Friday 5ive- March 25, 2022

Welcome to the Friday 5ive, a weekly-ish blog post about five things that caught my attention this week. You know it's spring when the weather whipsaws from 72 one day to 42 the next.

1) I attended my first in-person book event since February of 2020 at the book launch for John Searles' fantastic novel, Her Last Affair. (My review is here.) Held at Symphony Space in NYC, the evening began with actress Amy Ryan reading from the first chapter of the book. Can I just say that I would like to request that Amy Ryan read to me every night before I go to sleep? She and John then had a fantastic discussion that included stories about the summer he traveled with his Dad (who was a cross-country trucker), the year he and his husband lived out of hotel rooms and in friends' guest bedrooms after their apartment was destroyed in a fire caused by the couple next door who constantly fought, and the importance of making sure your Skype app is turned off before your book club starts talking about the author after the session ends, among other topics. Oh yeah, and the book was discussed too, which I highly recommend. It's the story of three people who try to connect with old loves, secrets, and how Searles connects these three people is a twist that left me gasping. The setting is an abandoned drive-in movie theater which adds to the creepiness factor. We even got popcorn to take home!

John Searles and Amy Ryan

2) I finally finished my virtual Route 66 ride through Conqueror Virtual Challenge. It took me 244 days to  ride the 2280.3 miles. This one was my longest journey yet and it felt great to complete it. Doing these virtual challenges keeps me on track on my Peloton rides. My next ride is a short 500 miles along the North Coast of Scotland.

3) We had a birthday party at the Book Cellar, the used book store located in the Webster branch of the New York Public Library where I volunteer, this week. We had a lovely luncheon, with flowers, balloons and a birthday cake made by one of the volunteers. It was a delicious vanilla cake made with mandarin oranges. The festive sprinkles on top actually matched the cake plates. It feels good to celebrate birthdays once again as a group.  Here is a classic recipe for the cake.

4) I've been watching a lot of old sitcoms as you know, and I just stumbled upon one I haven't ever seen before- Reba, starring country superstar Reba McEntire. She stars in this 2001-2007 sitcom where she plays a divorced mom who lives with her three children. Her oldest daughter (played by Joanna Garcia Swisher) is 17 and finds herself pregnant by her high school boyfriend (played by Steve Howey from Shameless). They marry, have the baby, and live with Reba and her 13 year-old daughter and 8 year-old son. Reba's ex-husband (Christopher Rich) married his ditzy dental assistant (Melissa Peterman) and they all try to live and let live. Reba McEntire is a fantastic comedic actress, I had no idea! I'm really enjoying watching the early morning reruns of the show on the Hallmark Channel. 

5) I read three books, including Susan Mallery's The Summer Getaway (my full review here) about a forty-ish divorced mom who leaves her Florida home, her ex-husband, ex-boyfriend, adult children and all their issues behind to help her great-aunt in California. She meets a handsome ex-Marine and begins a hot affair only to have her entire family bring their problems to her in California. 

 

Annie Ward's The Lying Club (my review is here) is for fans of Liane Moriarty's Big Little Lies. The book begins with a dead body lying on a high school gym floor, and a woman who blacked out and can't remember what happened. Throw in a wealthy community with a mom who will stop at nothing to make sure her lacrosse star daughter gets into a good college, teens running amok, a high school coach who wields too much power in the community, and you've got a suspenseful story.

 

I also read an amazing novel by Melissa Fu titled Peach Blossom Spring. The story begins in 1938 China, with Meilin and her young son Renshu on the run from Japanese bombers who are destroying their town. Meilin and Renshu do what they can to survive, and finally settle in Taiwan as refugees. (Reading this resonates so much with what is happening in the Ukraine now.)  As Renshu grows up, he is an excellent student and gets the opportunity to study in America. Here his life diverges from his mother's and we see the difficult life of an immigrant in the United States contrasted with Meilin's life working as a maid and seamstress in Taiwan. It's a heartrending story about mothers and sons, written with such empathy for the characters.  Peach Blossom Spring will be one of my top books of the year.  

Have a safe week everyone.

Anne Lamott at Symphony Space

I had the wonderful opportunity (thanks, Lydia!) to see Anne Lamott at Symphony Space last night in New York. I had never been to an event at Symphony Space and it is a beautiful venue.

When I got there, there were already many eager Anne Lamott fans in line. Lamott fans are a special breed; they are kind and friendly and many people started conversations with people in line next to them. No one was cranky about waiting out in the cold.

Lamott began the program by reading from her new book, Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers.  It is a slim book, all about the three prayers we say to God or our higher power: help the people we love who need it and help us to be better people; thanks for the many blessings we have and wow, expressing amazement at the many wonders, and sometimes awful things, we are surrounded by.

She spoke of her belief in science, which doesn't always coincide with her fellow Christians. She bemoaned the fact that Christians today are not identified as Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton, people who cared for the sick and the poor, who were great thinkers, but rather politicians like Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee.

Lamott was dragged kicking and screaming into the world of Twitter and Facebook by her publisher, but once she was on them, she became a social media maven (even if she doesn't always know the lingo). The recent election was a treasure trove for Lamott, and she spoke eloquently about the debt that today's women owe the women before who had to fight for equal rights. It is our responsibility to not let their struggle fall by the wayside. (You can follow Lamott on Facebook here, and on Twitter here)

Gretchen Rubin & Anne Lamott at Symphony Space

Author Gretchen Rubin (The Happiness Project) interviewed Lamott, and I (along with many others in the crowd) wished their conversation had gone on for many more hours. Lamott puts many of her family and friends in her books, and Rubin asked her if that was a problem for her, if she worried about what they thought, or if she "just let the chips fall where they may." The crowd roared with laughter when Lamott said "there is not an area of my life where I let the chips fall where they may. I worry about every chip."

She joked about her "raging OCD issues", her highly structured writing schedule, how much harder it is to write fiction than non-fiction, and how if you change a person's hair color and height, they will never recognize themselves as a character in your book.

Rubin asked one of my favorite questions, "What do you read?" and Lamott gave us quite an extensive list.

• Every morning, she reads the New York Times
• The New Yorker magazine (although sometimes she claims to be reading this when she is actually reading the National Enquirer)
• Barbara Kingsolver books- she loved The Lacuna (so did I!), even though critics were not as kind. Lamott says she loves a new Kingsolver book because she knows she will "get lost for ten hours in it."
• Katherine Boo's National Book Award winner, Behind the Beautiful Forevers
• Laurie E. Colwin's Happy All the Time, which she says she has given to many people over the years
• Althea Black's I Knew You'd be Lovely, which she called "just wonderful, smart, and sweet."
• Mikey Walsh's memoir, Gypsy Boy
• Douglas Foster's After Mandela
• Adam Hochschild's King Leopold's Ghost

She has been working on her next book, As In Life, for a few years. Her editor Jake Morrissey interrupted her progress on that book to encourage her to write Help, Thanks, Wow, so we have another book to look forward to very soon.

I loved how Lamott closed by stating that for humans, there is "no owner's manual, we just care for each other." If you haven't read Lamott (her book Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith is on my favorites bookshelf), give her a try. She writes fiction and non-fiction and her book Bird by Bird is a staple for anyone who wants to be a writer.