Friday 5ive- June 20, 2020

Welcome to the Friday 5ive, a weekly blog post about five things that caught my attention this week. The weather was spectacular last week, sunny and warm, perfect for sitting outside and reading a good book (or two or three or four).


1) It's so wonderful to see all the flowers in bloom, like these beautiful hydrangeas. They just make me smile.

2) Speaking of flowers, I ordered these paint by numbers kits of flowers for the gals to do while the guys go golfing. One of my friends did something similiar with her family, and we ladies thought it looked like fun. I'll post the results on an upcoming edition of the Friday 5ive. (Warning- I can barely draw stick people, so we'll see if I am any better at this.) I ordered them from The BookMark Shoppe in Brooklyn on Tuesday and they arrived on Wednesday- what great customer service! Shout-out for indie booksellers!

3)  June is Immigrant Heritage Month and when I was looking through my bookshelves for books to post on the Book Cellar Facebook page, I came up with quite a variety of books. I've read seven of them (and all were great), so I think I will try to read one of these per week to catch up. #ReadingGoals

Immigrant Heritage Month books

4) We watched the last episode of Showtime's Billions this week (their season was shortened by the COVID outbreak), and I was so excited to see Rick Hoffman playing a small role as sleazy doctor. Hoffman played lawyer Louis Litt for seven seasons on USA Network's Suits, which my son, his wife, and I loved. I went on Twitter and discovered that many Suits fans were as thrilled as I was to see him back on TV. (It's the little things.....)

Rick Hoffman on the left on Billions

5) As I said, I read a lot this past week (four books) in the sunshine, and it was glorious. (Click on the book titles under the photos for links to purchase.)

First I read actress Hilarie Burton Morgan's The Rural Diaries, a memoir about her and her actor husband Jeffrey Dean Morgan and their young son moving from Hollywood to a farm in Rhinebeck, NY, a few hours north of NYC. It's terrific, and the perfect tonic for those of us stuck inside. Burton Morgan shares what life is like on a farm, her hands-on remodel of their farmhouse, and friends she made in a small town. I highly recommend it. I bought this from Oblong Books & Music independent bookstore in Rhinebeck, and Burton Morgan personally signed every copy they sold- they are up to 7355 so far- amazing!

The Rural Diaries

Another great book I read is Regina Porter's 2019 novel, The Travelers, which weaves the stories of several people from two families from 1954 to 2010. It's about love, marriage, family, race, friendship- in short, life. Porter is a brilliant writer, and if you are looking to read more black voices, pick this one up. I read it in one day, I couldn't put it down.

The Travelers

I also read Emma Jane Unsworth's novel Grown Ups, which for some reason I thought was a memoir when I started reading it. (My first clue it wasn't should have been that the narrator's name is Jenny, not Emma.) Jenny is a 35-year-old Londoner who writes a column for an online site called Foof, pitched for feminists. She lives with her somewhat-famous photographer boyfriend Art until they break up and she has to take in three roommates she doesn't like. She avoids her mother, until her mother shows up to move in with her. The book is a fast read, with texts, emails and social media posts interspersed. Jenny is kind of a mess, but she says things that will make you laugh out loud one minute and tear up the next. Although I am someone who is not the target age for this novel, I still enjoyed taking Jenny's journey with her. 

Grown Ups

And lastly, I read Richard Farrell's upcoming novel The Falling Woman, the story of Erin, a middle-aged woman facing a deadly pancreatic cancer diagnosis She gets on a plane that explodes over Kansas, and is the only survivor. She disappears from the hospital before Charlie, the young NTSB investigator tasked with finding out if it is truth or a hoax that there was a female survivor, can talk to her. This is Charlie's first time working a major disaster and if he can't get answers, his career will be finished before it begins. Why did Erin disappear? Why doesn't she want her family to know she is alive?  Fans of Dear Edward will want to read this one. My full review posts on Tuesday.

The Falling Woman

 Have a great week everyone- stay safe and healthy and wash your hands.

Weekend Cooking- The Grown Ups by Robin Antalek

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.

The Grown Ups by Robin Antalek
Published by William Morrow Paperbacks ISBN 9780062302472
Trade paperback, $14.99, 357 pages

The cover of Robin Antalek's  The Grown Ups is a photo of what looks like an abandoned picnic table. It drew me in right away, wondering what happened at that table. Did the people who ate there enjoy themselves or was there an argument and is that why no one is sitting there?

The Grown Ups open in 1997 at Suzie Epstein's 15th birthday party. Suzie brings her neighbor Sam into her basement and shows him photos of neighborhood women that her father, who just moved out out, had hidden. Sam just wanted to kiss Suzie, but Suzie wanted Sam to know that his mother's photo was there, and that it implied that her father and his mother were sleeping together.

Soon after, Sam's mother left too, and that left Sam alone with his father and older brother Michael to fend for themselves. Suzie's mom falls into a funk and it is left to Suzie to run the household and care for her little brothers.

Suzie's mom moves the family away to reunite with her husband in Brookline, far away from Sam. Sam is distraught and he begins to date Bella, Suzie's best friend. Bella loves Sam, Sam pines for Suzie, and Suzie is determined to go to medical school. She will not let herself become totally dependent on a man like her mother.

Suzie meets someone and falls in love, and Bella and Sam date, though Sam can't really commit to Bella the way she deserves. He becomes distant and loses his way in life.

Until he finds that he has a talent for cooking. He works for a caterer in Manhattan where

"The prep kitchens were in a warehouse building near the West Side Highway, and the food was what you would expect at a wedding for a hundred or so of your not-so-close friends. There were always a multitude of chicken dishes on the menu, as well as salmon puffs and shrimp rolls, and roasted red potatoes. These dishes traveled well on the Long Island Expressway en route to their location."

I never would have imagined that the warehouses on the West Side Highway housed catering kitchens. I will think of that the next time I am at an event for hundreds of people.

I enjoyed the descriptions of Sam's food, like "the quinoa salad with roasted vegetables, black bean burgers on whole grain rolls, a green salad, and new potatoes with lemon laid out on the table in the backyard underneath the grape arbor."

Or this one: "For dinner Sam grilled the corn and steaks, pulverized the parsley, lemon, garlic and oil into a pesto he drizzled over thin slices of meat and roasted potato, and served everything on the deck."

The Grown Ups  is a wonderful coming-of-age story, although the scenes set in 1997 seemed to me to contain details more in line with being a teenager in the 1970s, with all the moms smoking and milk delivered to homes and left in boxes on the porch.

Sam, Suzie and Bella each tell their story in alternating chapters, and they feel to me like people I would know from the neighborhood. They try to be good people, dealing with family problems, unrequited love, and all the scary things life can throw at you. Sam's dad Hunt in particular was a favorite of mine, supporting his kids and just being an all-round good guy.

Antalek writes a story filled with very detailed scenes that you can visualize in your mind. After reading The Grown Ups, I picked up Antalek's previous novel The Summer We Fell Apart because she tells a story with so much heart.

The Grown Ups reminded me of Meg Wolitzer's The Interestings, another story about a group of friends struggling with friendship, love and life.

My review of The Interestings is here.