Sunday Times Book Review

Meaty stuff, indeed a whole pot roast of interesting reviews in today's NY Times Book Review. I would like to read Milan Kundera's essays as well as The Communist's Daughter, a novel by Dennis Bock. The nonfiction book, The Father of All Things, about a father and son's visit to Viet Nam is high on my list of "to be read." Written by the son, the father becomes the perhaps unlikely hero. A bunch of other good stuff including Tennessee Williams' Notebooks.

Becoming Judy Chicago, A Biography of the Artist, just has to be good. I remember seeing The Dinner Party in Chicago way back when. I went with a friend and we were absolutely blown away by those plates on the tables, plate after fantastic, incredible plate. I saw the exhibit once again and like it even more, and now it will have a permanent home in New York at the Sackler Center in Brooklyn. Hooray! I find this really exciting. If you want to know what the late sixties and seventies were all about, see this exhibit. I'll be taking it in as soon as time and finances allow. Yay, Judy Chicago!

The best seller list is always instructive. James Patterson up the ying yang, some sentimental twaddle, the usual thrillers and Janet Evanovich, who makes me laugh out loud embarrass myself in public. I wouldn't dare read her on a train or plane. She's a nice lady, too, and shares of herself. Ten Days in The Hills by Jane Smiley, also reviewed in the Times, a modern day Decameron, has been panned a lot. Lots of talk, lots of apparently x-rated sex, and no plot to speak of. What was she thinking of? Ya gotta have plot. Miles and miles and miles of plot. Hmmm. I think I could do a whole parody here.

In the letters, someone pointed out that 50's pre-Castro Cuba had been written about and very well in the novel Three Trapped Tigers, (Cabrera Infante)which I enjoyed a lot way back in the 70's when I was a slip of a girl.

High Profile by Robert Parker is on the best seller list and on my nightstand, a coinidence that almost never occurs. I am enjoying it moderately. The very laconic dialogue starts to sound a little weird after 100 pages, and I don't find the ex-wife very sympatische. Oh well.

Nothing of interest on the paperback best seller list but Lisa Scottoline's Dirty Blonde, which I do want to read.

We drove to Cape Cod for lunch today, all the way to Provincetown, or P-town, as it's called locally. The sign on 495 states The Cape and the Islands. Would an outlander find this confusing? Would he know he was heading to Cape Cod and the ferries to Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, the aforementioned "Islands."

P-town in winter is delightful. A brisk windy day that began sunny. We took 6A, the shunpike there and loved driving through the historic little towns with glimpses of water and salt marshes, the closed art galleries and restaurants, the for sale signs, the very gray twisty tree trunks, gnarled by salt and wind, and all the little gray shingled houses, big ones too, the inns and the quaint gift shops. The restaurant we wanted in P-town was closed. Last winter it was open, so we found another and had a scallop role that couldn't be beat and a Caesar salad with homemmade croutons and a soupcon of anchovy. Typical half-straight half-gay crowd, with the gays better dressed. We looked like the typical urban couple on a Sunday outing, which we were. I had hoped to eat some oysters. Well, there's always Legal Seafood, n'est pas?

Friday night at Handel and Haydn about 5 - 10% of women wore tailored blazers. This is something I'm looking at all the time now. Still most laidies wore sweaters. After all, it's New England in the winter, and what could be more appropriate that warm wool? Which was what we wore today, as well.

It's going to be colder than a well-digger's you-know-what this week, so warm wool is required.

Looking in vain for signs of spring,

Grapeshot