Friday 5ive- A Bookish Week

Welcome to the Friday 5ive, a weekly blog post about five things that caught my eye this week.
It's been a week filled with lots of exciting bookish things.

1) Thursday was our annual Beach Club Book Club meeting. We meet at a fantastic beach club on Atlantic Beach on Long Island. The weather was perfect-bright, sunny and hot. The ladies prepared some appetizers, followed by sandwiches and couscous salad, and ending with these gorgeous and delicious cookies baked by Buttercream and Biscuits. We had a great discussion of Lisa See's powerful novel, The Island of Sea Women.  (My full review is here.) The book is about two best friends, women divers on the island of Jeju, South Korea, and what happens when you can't forgive someone you love because you don't understand. One of the club members has a son who lives in South Korea and that gave an added dimension to our discussion. Many thanks to our hosts!

Beach Club Book Club

2) On Tuesday, I attended a book event at The Corner Bookstore on the Upper East Side for debut novelist Jonathan Vatner's book, Carnegie Hill. The overflow crowd (there were people outside on the sidewalk!) heard Jonathan read from a particularly humorous chapter (a scene about a woman visiting a doctor to consult about cosmetic surgery) of his book. Vatner, in discussion with author Grant Ginder, was inspired by a friend who lived in a co-op on the Upper East Side. His friend would share the emails he received from the co-op board, and Vatner turned that into this hilarious novel about residents of an Upper East Side co-op building that has gotten rave reviews. I can't wait to read it.

Jonathan Vatner

3) The Readerly Report is one of the podcasts that I subscribe to and enjoy a great deal. Gayle and Nicole talk candidly about the books they enjoy, the ones that didn't particularly move them, and other bookish things. They invited me on their show, and we had a fantastic chat about book events we attend, books we're reading, authors we like, and I answered their five questions they ask all their guests. You can listen to it here. And if you like podcasts about books, I highly recommend The Readerly Report, but be warned, listening will increase your To Be Read pile significantly.

4) I found the sign of the week at my local Italian grocery store, Agata & Valentina. While picking up some chicken thighs at the butcher counter, I noticed a sign advertising Filet Mignon from Seneca Falls NY. I was so excited, I took a photo and I know the butcher was wondering what I was doing.

5) In addition to my continued reading for our Italy trip, I read a memoir by Cheryl Stritzel McCarthy, Many Hands Make Light Work. It's about her family of nine children growing up in Iowa in the late 1960s, and 1970s. I loved this book! It's a sweet family story, and anyone from a big family will relate to it. The title comes from father Joe's favorite saying, "Many Hands Make Light Work" as the family owns several student rental homes, and the children spent much of their growing up years doing routine maintenance (mowing grass, shoveling snow, painting) and actual demolition on the homes. There's so much here to enjoy- a big Catholic family who enjoy each other's company, just reading about their daily routine will leave you speechless. Dad is a college professor, and Mom runs the home with an efficiency that is astonishing. Everyone should read this book, and I will have a full review this weekend.

We will be off to Italy next Friday, so I'll be back here in a few weeks with lots more to share with you all. Ciao!

Two Novels Featuring Women During War

Reprinted from the Citizen:
This month's Book Report highlights two novels written by women that deal with women living through war and working in traditional male roles.

Author Kate Quinn's previous novel, The Alice Network, was about a female spy network in World War II France that helped the Allies defeat the Germans. It was a best-seller and even today still resides on the paperback best-seller list. Her new novel, The Huntress, is also partially set in World War II. Following the war, Ian, a Brit, and Tony, an American, have teamed up to find Nazis who have escaped punishment for their crimes. They are looking for a Polish woman known as the Huntress, who is known to have slaughtered innocent children. 

Nina is a Russian woman who escapes her hardscrabble life to join a cadre of female fighter pilots. The most interesting parts of this big, sprawling novel deal with Nina's experiences as a fighter pilot. The Russians created a team of all-female fighter pilots who had to work twice as hard as the male pilots to prove themselves worthy. Nina found a family among these women, and the descriptions of their battles is heart-pounding on the page. 

Nina has personal reasons for wanting to find the Huntress, and joins up with Tony and Ian, who have a lead that the Huntress may be hiding in America. They turn the tables on the Huntress, as she now becomes the hunted.

In a small Massachusetts town, a teenage girl named Jordan is happy that her widowed father has finally found love again with Anna, an immigrant widowed mother of a young girl. They have become a happy new family, but something nags at Jordan about her stepmother.

All of these stories intersect in an intriguing way, and Quinn certainly knows how to ratchet up the tension in this thrilling story. Sharp-eyed fans of The Alice Network will recognize a cameo appearance by one of the main characters from that novel.

Lisa See's novel, The Island of Sea Women, is set on Jeju, an island off the coast of Korea. Young-sook and Mi-ja are best friends who are learning how to become divers, like Young-sook's mother. In their culture, the women are the breadwinners of the family, while the men stay home and take care of the young children and the home. 

Diving for fish (abelone and octopus are prized) can be dangerous, and the women work as a team to keep each other safe, but accidents do happen. Young-sook becomes betrothed to a teacher, but she is jealous that Mi-ja has captured the attention of a handsome businessman who lives in the city. Young-sook and her husband happily welcome three children into their lives. Mi-ja and her husband have a son, but Mi-ja's marriage is troubled.

The Island of Sea Women begins during the Japanese occupation of Korea, and the people of Jeju fear the soldiers. When the Korean War begins, their country is torn apart as Russia and China back North Korean communists and the United States back South Korea. See describes what became known as the 4.3 Incident, where Koreans massacred their own people, including many people on Jeju, while the Americans did nothing to stop it. It is told in horrific detail, and the losses suffered by Young-sook cause a permanent fracture between her and Mi-ja.

The book begins and ends in 2008 as a family of Americans have come to Jeju, now a popular tourist destination. A family of four are looking for anyone who knew a family member who used to be a diver on Jeju. Young-sook avoids the tourists in general, happy to just spend her time on the beach, but this family, particularly the teenage daughter, is persistent.

The Island of Sea Women"is the kind of book you get lost in, taking the reader to an unfamiliar world. See clearly did a great deal of research to create her brilliant novel (as her acknowledgments pages attest), and it adds to the authenticity of the story.

It is an emotional book, one that will bring tears to your eyes as you read about the inhumanity people inflict during war. But at its heart, it is a story of the friendship of two girls and what happens when that friendship is tested. This is a must-read book.

If you read

BOOK: The Huntress by Kate Quinn

GRADE: A

PUBLISHER: William Morrow

COST: Trade paperback, $16.99

LENGTH: 560 pages

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BOOK: The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See

GRADE: A+

PUBLISHER: Scribner

COST: Hardcover, $27

LENGTH: 384 pages

Friday Five- April 5, 2019

This week's Friday Five begins with a quick road trip.

1) We spent a day in Washington DC, where my husband had business and I visited the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery. They have such interesting exhibits, like Votes for Women: A Portrait of Persistence and One Year 1968: An American Odyssey. I really went to see the Barack and Michelle Obama portraits, which are marvelous. Barack's looks almost 3D like, and Michelle's is magnificent. It was great to see so many school groups there looking at them. While there, I heard the best thing I've ever heard in DC. A young boy, maybe 8 or 9, was talking to his older sister and while standing in front of the huge portrait of Bill Clinton, he pointed at it and said to her, "Look, it's Hillary Clinton's husband!" He couldn't understand while he was there and not Hillary.

2) I've always wanted to eat at Jaleo, chef Jose Andres' DC restaurant, and since it was down the block from the National Portrait Gallery, I finally got the chance. I had a JLT- jamon (Spanish ham), lettuce and tomato on grilled brioche bread with a tasty mayonnaise sauce. The best homemade chips I've ever had came on the side and I added a red sangria for a delicious lunch. 

Lunch at Jaleo

3) Tuesday night I attended a book talk and signing of Jacqueline Winspear's 15th book in her Maisie Dobbs series, The American Agent, at Barnes & Noble on the Upper East Side. I've read all of her books, and this is one of her best in the series. It's set during the London Blitz during WWII, and Maisie and company are back together again. Winspear's talk was very interesting, she spoke about how the character of Maisie came to her at a stoplight during a rainstorm in California, fully formed. 

Jacqueline Winspear at Barnes & Noble

4) The season three finale of This Is Us was on this week, and it was everything you would want it to be. I have been a fan since day one, and seeing into the future of the Pearson family was so heartbreaking and emotional, I can't wait for season four. Everyone associated with this wonderful show is top notch- writers, producers, directors and actors. If you don't watch it, I highly recommend it.

5) Speaking of things that make you emotional, I finished reading Lisa See's newest novel, The Island of Sea Women, about two female divers who lived on Jeju Island, off the coast of Korea. I knew very little about the history of Korea prior to the Korean War, and this takes place between the Japanese occupation of Korea, through the Korean War, and ends up in 2008. It's a stunning novel, and as I read the saddest, most horrifying part, I had to stop myself from sobbing on the train. It's one of the best books of 2019.