When Life Gives You Pears by Jeannie Gaffigan

When Life Gives You Pears by Jeannie Gaffigan
Published by Grand Central ISBN 9781538751046
Hardcover, $28, 303 pages

If you're familiar with comedian Jim Gaffigan, you know from his standup routines that he has five children and an amazing wife Jeannie. In addition to parenting their five children Jim and Jeannie write together- his standup comedy specials and books, and they created and produced his sitcom, The Jim Gaffigan Show, based on their family life, that ran for two seasons on TV Land. (You can watch it here- it's fantastic.)

In 2017, while Jeannie had coralled the children to their pediatrician for a visit, the doctor noticed that Jeannie has troubling hearing out of one ear and recommended that she see an ENT doctor. What the doctor found was that Jeannie had a brain tumor the size of a pear.

Jeannie describes what happened next in her memoir When Life Gives You Pears- The Healing Power of Family, Faith, and Funny People. She takes the reader along on her medical journey, through the fears and pain, and yes, because she sees everything though the lens of comedy, the laughter too.

Jeannie Gaffigan is a woman of strong Catholic faith, and she relied on that to help get her through this frightening event. Being the mother of five young children and living in New York City, she is also an extremely organized woman. (Just trying to get the children to their various schools located in all the different corners of Manhattan is a Herculean task.)

And even though the Gaffigans were able to find and afford the best doctors, things can go wrong. After a successful surgery to remove the tumor, Jeannie aspirated and got life-threatening pneumonia in both lungs.

Jeannie's road to recovery would be long and difficult. She and Jim had to rely on neighbors, family, and friends to help care for the children, and for Jeannie when she came home. She takes us through the various nurses, doctors and therapists who helped her get better to get home to her family.

A Shift Schedule was created so that Jeannie wouldn't be alone in the hospital. Her mom flew in to stay with the children. Her many siblings left their own families and jobs to come help out. As the oldest child of nine, Jeannie helped raise some of her siblings and they came to help her in her time of need becasue that's what families do.

I highly recommend When Life Gives You Pears. Jeannie Gaffigan is a terrific writer; her organizational skills, her humor, and her humanity shine through the pages. Most of us will go through some kind of medical episode either ourselves or with someone we love, and we'll be able to relate to Jeannie's journey. I put this one on my annual list of the Most Compelling Books I Read in 2019 (and I read nearly 100), and you should read it in 2020.

The Most Compelling Books of 2019

Reprinted from auburnpub.com

The end of the year means a time of reflection, and for me that means reviewing all of the books that I read and compiling my list of the Most Compelling Books I Read in 2019. They are books that made me think of them long after I finished them, books that affected me deeply. (Click on the title under the book cover for more information.)

I’m not usually drawn to books with a time travel feature, but Lisa Grunwald’s Time After Time utterly captivated me. Set in 1937, a young woman named Nora returns every year on the same day to the place where she was killed in a train accident at Grand Central Station in 1925. When she meets Joe, a railman, they fall in love, but the fact that she disappears complicates things. It is a love letter to Grand Central Station, and a love story for the ages. It asks the question, what would you sacrifice for love? 

Time After Time

Cara Wall's debut novel, The Dearly Beloved tells the story of two young couples. Both husbands are ministers, and share a pastoral appointment to a Greenwich Village church in New York City in the 1960s. One man feels his calling is to support social justice and he is married to a traditional pastor’s wife, while the other man prefers to tend to his own flock, and is married to a woman who has little use for religion. It’s a deeply moving portrait of faith, friendship and marriage. 

The Dearly Beloved

Mary Beth Keane’s third novel, Ask Again, Yes  also tells the story of two intertwined families. Two Irish NYPD officers move their families to a small town in upstate New York. The son of one and the daughter of the other grow close until a tragedy tears the families apart. It follows the families through the years, and it talks of family, love and forgiveness, and the writing is gorgeous. 

Ask Again, Yes

In another story about family and forgiveness, Ann Patchett’s The Dutch House brilliantly tells the story of a brother and sister who lose their mother when she deserts the family, and when their father dies, their stepmother banishes them from the only home they have known. The sibling relationship is moving. 

The Dutch House

Another family drama is J. Ryan Stradal’s The Lager Queen of Minnesota, about two sisters, one of whom inherits their’s father’s land and becomes a hugely successful beer maker, while the other struggles financially. The granddaughter of the less successful sister discovers a talent as a craft beer maker, can it bring the sisters together?

The Lager Queen of Minnesota

Laura Lippman takes us back to 1960s Baltimore in her mystery, Lady in the Lake about a housewife who leaves her family and becomes a reporter for a newspaper. She wants to find out the truth about why a young black woman was murdered and no one seems to care. It’s Lippman’s best book yet. 

Lady in the Lake

Lisa See takes us to world many are unfamiliar with in The Island of Sea Women. On the island of Jeju in South Korea, the women are the breadwinners, diving for fish to sell. Two young girls become friends and See tells their story over the span of their lives. It begins during the Japanese occupation of Korea, through the Korean War, up til 2008. It is harrowing and heartbreaking. 

The Island of Sea Women

Amor Towles’ A Gentleman in Moscow was published in 2016, but I read it this year. In this masterpiece of writing, Towles creates a character of a man under house arrest at a luxury hotel in Moscow for a transgression against the state. He lives his entire existence within the walls of this hotel, and although it should feel small, it feels so big.

A Gentleman in Moscow

A lighter book is Linda Holmes’ Evvie Drake Starts Over about a young widow in small town Maine who takes in a boarder- a major league baseball player who has lost his mojo. It’s a sweet, tender story, and watching their relationship grow is so lovely. 

Evvie Drake Starts Over

I have two nonfiction titles on my list. The first is actress Kate Mulgrew’s How to Forget about the life story of her parents- how they met, fell in love, raised a family and eventually became ill. Her mother suffered from Alzheimer’s and her father had cancer. It’s a realistic look at family, beautiful written. 

How to Forget

Jeannie Gaffigan, mother of five young children married to comedian Jim Gaffigan, finds that she has a brain tumor in When Life Gives You Pears. Her story is scary, and yet she manages to find the humor in her situation. 

When Life Gives You Pears

I hope you read some great books in 2019 and will read many more in 2020.

Friday 5ive- January 10, 2020

Welcome to the Friday 5ive, a weekly blog post about five things that caught my attention during the week. It's back to NYC and work for us this week, so it's been all about catching up- with mail, bills, taking down our Christmas tree and decorations- you know, the fun stuff.

1) Last year, our family all got Peleton bikes- between our family and friends, we have nine bikes! It's fun to ride together and it keeps everyone on their toes (if they are out of the saddle, as it's called.) This year, everyone got Nixplay digital photo frames. Years ago we had a digital photo frame that you had to put a memory card in. The new technology uses WiFi, and the great feature is that you can instantly send a photo to other people's Nixplay. It's fun to see a photo pop up from a family member, and we get so much enjoyment from watching ours and remembering all the good times. We got my mom one for Christmas and I had a blast loading up family photos- it's so easy too, just click on your desired photo on your Iphone and the option to send it to the Nixplay app pops right up. Our extended family now has ten of them. You can find more information at their website here.

A Nixplay photo from our son's wedding

2) A new year means setting new goals, and readers are big on doing that. TaviaReads (the host of the BookClubGirl podcast) on Instagram posted this graphic where people can share their #TBR2020 (To Be Read) goals, and mine is below. So far I have read 5 books, including the first Elena Ferrante Neapolitan series, My Brilliant Friend. I'm off to a good start, I'll keep you posted on my progress. You can go here to get your copy of it on Instagram, just follow the instructions.

3) The royal family of Great Britain is in the news this week, so I guess we may have been prescient when we created a royal family display at the Book Cellar two weeks ago. (Thanks to the people who donated the three beautiful royal family photo books.) Now I have to catch up on The Crown on Netflix, I'm only in the middle of season two.

4) My husband and I are big fans of CBS' Bob (Hearts) Abishola. It's a funny sitcom about a 50 year-old man who owns a family-run compression sock business. When he has a heart attack, his nurse is a younger Nigerian woman, Abishola. Bob (played by Billy Gardell from Mike & Molly) is smitten with Abishola (played by Folake Olowofoyeku, with a fabulous sense of timing and deadpan humor), and she likes him too. Their romance is sweet, and the supporting characters are wonderful, including the amazing Christine Ebersole as Bob's mother, a woman who speaks her mind. In trying times, it's good to have a little lightness. Give it a try, it's on Mondays. 

5) I finished two books this week- Matt Norman's Last Couple Standing, about a group of eight friends from college, who all paired up and married. Now years later, three of the couples are divorced, and Jessica and Mitch are the last couple standing. They fear for their marriage and decide that the best way to avoid divorce is to have sex with other people- with strict rules. You can imagine it doesn't work out quite the way they hoped. I liked Norman's novel, Domestic Violets, and had high hopes for this one that he more than lived up to. It publishes in March, I'll post a full review then. 

I also finished the first book in Elena Ferrante's Neapolitan series, My Brilliant Friend, the first of four books about a lifelong friendship between two women- Lila and Elena, in Naples, Italy. Everyone I know has read this series, so I thought I'd better catch up. It took me along time to get into this book, but about 100 pages in and I was hooked. The characters are indelible and the writing is superb. I hope to finish all four this year. (It's also an HBO series.)

One of the most highly promoted books at the Book Expo this past May was Jeanine Cummins' American Dirt, about a woman who has to leave her native Mexico for the United States with her young son after her family is killed by a drug cartel. Stephen King blurbed that "I defy anyone to read the first seven pages and not finish it" and he nailed it. The first chapter is so harrowing, and 100 pages in and it is heart-pounding and heartbreaking. This book lives up to the hype so far, I can't wait to finish it. It publishes January 21.

Have a good week, I hope your 2020 is off to a great start.

Friday 5ive- The First Friday of 2020

Welcome to the Friday 5ive, a weekly (sort of) blog post where I share five things that caught my attention this week. On this first Friday of 2020, we are in Longboat Key, Florida for a much-needed vacation after the craziness of the holiday season. It seems we just run, run, run from Thanksgiving to Christmas, so it's good to relax in the sun.

1) We started our vacation by visiting a new-to-us restaurant in Sarasota- Caraguilos Italian American in downtown Sarasota. It's a casual Italian, family-owned restaurant and we loved it! The food was fantastic, we had a great bottle of wine, and my dish of Fazoletti & Short Rib Ragu was amazing. The short rib was so tender, and the carrots and mushrooms were cooked to perfection. I can see why it s one of their most popular dishes on the menu. Our server Julie was top-notch, and one of the owners, Rob Caraguilo, came over and we had a nice chat. We'll definitely be coming back for the Buy One Pizza, Get a Second for 31cents night on Tuesdays during the off-season.

Fazoletti & Short Rib Ragu

2) We made a quick stop at the University Mall and saw this Lamborghini at the valet parking- with a baby seat in the passenger seat. That made us laugh.

3) When we were in Italy, we ordered a ceramic table from a craftsman for our lanai in Florida and we finally got to use it this time. It's so cheery and bright and reminds of our fabulous trip to Ravello.

4) We also caught up on some entertainment- we went to an actual movie theater and saw Richard Jewell, which was really good. The performances by Sam Rockwell, Kathy Bates and Paul Walter Hauser as Richard Jewell were fantastic. Richard Jewell is based on the true story of a security guard at the Atlanta Olympics in 1986 who saves many people when a bomb goes off, only to find himself the target of the FBI investigation. 

We also watched Chernobyl on HBO, a miniseries based on the nuclear explosion there in 1986 and the coverup by the Russian government. It's a gripping drama.  

To continue with our theme of based on true events, we watched The Two Popes on Netflix. Jonathan Pryce is outstanding as Pope Francis and Anthony Hopkins is equally terrific as Pope Benedict. You get a real sense of both of these men, I highly recommend it. Both men are talked about as Oscar contenders for their performances. 

5) I got a lot of reading in this week. Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig and Karen Whites's third collaboration, All The Ways We Said Goodbye  (which publishes January 14th) is their best one yet. With three times settings- WWI, WWII and 1964, they seamlessly tell the story of three women and how they are connected through the years and what secrets are revealed through their connection to the Ritz Hotel in Paris. I love that the story contains characters from their two previous collaborations- The Forgotten Room and The Glass Ocean. A complete review will follow soon.

Kiley Reid's debut novel Such a Fun Age is Reese Witherspoon's Hello Sunshine Book Club pick and it's a great choice. It begins with a young black woman who takes the young white girl she babysits for to a grocery store late at night and is accused by a security guard of kidnapping the child. It's a thought-provoking book about race and privilege and class and it's very good. 

Since I went to Italy over the summer, Alexander McCall Smith's My Italian Bulldozer, about a food and wine writer who travels to Tuscany after his girlfriend leaves him, was a good read for me. It's a lovely book and if you have ever visited Tuscany, you'll love it. 

I hope you had a wonderful holiday season and that 2020 holds great things in store for you.

Husband Material by Emily Belden

Husband Material by Emily Belden
Published by Graydon House ISBN 9781525805981
Trade paperback, $15.99, 304 pages

Emily Belden's first novel, Hot Mess, (my review here) appealed to me because it was set in the restaurant world, and my husband and I owned a restaurant at one time. Her interesting characters and sharp writing style (which had lots of clever lines that made me laugh out loud) hooked me right away.

I was pleased to see that she has a new novel, Husband Material. Her new protagonist Charlotte, who works in analytics for a social media influencers company, is hiding something from her roommate and coworkers: Charlotte lost her husband five years ago when he died of a sudden stroke.

Charlotte is working on a new dating app that analyzes a person's social media posts and history to predict if the person is the perfect match. It gives her stats on how likely a second date would be, how likely they would be to marry, and how likely they would be to divorce. She has been trying it out on herself, but to no avail. Her Tinder dates haven't gone any better.

She brings a disastrous first date to her best friend's wedding, a setup by her best friend. He looks like a contestant from The Bachelor, and unfortunately he acts like one too, or as she puts it "he reminds me of a guy who gets sent home on night one of The Bachelor." Charlotte is so appalled by his comments and behavior, she asks him to leave before dinner is served.

When she returns home from the wedding, a package is waiting for her. The mausoleum where her husband Decker's ashes resided burned during a wildfire, and now the urn with his ashes are in her apartment. A letter accompanying the urn states that the company is no longer in business and she may do what she wishes with them.

This throws Charlotte for a loop, and brings back people into her life she hasn't seen since her husband died. Charlotte goes to the home of her former mother-in-law, a wealthy woman who has no love lost for Charlotte since she blames Charlotte for her son's death.

Charlotte also reconnects with her husband's best friend Brian, now a pediatrician. Brian offers to help her find another resting place for Decker's ashes, and then asks her if she'd like to go to a baseball game with him.

Husband Material contains the interesting characters and sharp wit seen in Hot Mess. (I wonder if her next novel's title will be two words beginning with H and M?) Brian's fancy car has air vents that can be customized to release scents like "freshly baked waffles", and Charlotte lamenting that her "aerobic capability caps at power walking to my Ubers before I get charged the late fee" are two examples of her wit.

While it would have been easy to make the mother-in-law strictly a Wicked Witch of the West character, a plot twist near the end shows a different shade. The plot twist is one I didn't see coming, and it certainly throws a interesting curveball.

Emily Belden's second novel Husband Material is even better than her first. I liked that it's not strictly a romance, it's more a story about Charlotte facing her future by dealing with her past. I highly recommend it.

Thanks to Harlequin for inviting me to be a part of their Romance & Women's Fiction blog tour, and providing me with an egalley for an honest review.

The Wicked Redhead by Beatriz Williams

The Wicked Redhead by Beatriz Williams
Published by William Morrow ISBN 9780062660312
Hardcover, $26.99, 406 pages

When we last left Gin Kelly, she had just had a harrowing encounter with her violent stepfather and his gang of Prohibition-violating criminals that left Billy Marshall, the man who loved her, badly beaten in Beatriz Williams' second Wicked City series novel, The Wicked City.

The third novel of the Wicked City series, The Wicked Redhead, picks up in 1924 in the aftermath of the violent event. Gin and Billy's brother Anson, a Prohibition agent who is Gin's lover, have escaped to Cocoa Beach, Florida with Gin's young sister Pasty. They are staying with Anson's friends Simon and Virginia to recuperate.

Although Anson wants to provide a safe life for Gin and Patsy, he is drawn to helping the feds fight the scourge of pirates who are attacking the illegal rum runners, as well as the unlawful liquor distributors filling the waters off the east coast.

Gin is angry that Anson would undertake such a dangerous mission. When Anson and Billy's indominable mother comes to Cocoa Beach, she wants to bring Gin back to Long Island to help her son Billy's recovery. She offers Gin a quid pro quo- if Gin comes backs to New York to help Billy, she will give Gin some information about her family that could change her life.

The scenes between Gin and Mrs. Marshall are the strongest of the book. These two characters are tough, strong ladies. Mrs. Marshall may not be sympathetic, but she loves her seriously injured son and will do anything to help him. As the mother of sons, I understand that.

In 1998, Ella's story also picks up where we left her in The Wicked City. Ella has left her cheating husband and moved into a small apartment where Gin used to live. Ella finds racy vintage photographs of Gin, and wants to know more about this redheaded woman who also has a connection to her great-aunt Julie.

Once again, there is a violent confrontation involving Anson and Gin at the end of their story. There are also a few explicit sex scenes early on in the book, and Williams knows how to raise the pulse of her readers. Williams' leaves readers with more to tell in Gin and Ella's stories, so I'm sure we will see these ladies again in another book.

I enjoy Williams' style of writing, and I found one particular passage enlightening. Gin thinks-

"That's the trouble, isn't it? You never can see yourself from the perspective of someone else. You never do know how you look."

For those who read the Schuyler Sisters novels by Williams, you'll be happy to know that they play a part in this series as well. And I loved that the law firm of Willig, Williams & White is mentioned, a nod to Williams' writing partners authors Lauren Willig and Karen White, whose latest book, All the Ways We Said Goodbye publishes in January.

Fans of Beatriz Williams will enjoy The Wicked Redhead, but I do suggest that you read The Wicked City first in order to fully appreciate the new novel.

Beatriz Williams' website is here.
My review of The Wicked City is here.


Thanks to TLC Tours for putting me on Beatriz Williams' tour. The rest of her stops are here:

Instagram Features

Tuesday, December 10th: Instagram: @owlslittlelibrary

Tuesday, December 10th: Instagram: @jessicamap

Wednesday, December 11th: Instagram: @book.hang.o.ver

Thursday, December 12th: Instagram: @girlwithnoselfie

Friday, December 13th: Instagram: @downtogetthefictionon

Saturday, December 14th: Instagram: @lavieestbooks

Sunday, December 15th: Instagram: @wherethereadergrows

Monday, December 16th: Instagram: @tarheelreader

Tuesday, December 17th: Instagram: @bookishblissandbeauty

Wednesday, December 18th: Instagram: @thephdivabooks

Review Stops

Tuesday, December 10th: The Pages In-Between

Wednesday, December 11th: Jessicamap Reviews

Thursday, December 12th: Instagram: @lauralovestoread

Friday, December 13th: Reading Reality

Friday, December 13th: View from the Birdhouse

Sunday, December 15th: Girl Who Reads

Monday, December 16th: bookchickdi

Tuesday, December 17th: Broken Teepee

Wednesday, December 18th: The Reading Corner For All

Thursday, December 19th: A Chick Who Reads

Friday, December 20th: 100 Pages a Day…Stephanie’s Book Reviews

Monday, December 23rd: Always With a Book

Friday, December 27th: Instagram: @beritaudiokilledthebookmark

Monday, December 30th: Instagram: @babygotbooks13

Tuesday, December 31st: Instagram: @libraryinprogress

Thursday, January 2nd: Instagram: @kraysbookclub

Friday, January 3rd: Iwriteinbooks’s blog

Monday, January 6th: Instagram: @shereadswithcats

The Friday 5ive- Christmas books

Welcome to the Friday 5ive, a weekly blog post about five things that caught my attention during the week.

I know you'll be surprised to know that I have a lovely collection of Christmas books that I display during the holidays. The following are five of them that I think you may like.

1) Many writers have a Christmas book in their collection, and the late Dorothea Benton Frank's The Christmas Pearl is one of the best. It takes place in her beloved Low Country of South Carolina, where 93 year-old Theodora is remembering the the beautiful family Christmas' of her childhood as her bickering family comes home for the holidays. The edition I have has dozens of down-home family recipes at the end. We all miss Dottie.

2) In the historical romance genre, Lauren Willig's The Mischief of the Mistletoe is her Christmas novel from her popular Pink Carnation Series. While teaching at a girls school in Bath, England, Arabella and her friend Reginald find a Christmas pudding with a cryptic message inside that will lead them into a Christmas caper. The cover of this one is so lovely.

3) Mystery writer Mary Higgins Clark writes a series of Christmas books (some with her daughter Carol Higgins Clark), and her Silent Night takes the reader on a New York City adventure as young Brian follows a man who steals his mother's wallet into the subway and this changes the life of the thief and Brian.

4) I adore Mary Poppins, and when I saw this slim volume of Christmas stories, Aunt Sass, by P.L.Travers, I had to have it. Travers wrote these three stories to give as gifts to her friends about three people who influenced her- a Chinese cook, a foul-mouthed ex-jockey, and Aunt Sass, the inspiration for the character of Mary Poppins.

5) Last year the New York Public Library published 100 Christmas Wishes, a beautiful collection of vintage holiday cards that would delight any fan of Christmas.  It's so pretty to thumb through, and I got my copy signed by Rosanne Cash, who wrote the forward.

Do you have a favorite Christmas book? Share it in the Comments section.

Friday 5ive- Christmas Ornaments

Welcome to the Friday 5ive, a weekly blog post where I share five things that caught my attention this week.

It was time to put up the Christmas tree again and I enjoy going through all the ornaments, remembering where I got them and what they mean to me. Here are five that I particularly enjoy.

1) The best ornaments are the ones that our sons made in elementary school. These take front and center position on our tree every year and they always will.

2) One of the most popular shops at The Holiday Market at Bryant Park is the one that sells personalized ornaments. I stop by every year, and three years ago I got this one with all of our names on it. 

3) One of my newest ornaments comes from the New York Public Library Gift Shop. Since I volunteer at the Book Cellar book shop located in the Webster branch of the NYPL, this one is very appropriate.

4) Whenever we travel, I pick up an ornament for our tree. This one is from our trip to Ireland.

5) A family member gave us this Wegmans ornament to remind us of home, and that it does. (Although now there is a Wegmans in Brooklyn I have yet to see.)

Do you have favorite ornaments for your tree? Share them in Comments below.