Life: It Goes On - November 6

Hope you have all enjoyed another wonderfully warm and sunny fall week. Did those of you with kids all survive Halloween? There's a part of me that misses getting to craft costumes but the getting them into them, makeup and all, multiple times then schlepping them around the neighborhood I don't miss. You know what else I miss? Ghosts, and vampires, and all of the other kinds of costumes kids used to put on for Halloween. I don't even recognize what a lot of the kids are dressed as any more. Guess I'm turning into "that" grumpy old lady!

This Week I'm:

Listening To: NW still; I'm about two-thirds of the way through it now and enjoying it much more. Knocked out a couple of podcasts during workouts and on our trip I introduced The Big Guy to "Hamilton."

Watching: Baseball, football, and The Voice. The Cubs win made a lot of people in my family very happy so that made us happy.

Reading: Hoping to finish Fingersmith in the next day or so; not much reading time lately. Next up, for book club, is Lauren Groff's Fates and Furies.

Making: I froze three quarts of homemade tomato soup, two quarts of apple slices, five containers of apple butter and 1 quart of applesauce. I'm fired up to get some more soups made and frozen for the winter - love looking into my freezer and seeing so many things ready quick, delicious meals.

Planning: On doing a purge and sort of paperwork. Because, somehow the title to Mini-me's car has vanished from the file where we keep "very important papers" and he needs to get his car licensed in his new state. I can't tell you how little I'm looking forward to sorting through every single piece of paper in the house to find where it got filed by accident.

Thinking About: My bed. Two nights in a bed that's not ours, that's only a double, and two five hour drives in three days has me tired.

Enjoying: The weekend with family, getting to meet The Princess, have some of our favorite pizza, and enjoy a couple hours at one of my brother's and his wife's favorite vineyards (which blessed us with a magnificent sunset as we left).

Feeling: In love! I'm officially nicknaming my new great-niece The Princess because that little lady can bring a roomful of adults to a standstill to coo and ah over her. Miss H repeatedly threatened to tuck The Princess into her purse and bring her home (which gives me hope that Miss H might yet reconsider her statement that she is never going to have kids).

Looking forward to: A quiet week. Because that's how this introvert recharges her batteries.

Question of the week: I'm still looking for book club ideas for next year. What was the book you read this year that most made you want to talk about it with other people?

Five On Friday

It's November, it's Friday and it's in the upper 70's in Nebraska. Pretty damn excited about that! Here's what else I'm excited about (this is what happens when you haven't finished a book in more than a week and don't have any reviews to post!):

ONE

Baby Evie! We are planning on heading south when Miss H gets off work to meet the latest member of our family. I may have bought her a Husker outfit with a tutu! No pictures of her yet until I get her mom's and dad's permission to do so. After that, all bets are off.

TWO

The Serial Reader app. I'm breaking it in with a play, short stuff. But you can read Anna Karenina, if you're willing to take six months to read it. This app is great for people who "don't read" - surely everyone can find 7-10 minutes a day for reading!

THREE

I've used up all 20 lbs of the apples The Big Guy brought home last week, except a few we left out for eating. We've had fried apples a couple of times but most of them are now in the freezer in various incarnations. I'd feel like Martha Stewart but they aren't in pretty containers with cute labels and raffia bows. Although, everything is labeled. Because isn't is weird that once you put a container of something in the freezer, it no longer looks like anything you can recognize?

FOUR

New trainers for my birthday. I never paid a lot for walking shoes or trainers and spent years thinking all walking shoes were heavy or uncomfortable. I'm not blaming that for my big butt, but it didn't help. A couple of years ago, I spent some money on a good pair of shoes and, more importantly, time to find shoes that really fit my feet. Ta-da! I finally understood what it meant to have a spring in your step. Then I wore them down on the inside but the outside was still in great shape so I didn't think I could justify new shoes. What was I waiting for! I'm ready to conquer the gym again!

FIVE

The end of the baseball season. Don't get me wrong, I like baseball. But when the post-season hits, it's a battle between Miss H and BG every game as to who gets to have the big television. And I didn't really care who won (although I'm glad that so many of my family members are happy with the outcome) and I'm tired of hearing about how this series was "historic." Oops, didn't mean to end on a grumpy note. Sorry about that! 

What are you excited about this week?

Nonfiction November - My Year In Nonfiction

Finally! The kick in the butt I need to pull out some nonfiction reads. It's not like I don't enjoy nonfiction but for some reason, I just don't seem to pull it out when I've got the chance to read whatever I want. I may just drag this thing into December once I get going because talking about my year in nonfiction won't take long at this point. Which is a disappointment.

I have read nine nonfiction books so far this year, which puts me just two books away from my original goal of 11-14. I'd much prefer to be at the high end of that or beyond by year end.

The bigger problem is that I've not been overly impressed with a lot of the books I've read. So far, I've only got three on my top books of the year: Finding Fontainebleau by Thad Carhart, How To Be A Woman by Caitlin Moran and Behind The Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo.

So, what to read to end the year on a high note, nonfiction-wise? First, I'll pull Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project off my nightstand and finish that. I might also try to get to her Happier At Home. Then I'll check out what's on my Nook. I'm thinking it's time to read another memoir, perhaps Mary Karr's Lit or Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Maybe a sports book - I'm thinking The System: The Glory and Scandal of Big-Time College Football. Or something historical like The Worst Hard Times: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dustbowl. Maybe something that will really grab me like Anne Perry and The Murder of The Century. I've got a book club book to read yet this month, a book for a review, and the plays for my Classics Club spin so I'm not sure how many more books I'll get read this month.

What was your favorite nonfiction read this year? Maybe that's the one I should be reading!

West of Sunset by Stewart O'Nan

West of Sunset by Stewart O'Nan
Published January 2015 by Penguin Publishing Group
Audio: Blackstone Audio
Narrator: Christopher Lane

Publisher's Summary:
In 1937 F. Scott Fitzgerald was a troubled, uncertain man whose literary success was long over. In poor health, with his wife consigned to a mental asylum and his finances in ruins, he struggled to make a new start as a screenwriter in Hollywood. By December of 1940, he would be dead of a heart attack.

Those last three years of Fitzgerald’s life, often obscured by the legend of his earlier Jazz Age glamour, are the focus of Stewart O’Nan’s gorgeously and gracefully written novel. With flashbacks to key moments from Fitzgerald’s past, the story follows him as he arrives on the MGM lot, falls in love with brassy gossip columnist Sheilah Graham, begins work on The Last Tycoon, and tries to maintain a semblance of family life with the absent Zelda and daughter Scottie.

Fitzgerald’s orbit of literary fame and the golden age of Hollywood is brought vividly to life through the novel’s romantic cast of characters, from Dorothy Parker and Ernest Hemingway to Humphrey Bogart.

My Thoughts:
Dorothy Parker once said of Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, "They did both look as though they had just stepped out of the sun; their youth was striking. Everyone wanted to meet him."

By 1937, though, not so much. Zelda's fragile mental health was a constant concern and Scott's books were out of vogue. No longer the golden boy, Scott was suddenly just like every other hack trying to make a living in Tinseltown. Albeit, one who had some pretty famous friends, including Ernest Hemingway, Marlene Dietrich, Humphrey Bogart and his wife Mayo Methel, and Dorothy Parker and her husband Alan Campbell.

Top: Sheilah Graham, Garden of Allah, Ernest Hemingway and Scott
Middle: Scott, Zelda and Scottie, Scott and Zelda, Scott and Scottie
Bottom: Hemingway and Marlene Dietrich, Mayo Methel and Humphrey Bogart, Alan Campbell and Dorothy Parker

There was so much to enjoy about West of Sunset. O'Nan is quickly becoming a favorite of mine and I'll definitely be pulling something else of his off the shelves soon. There's nothing fancy about his prose; he just "gets" what it takes to survive life's struggles.

Christopher Lane's narration was wonderful (my only little problem with it was his English woman's voice for Sheilah). I really wished I wasn't listening to it on disc so that I could have listened outside of my car; his tone and cadence are marvelous. I'll certainly be looking for more of his work.

O'Nan balances the glitz and glamour of life in Hollywood with Scott's daily efforts to fix terrible scripts, deal with flaky executives and the whims of the studios, and do right by the wife he is no longer in love with and the daughter he adores. Much of it comes from Fitzgerald's own letters and O'Nan did his best to work around the facts as they're known. Constraints like those can really hamper an author but O'Nan does a masterful job of getting into Fitzgerald's head and creating dialogue. And in creating empathy for man of whom it would have been easy to think "well, he got what he deserved after living the way he had lived."

Those paid reviewers had mixed opinions about this book when it came out last year. Maybe if I'd read it, it might have been easier to see who those who were less than impressed were seeing. I certainly didn't hear it. This one's going on my list of favorite audiobooks for the year.