Sunday, February 14, 2016

Sunday Salon

It's been a fun week.

Wednesday I had my crime fiction reading group, which involved a lively discussion of Ripley Under Ground by Patricia Highsmith. I am very glad I read The Talented Mr. Ripley before the meeting. Ripley Under Ground works OK as a stand-alone but the better you know Tom the more you get out of it, I think. The instructor, crime writer David Gordon, picked the sequel because he thought most of us would have read Talented and most everyone had.

 I celebrated a birthday this week with a pedicure and a Broadway show- "Fun Home," based on Alison Bechdel's graphic novel about her father's suicide and her relationship with him. My review of the book is here. I enjoyed the show. It was very emotional but we did not have great seats- we were in the orchestra section, which meant the performers had their back to us much of the time. Our section was the only one that didn't give them a standing ovation. What was kind of funny was that my husband and I just finished watching the TV series "Fringe" on Netflix last week, and "Fun Home" starred Michael Cerveris, who was one of the stars of that show. Just a coincidence but it was kind of neat. Anyway he was great and the singing was very entertaining; I just wish we could have heard it better. Oh well!

Then on Saturday night we had a coconut cream cake from one of my favorite bakeries, Amy's Breads.  There were a lot of other things that went on in NYC last week, bookish events I couldn't make because of other commitments, including three events in a row celebrating the release of Muriel Barbery's new novel The Lives of Elves. I do hope to read it soon and was kind of disappointed to have to miss all three events. What can you do, it's busy here.

Today it's freezing cold in NYC and I doubt we'll be going out. We usually don't go out for Valentine's because my birthday is around the same time and somehow the restaurants are not as busy the week before.

Anyway I have exactly nothing big planned this week beyond some time spent with friends. Which actually sounds pretty great.

What are you up to today? Have a great week!

2 comments:

rhapsodyinbooks said...

Happy belated birthday! It's funny about coconut. I think people either love it or hate it. My husband loves it, but it makes me gag, so he doesn't get any unless we go out!

Bryan G. Robinson said...

I made a goal a while ago of reading all the Ripley. I think I've read one so far. Maybe I need to return to my goal here.

Happy belated birthday. Glad you had fun.

We didn't go out here either, but my wife is at the store right now, grabbing a steak for later.

Time with friends sounds wonderful. That's what we have tomorrow, with a rare day off from work for me, for Presidents Day. We're going to the neighbors to play cards.