Life: It Goes On - August 24

Happy Sunday! It's a beautiful day in Omaha today - the sun is shining, it's only 65 degrees, and the windows are open. Yesterday I harvested a giant bowl of cherry tomatoes...to go along with the giant bowl that is already on my counter. This week's menu will definitely be cherry tomato focused, and I'm okay with that. Our other tomatoes? Not doing much so the Big Guy has gone off to the farmer's market to find a couple of tomatoes that will work for BLTs and an egg dish I want to try. 

Last Week I: 

Listened To: Isabelle Allende's Ripper still. Almost half way through and we are still meeting new characters that we're getting a lot of background on. Please let all of the start coming together in a way that ties back to what I thought the book was about. 

Watched: Only Murders In The Building, the last episode of season 2 of Shrinking, football and the kickoff of the college volleyball season with our Huskers (ranked #1) defeating Pittsburgh (ranked #3). This season is going to be so much fun! 

Read: I finished Geraldine Brooks' Memorial Days and it's one of those books that I was said to finish. Today I'm headed over to the library to pick up Ruth Ware's latest, The Woman In Suite 11 and Clare Leslie Hall's Broken Country. 

Made: Lots of salads this week and last night I made caprese lasagna roll ups, which I'm excited to say we'll have for leftovers today. 

Enjoyed: I have a four-day weekend and it's been so nice to just leisurely work on things that need to get done but also have plenty of time to relax, read, and even take a couple of naps. Best yet is knowing that I don't have to go to work tomorrow so I can fully enjoy Sunday! 

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This Week I’m:  

Planning: Trying to put together a couple of long weekend trips, since we haven't gone anywhere all summer. 

Thinking About: What a small world it is. Last night we went to a new-to-us place for a glass of wine. The place was empty so we struck up a conversation with the bartender, who told us that he used to live in Alaska. Of course, we said that's where our kids lived; and, of course, he asked where in Alaska they live. I told him the town and then started to tell him where that was in relation to Anchorage, but he cut me off exclaiming, "That's where I lived!" What are the chances?

Feeling: Rested and happy to know that I've reached the point with my PTO that I'm going to have to schedule more of these long weekends to make sure that I don't reach the point where I max out on PTO. 

Looking forward to: Another long weekend this coming weekend, although I know that BG will try to fill up all three days with activities. 

Question of the week: Next weekend marks the unofficial start of autumn. Are you looking forward to fall, or are you like me and wish that summer could hold on for a few more weeks?

Life: It Goes On - August 17

Happy Sunday! I'm finally getting to this, just before I go to bed. Made a quick trip to Kansas City (left here at 10 a.m. yesterday and got back at 11 a.m. this morning) and came home with a headache that has had me mostly just sitting all day. Am I getting too old to make a quick trip to K.C.?! Last Week I: 

Listened To: I finished Kim Michele Richardson's The Book Woman's Daughter and started Isabelle Allende's Ripper. Three hours in and I feel like we're mostly just getting to know characters. 

Watched: The main reason I went to K.C. was so that Miss H and I could go see Freakier Friday together. Freaky Friday is one of those movies the two of us have watched dozens of times and always quote so I'm glad we got to see the follow up together. Verdict: we both liked it and laughed a lot. Does it live up to the original? No, but almost nothing does. It tries a little too hard and tries to do a bit too much. But almost everyone from the original is in it and there are a lot of fun throwbacks in it, including the band playing the song from the Battle of the Bands in the first movie. And there are a couple of Easter eggs in it that we both loved. Two thumbs up from us. 

Read: I started Geraldine Brooks' Memorial Days, which I had forgotten was a memoir about her grief process after losing her husband. 

Made: Monster cookies and onion dip to take down to have with my girl. 

Enjoyed: Dinner with friends Friday night at one of our fave places and time with my girl with just the two of us. Big Guy had a "gig" with his old band so couldn't come. Sometimes it's fun to just have girl time!

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This Week I’m:  

Planning: I'm hosting book club Tuesday (yeah, it wasn't last week, it's this week) and we're going to be watching a movie based on a book. So I'm planning which movie to watch and what to serve. 

Thinking About: Family genealogy. I'm on a kick now to get all of my previously notes organized and put into a readable format. Then I'm looking forward to filling in the blanks. 

Feeling: Still tired, still a dull headache so I'm feeling ready to crawl into bed. 

Looking forward to: Seeing my friends on Tuesday and a four-day weekend next weekend that I have to take so I don't max out on earning PTO. 

Question of the week: Have you ever looked into your family history? If so, how far back have you been able to track your family? Thanks to my mom and BG's mom's side of the family, we already have most of the work done to track our family back to Europe on all sides; my job is to track it on his dad's side. 

The Art Forger by B. A. Shapiro

 

The Art Forger by B. A Shapiro 

Read by Xe Sands

10 hours

Published October 2012 by Algonquin Books

Publisher's Summary: 

On March 18, 1990, thirteen works of art today worth over $500 million were stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. It remains the largest unsolved art heist in history, and Claire Roth, a struggling young artist, is about to discover that there's more to this crime than meets the eye. 

Making a living reproducing famous artworks for a popular online retailer and desperate to improve her situation, Claire is lured into a Faustian bargain with Aiden Markel, a powerful gallery owner. She agrees to forge a painting-a Degas masterpiece stolen from the Gardner Museum-in exchange for a one-woman show in his renowned gallery. But when that very same long-missing Degas painting is delivered to Claire's studio, she begins to suspect that it may itself be a forgery. 

Her desperate search for the truth leads Claire into a labyrinth of deceit where secrets hidden since the late nineteenth century may be the only evidence that can now save her life.

My Thoughts:

Claire Roth is a woman who feels that she has been done wrong by the art world. She's not wrong, which we'll gradually learn. But she uses this as an excuse for agreeing to forge a copy of one of the pieces of art that was stolen, solely on the basis that the man who hires her insists that he will give the original back to the museum once the copy is sold to a shady character who doesn't deserve to have the original. In exchange for that, Claire will get to have her chance to finally become the artist she might have been if she had not been so blinded by her love of a man many years ago. 

So she agrees and almost immediately falls in love with Aiden. Despite the fact that he's clearly involved with criminals. Despite the fact that his love of the artwork he owns prevents him from being willing to part with any of it, even when he admits to having financial problems. But he's promised her that he's made sure that she can never be implicated, going so far as to say to her that the painting that he's brought her to copy is, in fact, a copy itself, thereby making her simply someone who is copying a copy. That's all she knows about the deal; the rest is secret. But that's since she's keeping a secret of her own that will come into play later. What could possibly go wrong in a relationship built on secrets? 

Here are the things that I had issues with in this book: 

1. Claire being so gullible a second time. 
2. The interspersed chapters that are letters from Isabella Stewart Gardner which never come to light for the characters in the book. They are merely a way to set up a revel late in the book. 
3. Claire volunteers at a youth prison, teaching art. The point of this storyline appears to be to show us that Claire is, deep down, a good person who is terrified of being locked up. It also explains why she becomes convinced that the painting Aiden has brought her is a forger itself. Seemed to me all of this could have been done in a way that didn't introduce yet another storyline into a story that already had enough going on. 

Here are the things that I enjoyed about the book: 

1. Xe Sands reading of the book. 
2. For some reason, the theft of the paintings from the Stewart Gardner museum has always fascinated me, so I enjoyed reading about the museum and the theft. 
3. Learning about the techniques that Claire and other artists use. 
4. I did like all of the twists and turns the book took and the way only Claire could have solved the mystery of where the original work was hidden. 

Would I read another of Shapiro's work, despite having issues with it? I would - it was a quick read that I found entertaining enough and it looks like I'd get a chance to learn more about the art world if I read more by her. 

 

Washington Black on Hulu

Based on the book by Eli Edugyan, Washington Black (my review here)has been adapted into a mini-series which began airing on Hulu on July 23rd. I loved this book when I read it six years ago so you can imagine how thrilled I was to find that it was being adapted, especially considering that Edugyan is a co-producer and actor Sterling K. Brown is an executive producer and acts in it. 

Reviews are mixed. Variety says it falls short of the book, but whoever writes for RogerEbert.com was very impressed. I'm only one episode in and I'm enjoying it so far. In this episode, we're introduced to Wash in his life in Nova Scotia, with flashbacks to him as a child living on a plantation in Barbados. I'm not sure the horror of the plantation is as great here as it was in the book; we'll see if that aspect picks up as the show continues. The acting, so far, is good and the costumes and sets are wonderful. 

Since I didn't let the Big Guy in on the first episode, I'm going to have to watch the rest of the series without him or watch the first episode again. I think I prefer the first, giving me the chance just to immerse myself in the story without interruptions. I'll give you an update once I'm finished watching so let you know my final thoughts. In the meantime, if you haven't already read the book, I highly recommend it.