Friday 5ive- October 21, 2022

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

1) Sunday was a beautiful day in NYC so we took a walk through Central Park. It was so good to see the park filled with people, and it seemed like everyone was celebrating a birthday, we ran into mutliple celebrations..

2) The Center for Fiction hosted a discussion between Silas House, about his book Lark Ascending, and one of my favorite authors, Barbara Kingsolver, about her novel Demon Copperhead. I read an early copy of Demon Copperhead, and it is Kingsolver's best book yet, a contemporary retelling of Charles Dickens' David Copperfield. Her young protagonist deals with a mother who is an addict, living in a broken foster care system, poverty and the beginnings of the opioid crisis in Appalachia. I haven't read Silas House's book yet, but it sounds fascinating. It's a dystopian story about a young man who leaves the United States for Ireland, seeking refuge from devastating fires and political persecution  where he walks across the country with a dog he finds. The discussion was fascinating about two epic books, and what it means to be a writer from Appalachia. I watched it on YouTube, but I wish I had been there in person.

3) I love getting book mail, and this week I received my Stories & Suspects box filled with fantastic mystery books from Bantam. It features the new book from Susan Elia MacNeal, Mother Daughter Traitor Spy, about a mother-daughter duo living in Los Angeles during WWII who end up spying on people involved in the Nazi movement for the US government. It has a lot of resonance for events happening today. It also has a new crime drama  by William Landay (I liked his Defending Jacob), a psychological suspense from Catherine Steadman (The Family Game- a Book of the Month selection for October), a locked room mystery by Jilly Gagnon (All Dressed Up), and their Buzz Pick, a debut novel from Erin E. Adams titled Jackal about missing girls in a Rust Belt town. The box was sponored by Tony's Chocolonely, one of my favorite chocolate treats.

4) Stanley Tucci's Searching for Italy is back on Sunday nights on CNN, and we are enjoying traveling to the different regions of Italy. The first few episodes took us Calabria, Sardinia and Puglia and we've seen a lot of seafood dishes this season. 

5)  I adore Mary Beth Keane's books, and her upcoming 2023 novel, The Half Moon, is wonderful. Malcolm and Jess are a happy couple living in Gillam, a small town a hour upstate from New York City. Jess desperately wants a baby, and after several expensive and emotionally draining IVF tries doesn't undertstand why Malcolm is willing to give up on their dream. Malcolm's dream is to own the Half Moon, a bar he has worked in for years. They are at a crossroads, and the novel explores how that came to be and where it is headed. It is  phenomenal, I read it a little bit at a time because I did not want this fantastic book to end. I wanted to stay with Malcolm and Jess forever. 

Have a great, safe, healthy week.

Friday 5ive- June 3, 2022

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

Can it be June already????

1) I attended the White Mass to honor healthcare workers at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City this week. Sponsored by ArchCare, Timothy Cardinal Dolan celebrated the mass, and it was a great turnout of healthcare workers. It was an opportunity to thank the healthcare workers who were the true heroes during the pandemic, especially the early days when we really didn't know much about COVID. They went above and beyond to care for those who needed it most. Healthcare workers processed down the aisle with colorful umbrellas and that is always the most popular part of the mass.

2)  We traveled to Columbus, Ohio for our niece's high school graduation. It was a big graduating class, over 450 students. They had such beautiful music played and sung by the seniors, and we had a big family turnout for our niece Eva.

3)  The big family weekend activity (after the graduation of course) was an outing for all of us to a place called The Kitchen. It's a terrific group activity, we divided up and work at various work stations, prepping dinner for all of us to eat. We followed their recipes and chopped salad ingredients, made a dressing, made a chimmichurri sauce for filet mignon, peeled potatoes, cut broccolini, and mixed cupcake batter. The staff assisted with the actual cooking, and then we all sat down to eat. Add in the open bar with a signature cocktail and mocktail, and we all had a great time. 

The cupcake station

The prep tables

4) We're so happy to see the second season of Stanley Tucci's Searching for Italy is back on CNN. We enjoy his travels around the various regions of Italy showing us all the fantastic food we're missing. You know I took notes for our next trip to Italy. (Although the fish in Venice was not exciting to us.)

5) I read a fantastic novel, A Shoe Story by Jane L. Rosen. I'm not a 'shoe person', yet I really liked this one. After a tragedy send young Esme from a coveted post-college job opportunity at an art gallery in NYC back to her small hometown in Honeoye Falls, near Rochester, NY, the life she thought she would have disappears. Years later, she has an opportunity to dog sit for a woman in NYC, and she wonders if she can get the life  she dreamed of back. The characters are wonderful, particularly Sol, the elderly gentleman Esme befriends in the park. As someone who grew up near Rochester, I understood her upstate references, and now that I live in NYC, I jotted down all the places that Esme visited that I have yet to see. I also liked that each chapter was headed by a different show that Esme wore in that chapter-  it was so clever! A Shoe Story is a lovely story in a great setting. 

HAve a good week, stay safe and healthy.

Friday 5ive- February 26, 2021

Welcome to the Friday 5ive, a weekly blog post featuring five things that caught my attention this week. I can't believe it's the last Friday in February, time is flying by.

1)  After watching the first two episodes of Stanley Tucci -Searching for Italy on CNN, it made us long for our trips to Italy and all the fabulous food we had there. While placing an order from Vincent's Meat Market in the Bronx this week, I saw that they had Guanciale, a cured meat product (like pancetta) made from pork cheek and jowls. As that was a featured ingredient in one of the fantastic looking dishes on this week's episode, I ordered some. Now I just need to find that recipe....

2)  Today is National Take A Walk Day, highlighting the health advantages of walking outside. Al Roker from the Today Show walked from his home near Central Park to the Today Show studio on Fifth Ave. and 49th Street, a pretty decent walk, at least a few miles. I did my walk a few days earlier on Tuesday, walking 6 miles from our apartment on on the Upper East Side to run errands (post office, dry cleaner, drug store, grocery store) to the Barnes & Noble store on Fifth Ave. and 46th Street (very near the Today Show studio) and back home. On Sunday, we had six people from our family on their Peloton bikes doing Jenn Sherman's live 80's ride, which was a lot of fun. Exercise is a good antidote to being cooped up inside all day. The Today Show has a 31-day walking plan that looks great.

3)  This week was filled with online book discussions . The Peloton Moms Book Club hosted a Facebook Live with author Jane L. Rosen, discussing her wonderful novel, Eliza Starts A Rumor, about four women who live in a bucolic Hudson Valley town and form a bond over a rumor gone wild. It's about social media, marriage, friendship, and reaching out to others. I loved the book, my review is here. Thanks to Jennifer for hosting the discussion.

Next up was a large (250+) Zoom gathering with author Sarah MacLean in discussion with Lauren Willig about Lauren's first novel in her Pink Carnation spy series, The Secret History of the Pink Carnation. Published in 2003, the book is set in 1803 as British spies are embedded in Paris to try and foil Napoleon's plans to invade England. I so enjoyed the discussion, and look forward to joining in for the next 11 books in the series. Each month for a year we will read the next book in the series and discuss. You can watch it here. Join in the fun!

The last one was Adriana Trigiani's Facebook Live talk with Matthew McConaughey about his critically acclaimed memoir Greenlights. It was such an entertaining and fascinating discussion! Adriana asked great questions and Matthew was a wonderful guest, regaling us all with stories from his childhood and acting career. I must read this one. 

4) We binge-watched all seven episodes of The Queen's Gambit on Netflix this week. Lots of my friends have recommended it, including my son, and once we started it, we were hooked. It tells the story of Beth Harmon, a young girl orphaned when her mother commits suicide. Beth is sent to live at a girls' school where the school janitor teaches her to play chess and discovers she is a prodigy. Set in the 1950s-1960s, we see how Beth becomes a world-class chess champion, fighting sexism and her own demons. I never thought anyone could make watching chess interesting, but they sure do here. This is must-see TV, and Anya Taylor-Joy is a phenomenal as Beth. She may win a Golden Globe this weekend for her performance. The music is great too.

5) In preparation for the Zoom this week, I read Lauren Willig's The Secret History of the Pink Carnation. What a fun read it was! It's got history, romance (a few steamy sexy scenes), spies, action, strong women, humor and more all rolled up into a rollocking good read. In the present day, graduate student Eloise Kelly sets out to discover who the mysterious Pink Carnation spy was during the time Napoleon was about to invade England. She is led to letters written by a young Amy Balcourt, which make up the bulk of the story. Amy, her cousin Jane, and chaperone the tough and prim Miss Gwen travel to Paris to stay with Amy's brother, and they get caught up in intrigue with the Purple Gentian, a masked man who is a thorn in the side of Napoleon's Chief of Police. If you smugly assume (as I did) that you guessed who the Pink Carnation was (wasn't it obvious?), you will enjoy the denouement of this delightful story. I loved the characters (especially Miss Gwen) and there are so many great scenes here that scream out for a Netflix series. If you liked Bridgerton, The Secret History of the Pink Carnation is your next read.

Stay safe, socially distant, wear a mask, wash your hands, and get the vaccine when it's your turn. Yay for those of you who have already gotten yours!