Friday 5ive- May 1, 2020

Welcome to the Friday 5ive, a blog post about five things that caught my attention this week. Happy May Day to all. I wish it felt like May here, it's been pretty cold all week, but I think tomorrow it may warm up to 60 degrees.

1)  While walking by our neighborhood branch of the New York Public Library (which is also the home to the Book Cellar, the used bookstore where I volunteer), I saw that someone posted a sign that reads "We Miss You." I echo that thought, we sure do miss our library friends.

2)  My new hobby is checking out the books in the background of people being interviewed on TV from their homes. Nonfiction seems to be popular, and a lot of people have Robert Moses' The Power Broker, Doris Kearns Goodwin's Team of Rivals and Ron Chernow's Grant.
My favorite though is Seth Meyers, host of NBC's Late Night.  Meyers always has just a few book stacked behind them, and they are mostly novels. I love that he has always had novelists on his show, most late night talk shows only have writers of political or self-help books. Meyers will change the books from segment to segment during the same show, maybe just to make sure we're paying attention. One night, he had four different editions of Colleen McCullough's The Thorn Birds, one of my all-time favorites. We have similiar tastes in books, and I would love to sit down and discuss books with him. The photos below are from the episode that aired on Thursday, April 30th.

3)  One of our friends stopped by with her two basset hounds, Wilbur and Cindy Lou, so that we could say hello to them through the car window. They were on their way to get the nails clipped. They are such sweet doggies!

4)  I watched My Darling Vivian, a documentary on the life of Johnny Cash's first wife, Vivian Liberto Cash. It was so interesting and heartbreaking too, and it gave us a look at a woman few people know much about. Their four daughters, including musician Roseane Cash, talked about their mom, and her complicated life with Cash. It's on Amazon Prime for a limited time. Don't miss it.

5) I did a lot of reading last, reviewing four books here on the blog, starting with My Summer Villa By Melissa Hill, about three young women who meet at a summer rental in Positano, Italy. (Click on the book titles to see my reviews.)

The Secrets of Love Story Bridge by Phaedra Patrick, is about a widower who saves a young woman after she falls from a bridge, and then gets involved with the woman's family.

Wendy Francis' Best Behavior, is about a soon-to-be empty nester at her twins' college graduation weekend, dealing with her ex-husband and his new young wife.

And my favorite read of the week, Lian Dolan's The Sweeney Sisters, is about three sisters planning a funeral for their father and discovering that there is a fourth sister- their former neighbor.

I hope you all have a good week- stay safe, healthy and home. We'll get through this together.

The Secrets of Love Story Bridge by Phaedra Patrick

The Secrets of Love Story Bridge by Phaedra Patrick
Published by Park Row Books ISBN 9780778309789
Hardcover, $25.99, 336 pages

When we meet Mitchell in Phaedra Patrick's novel, The Secrets of Love Story Bridge, he is at his job cutting off the locks that people have attached to the bridge where he works in Upchester, England. A famous boy band filmed a video for their song "Lock Me Up With Your Love" on that bridge and ever since the song became a hit, people have been attaching locks with messages of love on them to the bridge.

The locks could weigh down the bridge and cause problems so Mitchell and another man spend their days cutting them off. One day, Mitchell spots a lovely woman accidentally fall off the bridge after attaching a lock and he jumps off the bridge to rescue her.

Mitchell becomes famous when a reporter writes a story about his rescue. He is perplexed by the attention, as he is a private person.  A widower,  he lives with his 10 year-old daughter Poppy in a small apartment. His wife Anita died three years prior.

Mitchell feels guilt about Anita's death. Trained as an architect, he worked long hours for a firm in a town far away designing the Upchester bridge. This kept him away from his wife and daughter, but he felt it was a sacrifice he had to make to advance his career and build a future for his family.

After his wife died, he quit his job to take the bridge maintenance one with steady hours so he can care for his daughter. Mitchell doesn't have many friends, and doesn't realize how lonely he is until he meets Liza, Poppy's music teacher.

It turns out that the woman he rescued from the bridge is Liza's sister Yvette, who had disappeared a month before the fall. Mitchell wants to help Liza and her family find Yvette. He feels like he couldn't save his wife, but maybe he can save Liza's family.

Phaedra Patrick writes lonely people so well. Her previous novel, The Library of Lost and Found, is about a woman who works in a library, but doesn't have much of a life outside that. Patrick creates such empathy for these characters, and I particularly like how she writes children. Poppy is a realistic depiction of a 10 year-old, not a smart-aleck or worldly beyond her years. I also like that the main character of the story is a man.

Patrick clearly believes in family, not only the family we belong to but also the one we create ourselves. The Secrets of Love Story Bridge is a sweet story, with enough of a mystery to keep our attention. Fans of Elizabeth Berg's The Story of Arthur Truluv would enjoy. I recommend it.

My review of The Library of Lost and Found is here.

Thanks for Harlequin for putting me on Phaedra Patrick's tour.

Friday 5ive- April 24, 2020

Welcome to the Friday 5ive, a weekly blog post about five things that caught my attention during the week. In my quest to work on a small project a day, today's task was finding a place for a set of golf clubs and a new golf push cart. In a small NYC apartment that was a challenge, but hey, I have a lot of time on my hands, right?


1)  Even though the weather has been colder than usual for April, we do have signs of spring. We took a walk on Sunday and found some welcome sights of lovely flowers to brighten our day.

2)  The only place I go to on a regular basis is the laundry room in our building. I go at 6:45am and I'm the only there. Items that have been found in the machines are tacked up on a bulletin board. This week I saw this tacked up on there and have to wonder if the person who lost their "Here Comes The Madness" underwear will ever claim it. It's been a week and so far no takers. At least it give us all a well-needed chuckle.  

3) We are all starved for live musical entertainment so it was great to watch a concert that was filmed in January before we all had to social distance from each other. CBS televised Let's Go Grazy: A Grammy Salute to Prince and it was fantastic. They had great performances from  H.E.R and Gary Clark Jr. (Let's Go Crazy), Sheila E (The Glamorous Life), Beck (Raspberry Beret), Princess, featuring Maya Rudolph, (Delirious) and the great Mavis Staples with the Revolution (Purple Rain). The best concert I ever saw was Prince during his Purple Rain tour, and who can forget his Super Bowl concert when he played in the pouring rain? If you missed it, the link is here. Be prepared to dance. 

4) I'm missing getting to attend book signings and hearing authors talk about their books, and this week I watched two Facebook Lives with Adriana Trigiani talking to Erik Larson about his Winston Churchill book, The Splendid and the Vile, and Colum McCann speaking about his novel Apeirogon, about two fathers, one Israeli and one Palestinian, who each lost a daughter. Both discussions were so fascinating and made me immediately go online to a local indie bookseller to order both books. If you like smart, interesting conversations about a wide range of topics, go to Adriana Trigiani's Facebook page here and watch them. Erik Larson here, and Colum McCann here. 

5) I read three books this week. Melissa Hill's The Summer Villa, about three young women who meet when they share a vacation villa in Positano, Italy. It will take you away and there were a few interesting twists that I didn't see coming. I enjoy being surprised. My full review posts Monday. 

The Secrets of Love Story Bridge is a wonderful novel by Phaedra Patrick about a lonely young widower with a 10 year-old daughter who rescues a woman who fell off a bridge. When the woman disappears after that, he becomes involved with the family in trying to help find her. I enjoyed Patrick's The Library of Lost and Found, and this one was just as good. She writes lonely people so well. My full review publishes next Wednesday. 

I also read an early review copy of Curtis Sittenfeld's novel Rodham, which poses the question what if Hillary Rodham never married Bill Clinton? It's an intriguing concept, and I liked the last half of the story better than the first. Sittenfeld also wrote American Wife, which was a fictionalized account of the life of a woman very similiar to Laura Bush. I'm curious to know why Sittenfeld didn't use a fictional character to represent Hillary Clinton, as she did with Laura Bush. You have to remember that this is fiction, not nonfiction, although she weaves in many factual events into the book in a clever manner. My full review will post soon.

I hope you all stay safe, stay healthy and stay home.