I’m late to my laptop this morning.
Blame it on this:
I read it on the bus to NYC yesterday. I read it on the way home. I read it in bed last night. And I read it this morning. I’m getting very close to the end. But, as with all good books, I don’t want to race through the final pages. I want to savor them.
Because I know the final pages will be unputdownable (my new word) and I also know that it will be another year until a new Jack Reacher adventure arrives in the bookstores.
Tom Cruise? What were they thinking??? Don’t answer. I already know. They were thinking box office.
I got into Manhattan a little early yesterday and I had to walk from the bus station to East 59th Street, which took me up expensive Fifth Avenue, past Bergdorf Goodman and Tiffany and the Plaza. Along the way, I stopped at Barnes & Noble because who can resist a bookstore? Not me. I saw many books I wanted, but didn’t bite. Except for one: Broken Monsters by Lauren Beukes. I read about it last year and tried to get a review copy but I was too late, it had already been published. It takes place in Detroit, which always draws me in because it’s my hometown. While browsing in the Mystery Section yesterday, I remembered the book and tried to find it, but I wasn’t sure of the author’s last name or even the title. I figured I’d see the last name and find it that way. No go. I finally resorted to signing on to NetGalley on my phone so that I could find the rejected request for an advanced reader copy. Ah, Beukes! As sometimes happens, it wasn’t under mystery but it was under literature.
Like I need another book on my To Be Read pile.
Anyway, it was a lovely day and I was on the edge of Central Park, but had no time to explore it. People were everywhere, as you can imagine, and I find I am always amazed at how many wealthy people there are in this part of Manhattan. You can see it in the clothes they wear, in the way they carry themselves. And there are many, many wealthy tourists. Where does all that money come from?
And then there’s me, in jeans and sneakers, wearing a sweater and a funky jacket that’s more than twenty years old. More like twenty-five.
My coaching session lasted twice as long as I had planned and was a difficult one, and I was hungry and dehydrated when I left the theater but, you guessed it, I had to walk about 25 blocks back to the bus station in order to grab the next scheduled bus, so I grabbed something to go and ate it on the bus. New York is lovely, or can be, but I’m usually racing through it on my way to and from some point in the city.
We have about a gazillion leaves to rake over the next few days. They are everywhere. Did I mention I don’t like raking leaves? When you’ve got as many trees as we do, it loses whatever appeal it has very quickly. And we don’t even tackle the back forty.
New post up on Just Let Me Finish This Page with some links for your reading pleasure.
Don’s CD is back in stock at CD Baby. You can either click here or travel over to my sidebar and click there.
Happy Wednesday.
Hi Claudia. Sorry your coaching was longer and more difficult than you anticipated. At least it was a pretty day and not freezing cold!! Thought of you as I bought Mallomars the other day. They’re back!!! Also, have started “The Girl on the Train” but I don’t think I’ll continue as I really don’t like any of the characters so far. I rarely feel this way, but (to me) they are just so pathetic and that makes the book very difficult to read. There are so many books out there that I want to devour, why waste my time on something so unappealing (again…to me…I know many have liked the book).
That has been my suspicion about the book, Vera. Since it’s been compared to Gone Girl, a book that has the same problem with unlikeable characters, I’ve held off reading it. I asked one of the guys at Mysterious Bookshop about it last winter and he said the same thing – that the hype was all about its similarity to Gone Girl. That immediately puts it off my reading list.
I keep thinking that one day I will get to NYC as it’s on the bucket list. I enjoyed the Jack Reacher book and it was hard to put down. I always hate when I finish it that I have to wait another year for more of this amazing character and yes I agree … Tom Cruise? Anyway, glad you had a chance to stop in the bookstore! It’s beautiful here today and I’m getting out to run some errands and then work on a new project…not a doll house but something fun for me!!
Linda
Have fun with your new project, Linda!
I’m glad you had the opportunity to hit up a bookstore. I will get to Jack Reacher one of these days…hopefully sooner than later. It’s been really windy this October…lots of falling leaves. Our street trees….they are honey locusts, are already bare. But, our birch and maples are turning nicely, and hanging on. All this to say…no raking yet, thank goodness! Enjoy your day! ;)
Our maples are shedding and the catalpa shed all of its leaves in one day – the day after the first frost. That happens every year with the catalpa. Catalpa leaves are huge, so you can imagine that raking them will be a big job!
After we rake, we put them out by the curb for city pick-up. What do you do….are you allowed to burn them? Or do you drag them into the back forty to join the others? We were out for a drive the other day…and noticed in the distance lots of small fires…and there’s this wonderful aroma in the air from burning leaves. It’s one of the nice parts of fall around here. ;)
Burning depends on how dry it is – and we don’t burn at all because we have too many trees around. Too dicey. We rake them on a tarp and put them in the woods and on the edge of the woods.
Hi Claudia. I just finished Make Me. Not my favorite. It was kind of gruesome. But generally. I love that series. Also I like John Sanford’s Lucas Davenport book. They’re about a zillion of those.
Well, they’re all violent, don’t you think? That’s the nature of the series…a guy who wants to solve things peacefully but has to resort to violence.
I wish the leaves here turn to nice autumnal colors. The weather is so weird here that my decorative pear (non-fruiting) didn’t lose its leaves until January or February this year, and I could see buds already beginning to form. It budded out only a couple of weeks later. Must not be good for the tree …not enough of a dormant period.
Probably not. Strange things happen when weather tend toward the extreme – as we’re all seeing now.
Claudia, my husband and I ask ourselves all the time, “where did all these “rich” people come from? All the homes being built now in MN are McMansions! We just don’t get it! We live in the same 1000 sq ft home for the last 40 years; reared and educated 3 children. Cozy, simple, and frugal are not new words to us.
Am I sounding like an old person? Yeah, I am.
I suppose I am sounding the same way – my mind boggles at that sort of thing.
My daughter once said that we should have a bumper sticker that says “We Brake For Bookstores”.
Perhaps the tourists visiting NYC thought they’d better dress smartly for the big city and bought new clothes before their visit. I bet all of them secretly have at least one pair of holey socks at home.
They probably do, but there was an elegance about many of them that told me they had money and were used to the perks of having money. Although some people are elegant in anything they wear, wealth or no wealth!
And – if I could jump in here – MANY rich people can’t look or carry themselves elegantly at all – no matter how much $$ they spend on their “look.”
Just call me a disgruntled member of the 99% – LOL.
Well said Janet! :)
xo, Janet!
When I lived in San Diego, I would go up to LaJolla to visit the cove in “off hours”. I loved listening to the waves and seals. I always thought of the wealthy people on the streets there as “plastic people”. So many of them look, talk, and walk the same; there doesn’t seem to be real emotion.
I read Make Me and enjoyed it. I’m thinking about getting Kate Morton’s new one The Lake House. I’ve read three of hers and enjoyed them.
Ah yes. I spent some free time in LaJolla when I lived in SD, as well. It’s so lovely there.
Even here in the midwest I marvel at the money so many young families seem to have. Some we know, and are aware of their jobs, so it is even more mysterious as to how they afford the big new cars, a boat, riding toys for the Littles, and a huge house. My fear is they are “financing” all of it. That is a scary thought, but I can’t understand how else they do it.
We washed windows today after our flu shots. Good to get those arms moving so they don’t stiffen up!! ? Not my favorite thing to do, but so glad they are done.
Hubs goes over the leaves every few days w/ the lawn tractor and sucks them up and then we put them on the curb for the village to take away as Donnamae said.
So glad you got to stop at the bookstore on your journey yesterday!! I think I could go past a cupcake shop/bakery easier than a bookstore. Well, unless I found a book and wanted to sit down w/ a treat…… then I’d have to back-track!!
Thank goodness I was in a hurry and not hungry when I got there. On 42nd street, there’s a Crumbs (cupcake) bakery and a Five Guys in the same block!
The leaves are beautiful here … I love driving through a tunnel of trees with the sun shining through as golden light. As for the yard, I don’t have many trees and usually don’t do much leaf maintenance, but this year I plan to run the lawn tractor over them and blow them to the edges of the yard, into the woods, so they don’t lie under the snow and kill the grass all winter. Good luck with the removal operation, and remember to jump in the pile once in a while!
I didn’t jump, but I sure did a heck of a lot of raking!
We are starting to rake here also. I chuckled about your comment on the Trump tower picture. Doris
It says everything, doesn’t it, Doris?
In real life, at senior age, I’m a very plain person. I wear shapeless, sleeveless shifts and Crocs. But in my other life…a fantasy life (a vision of my younger, more fashionable self)…I’m mesmerized by haute couture and I closely follow fashion which, in these days, is found mostly in photo images of celebs (models, actresses, singers) on the red carpet, charity events; film premieres; and fashion weeks in London, New York, Paris, Milan and, recently, Shanghai. I don’t sew although I wish I could but am drawn to gorgeous fabrics and embellishments, sparkle and color. When you described Fifth Avenue, Tiffany’s, Bergdorf’s and Central Park…with all the wealthy people…it really hit home with me how little I truly know about any of this stuff nor can I imagine looking at racks of ready-to-wear with prices still in the multi thousands (although it might be fun, just once, to go there and pretend!). I worked for wealthy ranchers in the early 1980s and one of their equally-wealthy investors had a husband who did a lot of business in the Middle East, which is where she’d lived with him for a time and also bought a lot of pricey gold jewelry from the area, which she enjoyed wearing (and she wore it well, never looking cheap or gaudy). I remember that when, back at home on the East Coast, she’d shop on Fifth Avenue, she’d leave her personal jewelry at home for fear of it being ripped right off her neck. I guess at the time, there must have been a rash of bold thievery amid all that wealth you witnessed on the street.
I think it’s kinda cool that you get to live between two worlds, Claudia! The excitement of the city is one thing…but it must feel so good to get home to your lovely cottage in the country. Soon enough, raking leaves will give way to inactivity/snow…except for those long trips into the city when I think you will need more than jeans to keep you warm! Speaking of, because I’m weather-obsessed here in SoCalif., we’re at 92 degrees approaching 4:00 pm, with no speck of Fall/Autumn in terms of feel or look except for it being ever-so-slightly cooler in the deep of night. I actually slept with a light blanket for the first time in ages which felt pretty darn good at 5am earlier today.
All the years I was growing up, going into the city (of Los Angeles) from the burbs was all about visiting family who remained there. We never had enough time to do anything else; go anywhere else. There was always the round-trip time of four to five hours of commute just to get there and back. As a result, I only had sporadic forays into L.A. and this has somewhat remained the case. In school, there’d be the occasional field trip to The Music Center (Chandler Pavilion, Ahmanson Theater, Mark Taper Forum) or one of the museums, like LACMA. In young adult years, we’d motor down for a concert at the Universal Amphitheater or The Hollywood Bowl. It wasn’t until I was nearly age 40 that I had occasion to actually stay in L.A. for a few days when my husband attended a convention at the Bonaventure Hotel. While he was at booths and meetings all day, I’d walk the shoes off my feet and one of the most beneficial things I did was pay for a group/walking tour by a historical society (a conservancy?) of downtown L.A. architecture, such as the 19th century/Italianate Bradbury Building. I remember going into a place that was once a men’s shoe store and the exterior glass is all incredible, authentic Lalique/art deco. So great that it was saved when other notable L.A. buildings were razed over the decades. I often say to my husband, once he’s truly retired, that we’re going to book a hotel in Los Angeles for a week at a time and finally be tourists. There’s so much to see and do in America’s great cities!
Neat idea to stay in Los Angeles and really allow yourselves to explore it!