobby Riggs- as well as her decades long fight for equality for women's tennis. She's accomplished so much in her life, and she doesn't shy away from her faults on and off the tennis court. This one is a must-read. 

Tara Laskowski's The Mother Next Door is a timely October read. Set around a Halloween celebration in a suburban cul-du-sac where a group of moms called The Ivy Five, led by their Queen Bee Kendra, as they welcome a new mom to their select team- the new high school principal's wife Theresa. Someone is stalking the Ivy Five moms, and Theresa is hiding her connection to the town and a secret from her husband. It's a real page-turner, and I stayed up late finishing this one to see how it would end. Fans of Liane Moriarty's Big Little Lies will like this one. My full review publishes here on Tuesday. 

Stay safe and healthy everyone, until next time.

Friday Five-March 22,2019- Florida Edition

This week's Friday Five comes to you from Longboat Key, Florida where we have been for the past week. Between the rainy cold first few days and the beautiful warm sunshine of the past three days, I have gotten in a lot of reading and catching up on Netflix and Hulu.

1) I read two big books- big in scope and page numbers. The first was Kate Quinn's The Huntress. I  received an ARC at the Book Club Girls' Night Out at Harper Collins last summer, where I listened to Kate and Jennifer Robson (The Gown) talk about their books. If you read Quinn's The Alice Network you will love The Huntress. It tells the story of female Russian fighter pilots in WWII,  and the hunt for a female Nazi who assassinated innocent Polish children during the war. It's brilliant and you will find yourself holding your breath as you read certain passages. (Full review to come)

2) The second big book I read was Jennifer Weiner's upcoming  June novel Mrs. Everything, which tells the life story of two sisters from the 1950s to the current day. Beth is the pretty one who works hard to be the good girl, and Jo is her older sister who tries to fit the mold of what a good girl should be but just can't do it. We follow their lives through college, careers, marriage and relationships. It reminded me so much of Irwin Shaw's Rich Man, Poor Man, which I loved in high school. It's Weiner's best book yet. (Full review to come)








3) Tuesday was a rainy day all day, so I caught up on some Netflix, Amazon and Hulu series. I finished season 5 of Netflix's Grace and Frankie, starring the incomparable Jane Fond and Lily Tomlin. I have to say that this season didn't grab me as much as the previous ones, but it's still a shining star. I started and finished the fourth and final season of Catastrophe on Amazon Prime, created by and starring Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney. It was a fitting end to this fantastic series, and I especially loved the sendoff they gave to Carrie Fisher, who played Rob's mom and passed away before the final season. I also started and finished the first season of Shrill on Hulu, starring Aidy Bryant from SNL. I love that Julia Sweeney and Daniel Stern play Aidy's parents, and Aidy is fabulous at playing such a complex character who doesn't always do the right thing.

4) I read two shorter books- Susan Silver's memoir Hot Pants in Hollywood- Sex, Secrets & Sitcoms and Laura Pedersen's Life in New York. I would have enjoyed Silver's book if it focused more on her experiences writing for sitcoms and less on her sex life. I really liked Pedersen's book. I loved her book Buffalo Gal about growing up in Buffalo in the 70s (as will anyone who grew up in the snowbelt), and this book had me laughing almost as much.

5) I watched the Paley Fest live stream of one of my all-time favorite sitcoms, Parks and Recreation or Parks and Rec as the cool kids call it. Patton Oswalt moderated the panel with all of the stars of the show, (Amy Poehler, Adam Scott, Rashida Jones, Nick Offerman, creator Michael Schur, etc.) It was an hour of pure joy, and watching Aziz Ansari crack up at everything Chris Pratt said was priceless. It was definitely worth the $7.99 price to watch it.

Credit- Getty Photos

I'm almost done soaking up the sun and it's nearly time to head back to NYC and reality. What did you do this week? Hit me up in Comments.