The Friday 5ive- July 10, 2020

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

1)  Saturday was the 4th of July and usually we can see the Macy’s Fireworks on the East River from our balcony. This year, Macy’s did five smaller fireworks displays across the five boroughs, culminating with fireworks from the top of the Empire State Building. We watched it on TV, and they did a great job editing it together. We saw some fireworks from our weekend retreat just outside the city, and we had the last of our Columbia Restaurant sangria in our America pitcher.

2)  To celebrate the 4th weekend, we watched Hamilton the Musical on Disney+. I was lucky enough to see the original cast on Broadway and they did such an amazing job filming it. You got a lot more out of it watching it on the screen. I loved it.

3)  I finally finished the latest season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel on Amazon Prime. Midge teaching Susie how to swim in the Fontainebleau pool was so hilarious! We stayed at the Fontainebleau a few years ago and it was fun to see how they made it look like 1960 again. 

4) I read New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey’s book She Said, about their investigative reporting on the Harvey Weinstein sexual harassment case, and it is phenomenal. Author Adriana Trigiani hosted a Facebook Live with the two reporters this week, and if you read the book, this is a perfect accompaniment. And if you haven’t read the book, read it and then watch. It’s imperative to read about the brave women who came forward at great risk to themselves.

5)  In addition to reading She Said, I also read Sarah M. Bloom’s The Yellow House, her memoir about growing up one of 12 children in New Orleans. It’s the story of her and her family as seen through the lens of their small shotgun house, and it is so moving. If you want to read more black voices, this is a good one to add to your list, and it deservedly won the 2019 National Book Award for Nonfiction.

If you are a fan of Netflix’s The Crown, Brynn Turnbull’s debut novel The Woman Before Wallis is for you. It tells the fictional story of a real woman, Thelma Morgan, who became entangled with two scandals in the 1930s. Morgan was the mistress of Edward, the Prince of Wales and next in line to become King of England, before he married Wallis Simpson and abdicated the throne. She was also the twin sister of Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt, mother to Gloria Vanderbilt and who fought a very public custody battle for little Gloria. My full review publishes Tuesday. (Spoiler alert- I really liked it.)

I hope you all stay safe and dry- we’re getting some much needed rain this weekend, but do we really need a tropical storm on top of everything else? #Thanks2020

August Books from the Book Expo

Every year I attend the Book Expo, one of the biggest publishing conferences in the country where publishers give out copies of the books they will be promoting in the near future. Each month I will post a photo of the books I picked up that will be published that month.
(June books are here.)
(July books are here.)

Here are the books I picked up that publish in August.

 Karen Abbott's The Ghosts of Eden Park recounts the true story of legendary bootlegger George Remus, who owned 35% of all the liquor in 1921. Mabel Willebrandt, a pioneering female prosecutor sets her sights on bringing down Remus' empire, along with her investigator Franklin Dodge. When Dodge begins an affair with Remus' wife, things get really crazy. This one has gotten rave reviews and sounds fantastic for people who like true crime that reads like fiction.

In thriller writer Karen Slaughter's newest novel The Last Widow, Atlanta medical examiner Sara Linton and her partner, Georgia Bureau of  Investigations Will Trent, are tasked with investigating a two deadly bombings when Sara is kidnapped and Will must save her and prevent more bombings from happening. Slaughter is at the top of her game here.

Lisa Lutz's The Swallows is about "a teacher at a New England prep school who ignites a gender war- with deadly consequences". I loved her last novel, The Passenger, and this one looks to be pretty intense and a little controversial.

Sarah M. Broom' memoir The Yellow House is about the shotgun house she and her family of eleven siblings grew up in a poor neighborhood in New Orleans. Her widowed mom raised her family in that house until Hurrican Katrina came along. It's about race, class, inequality and family and it's gotten great reviews.

Rob Hart's novel, The Warehouse, was chosen as one of the Editor's Buzz Books at the Book Expo. Paxton works for Cloud (think Amazon) that has taken over a large portion of the American economy. Zinnia has gone undercover at Cloud trying to discover exactly what is going on there. It sounds fabulous and a little scary.

In Brock Clarke's Who Are You, Calvin Bledsoe, when the titular hero's mother passes away, a mysterious woman shows at her funeral and claims to be his aunt. She convinces Calvin to accompany her to Europe, where he is followed by secret agents, religious fanatics, and his stalker ex-wife. It's  being called a cross between a Wes Anderson movie and John Irving book, with that odd comic sensibility.

 Rick Moody tells the tale of the first month of his second marriage in his memoir The Long Accomplishment. His hope for a smooth matrimonial start is beset by "miscarriages, the death of friends and robberies, just for starters." Moody wrote the book The Ice Storm, so it will interesting to read his take on a real marriage.

See you in September.