Friday 5ive- November 20, 2020

Welcome to the Friday 5ive, a weekly blog post about five things that caught my attention this week, which has mostly been spent prepping for Thanksgiving next week.

1)  Walking by the Stumble Inn, a bar/restaurant that used to always be packed on weekends pre-COVID, I saw this sign that really sums up the feeling. 

2) Restaurants in NYC have really upped their game when it comes to creating outdoor dining areas now that the weather is much colder.  It's been interesting watching them build them.

Le Moulin Cafe

I really liked Luna Rossa's fall decor

3)  Reading with Robin had a Pre-Publication Marathon with 36 Authors last weekend. On Saturday and Sunday, she hosted authors who got to talk about their upcoming books. Robin interviewed each author for 30 minutes on Crowdcast, and there were so many great conversations. I was amazed at her stamina! I popped in and out all weekend, and did it ever add to my To-Be-Read pile. My favorite was Lauren Willig talking about her novel, Band of Sisters, which is coming out in March and it is fantastic. You can check them out on Robin's Crowdcast page here. 

4)  I'm watching the NBC sitcom Superstore on my Echo Show while I'm cooking dinner at night. It is laugh-out-loud funny, with some of the sharpest writing around. Lauren Ash as the take-no-prisoners head of security Dina and Mark McKinney as the caring and clueless store manager Glenn are the standout performers. 

5) I read two books this week. Danielle Martin's Glimmer As You Can takes us to 1962 Brooklyn as three women are each at a crossroads of their lives. You get a real sense of how dependent on men women were back then, and the courage it took to strike out on your own with your friends by your side. My full review publishes next Friday.

I'm continuing my Christmas-themed entertainment earlier this year with Susan Mallery's Happily This Christmas, the seventh book in her Happily, Inc. series. I read the sixth one last year, Meant to Be Yours, and I really enjoyed getting to know everyone in the wedding destination town setting. In the newest chapter, Wynn, graphic designer and single mom of a teen boy, helps her handsome police officer neighbor deal with his pregnant 21 year-old daughter who has moved in with him. I will definitely be going back to read the others in this delightful series. My full review publishes December 8th.

I hope you all have a happy, healthy and safe Thanksgiving this year. Stay safe, socially distant, wash your hands and wear a mask.

Word For Word Series at Bryant Park

Bryant Park's outdoor Reading Room is one of the coolest places to hear about books in a beautiful setting, behind the main New York Public Library right in the middle of the city. On Wednesdays during the summer they host a Word for Word Series, with authors talking about their works.

Recently, Robin Kall, of the Reading With Robin podcast, moderated a discussion with five terrific authors, beginning with N. West Moss, author of the short story collection The Subway Stops at Bryant Park. This event was the perfect venue for her talk about her book, where all the stories have a Bryant Park connection.

Moss liked to visit the park and people watch, playing "Tourist/Not Tourist" with her mother. She has a real love for the park, especially the Gertrude Stein statue. She read a small piece from one of her stories, about a librarian named Tim who works at the NYPL. In her research for the book, West got a tour of the stacks of books underneath the Bryant Park lawn- lucky lady!

Courntney Maum's new novel Touch, tells the story of a trend forecaster who believes the next "big thing" will be human touch, not tech. She got the idea from watching a change in her friends. About three years ago, they suddenly became unable to make a decision without consulting their phones. From whom they be attracted to (Tinder) to where and what they should eat (Yelp), people seems to be losing their human intuition.

Maum read a dialogue from her novel between the protagonist and her driverless car, Anastasia; it was very funny and Touch intrigues me.

Daniel Riley, the lone male on the panel, presented his debut novel Fly Me, set in 1972 Southern California, about two young sisters, stewardesses who become involved in a cocaine drug-running scheme and become entangled in a skyjacking incident. As a person who came of age in the 1970s, I found this one fascinating.

J. Courtney Sullivan's novel Saints For All Occasions has been called "the year's best book about family" by Washington Post reviewer Ron Charles, and several other reviewers share his enthusiasm.

Sullivan joked that she would "talk fast" because she is "38 weeks pregnant and might not finish the program". Her story is about two sisters who emigrate from Ireland to Boston with a big secret. She got the idea from a family story, telling the audience that at every Irish funeral there is always someone who shows up, an uncle or aunt, whom no one knew existed. In her story, it is a cloistered nun. This one has been on my list for awhile, I can't wait to dig in, especially since I come from an Irish family.

Julia Fierro's The Gypsy Moth Summer has also garnered much critical praise, making many "Best of Summer" book lists. (Including mine- my review is here.)  Set in 1992, on an island much like Long Island, Fierro's novel has summer romance, family issues, corporate pollution, class and race issues all wrapped up in a fantastic story.

A three time veteran of the Word for Word series, Fierro was very comfortable with the audience, joking about, among other things, the fact that since she is half-Italian and half-Irish, there was a lot of holy water in her house.

Kall brought up that each book was set in different eras and asked why. Fierro's book is set in 1992 because she was 16 that year, like her character Maddie, and so could relate. She wanted her story to be pre-Internet, when teens hung out at the mall and beach.

Maum's novel obviously had to be set in the "present day-ish" because the book depends on the current technology being a big part of the story. She did go out of her way not to brand things; you won't find Iphones or Google in Touch.

Moss' story collection starts with the Bryant Park renovation in the 1980's, when the park was known as "Needle Park" because of all the needles that littered the ground when drug users were the only people who hung out there. She mentioned how much more beautiful the park is now, but progress has a double-edge, with a cup of coffee in the park "now costing $9".

Riley's Fly Me is set in 1972, a time of "transition and tumult in the culture and airline industry." Since the setting was 14 years before he was born, Riley depended on playlists, slideshows and his mom and aunt for help with his research.

Sullivan's Saints For All Occasions goes back and forth between 1957 and 2009 because she wanted to look at the characters over time, how they are shaped by the decades and the Catholic Church, particularly women and what they could and couldn't do.

Kall then asked about epigraphs in books, because each author used them in their books. An epigraph is a short saying or sentence, used as a quote in the beginnings of the book to suggest they theme. Fierro originally had six, and laughed that her editor told she had to choose only one. The authors have epigraphs  from Kurt Vonnegut, Margaret Atwood, Joan Didion and David Foster Wallace in their books.

Kall closed by asking the authors to suggest books to the audience. Maum chose Stephen Florida by Gabe Habash, Riley suggested Newton Thornburg's 1976 California-set Cutter and Bone, Sullivan loves anything by Irish author Anne Enright, particularly The Gathering,  and Fierro went non-fiction with her pick of Deborah Blum's true crime book The Poisoner's Handbook, about the birth of forensic medicine in the Jazz Age of New York City.

Kall did a terrific job, asking great questions and getting such an interesting conversation with five authors in just an hour's time. I'm looking forward to more wonderful bookish talks at Bryant Park.

Information on Bryant Park's events is here.
Reading With Robin's website is here.
N. West Moss' website is here.
Courtney Maum's website is here.
Daniel Riley's website is here.
J. Courtney Sullivan's website is here.
Julia Fierro's website is here.

Weekend Cooking- Small Admissions by Amy Poeppel

This post is part of Beth Fish Reads' Weekend Cooking.  If you have anything related to food, cookbook reviews, novel or non-fiction book reviews, recipes, movie reviews, etc., head over to Beth Fish Reads and add your post. Or, if you want to read food related posts, head over to read what some interesting people have to say about food.

Small Admissions by Amy Poeppel
Published by Atria/Emily Bestler Books ISBN 97815011122521
Hardcover, $26, 384 pages

Once I saw the hilarious trailer for Amy Poeppel's novel, Small Admissions, I knew I had to read it.
See for yourself. (Note- there is language in this that some may find objectionable.)



I'm about three-quarters of the way through the book, and I love it. Kate is a twenty-something young woman who just went through a terrible breakup with her boyfriend. Kate has fallen apart, she has no job, she drinks so much the neighborhood liquor store owner looks upon her with scorn, and her friends and family do not know how to help her get out of her funk.

Kate's sister Angela gets her an interview for a job in the admissions office of the prestigious Upper East Side of Manhattan Hudson School, where to everyone's surprise, Kate gets the job.

I am loving everything about this book. The characters are wonderful, and Poeppel seamlessly weaves the various characters into the story- Angela, Kate's friends Victoria and Chloe, the admissions staff at Hudson, and the parents desperate to get their children into Hudson.

I laughed out loud so many times, mostly at the craziness of the private school admissions process. Poeppel clearly knows this world well and skewers it with a sense of gentle love.

Kate and Angela's parents are professors, "nerdy academics" as Angela calls them. There is a scene at the family home, back when Kate was just about to graduate from college, that applies to Weekend Cooking.

At the house, they convened in the cluttered kitchen over a meal that their mother called "Kaltes Abendbrot" or sometimes "Smorgasboard," depending on the selection, which in either case referred to black bread and things to put on black bread. Sprigs of dill were tucked between tiny shrimp and sliced eggs, not-quite-cooked to hard-boiled, and there was a chunky pate that made Angela wonder, "Chunks of what?"  Kate took off her jacket and pushed up her sleeves, saying "Mmmm, what a spread!" while Angela felt her usual disappointment, wondering what would be wrong with a nice chicken Caesar salad for once.

The four of them together (otherwise known, their parents had taught them, as a clan, or kinship unit, or conjugal family) stood around the butcher-block island to eat, as they had every school night. "Like pigs at the trough," their mother used to say happily. "Standing promotes digestion," their father reminded them. So did the tiny glasses of digestif they always drank after dinner. Lots of words for that too: Obstler or akavit. Kirschwasser or Schnapps.  "Corrupting a minor" was what Angela's friend's mother had called it when she notified the police on the evening of the dinner-balls.

Small Admissions is a gem of a book. If you're looking for a story that will make you laugh and have you rooting for the main character, this is it. People have compared it to The Devil Wears Prada and The Nanny Diaries, but I enjoyed Small Admissions much more than those. I highly recommend it.

Amy Poeppel's website is here.
Reading With Robin interviewed Amy Poeppel on her podcast here.

Reading With Robin at Word For Word at Bryant Park

Bryant Park, located right behind the New York Public Library, hosts a fabulous literary series each summer. Word For Word features authors in conversation about their works on Wednesdays during the lunch hour, and a few weeks ago I saw a really terrific program.

Robin Kall, who hosts a radio program Reading With Robin, hosted four authors talking about Family Drama in Fiction.

Kall, Dubow, Genova, Hughes, Thomas

Charles Dubow, who wrote Indiscretion, a book I really liked, is back with Girl in the Moonlight, a love story about "a first love that lasts a bit too long." It has compelling characters, and he said "the moral of the story resonates with me, hopefully with you too."

Lisa Genova, whose novel Still Alice, was recently made into a heartbreaking movie that won the Oscar for Julianne Moore, is back with Inside the O'Briens about a family dealing with the diagnosis of Huntington's Disease, a fatal neurodegenerative disease that is passed on genetically. She says it is about "how to find hope in a hopeless situation." I read it and it is amazing. (My review is here.)

Mary Beth Hughes' The Loved Ones is "essentially a story about a marriage." Set in 1969-70, a couple who lost their son two years ago are trying to find their way back to each other amidst problems with their 13 year-old daughter, and a brother who is trying to involve them in an embezzlement scheme.

Matthew Thomas' We Are Not Ourselves was on my list of The Most Compelling Books of 2014, and as Robin stated "is destined to be a classic." His story is about a Irish immigrant's daughter born in the 1940's who aspires to become middle class and achieve the American dream. He says it's about "how to deal with life with grace." (My review here.)

Kall asked some great questions of the group, including asking what kind of eavesdropping they did as part of their writing. Genova is from a large Italian family (she is the 26th grandchild!), a group she called "loud and boisterous", so there were plenty of opportunities as a child to listen.

Thomas declared that he was "an inveterate eavesdropper", claiming that as a writer he is always listening to the story being told off to the side.

Hughes's father is one of 12 children and she has 72 first cousins, so she always was surrounded by people talking. Now that she is a writer, her aunt is always telling her that she "has a lot of stories."

Dubow comes from a small family, and he was born with a stutter, so always listened much more than he talked.

Kall then asked what determined the time period setting of their novels, which was a good question I hadn't heard much before.  Thomas said he told a "story of time and place." It needed context, and called it a historical novel, not one "shot through with cell phones."

Hughes said that setting was very important to her story, calling it "Mad Men-esque" in 1969-70 when women's consciousness groups were beginning, and what that meant to the teenage daughter.

Genova's novel had to be set after 1993, when the gene that causes Huntington's was isolated. The fact that genetic testing is available is a key plot point in Inside the O'Briens.

Dubow needed to set his novel at the beginning of the AIDS crisis, when AIDS shaming was prevalent, as that is important to his plot as well.

When Kall asked if any topics were off-limits, Genova burst out with "Hockey. I'm not writing about hockey", which elicited chuckles from the audience.

Thomas said "this sounds like a challenge", then said he would "stay away from something that was unnecessarily painful to others." Dubow said he would not write about something he knew nothing about, while Hughes would "find it difficult to write about dance."

Kall said that some of her favorite family drama authors are Jonathan Tropper and Phillip Roth and asked the authors to name some of the favorites. Hughes loves Penelope Fitzgerald, saying that Blue Flower and Gate of Angels were favorites.

Thomas believes that everything is family drama, and called out Alice McDermott (one of my favorites) as well as the Russians, like Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky.

Genova liked All The Light We Cannot See, last year's Pulitzer Prize winner, and Dubow also cited the Russians, along with William Faulkner and James Salter's The Light Years.

Kall closed with a fantastic question- "What is the hope for your families in your book?" Hughes has great hope for her character Lily, " a beautiful spirit with great faith."  Thomas hopes that his character Eileen has grandchildren and learns to "feel the joy and forget the things that drove her and that she is more present in the moment."

Genova hops that her characters, who face chronic health issues can "be present to love, and the feel the gratitude of the joy of today.

Robin Kall was a wonderful moderator and this was one of the best Word For Word events I have attended. The rest of the summer schedule is here.

You can follow Robin Kall here.