Birmingham Botanical Gardens

This is a must see when visiting Birmingham--after visiting the civil rights sights, to take in a bit of peacefulness as an annecdote to all the racial hatred that is embedded in the city's past. In 1961, after years of trying and failing to make his dream a reality, Birmingham Mayor James W. Morgan finally came to an agreement with the Park and Recreation Board establishing the Botanical Gardens. The city constructed the gardens on 69 acres of Lane Park, just east of the Birmingham City Zoo, on the south side of Red Mountain. The mayor wanted Birmingham’s Botanical Gardens to be the largest of its kind in the Southeast.

The gardens are open year round and they are free of charge. There is a beautiful conservatory that is adjacent to the rose garden--the roses are aromatic, and one of the volunteers noted that while roses are being wiped out by pests across the southeast, they are remarkably healthy here. There are numerous paths, and lots of benches and gazebos to sit and take in the beautiful surroundings. Highly recommended.

Our Migrant Souls by Hector Tobar

This is a complicated story of Latin immigration to the United States--mostly to places that less than 200 years ago were part of Mexico--and being shunned and denigrated in places that historically speaking, the shunners are historically immigrants and those that are shunned are more native to the land. That is the crux of the matter, something that American Indians have understood and experienced for 500 years. Adding in to the conversation, the author uses his own family and their immigrant experience to bring some of his theses alive. Many of the conversations about Hispanics in America, especially those told in the media, suffer from a combination of myopia and monotony. They focus on predictable topics—perilous immigration experiences, cartels, poverty—and fail to grapple with the variety of Latino experience. This is not that book. Instead the author attempts in a way to remedy this. Part memoir and part polemic, the book tries to answer a rather panoramic question: What is the Latino experience in America like? At his best, Tobar offers a lyrical portrayal that captures the lives of many Hispanics. This is concise, approachable, and well worth reading.

Friendsgiving

Back in our younger days, when our kids were small, we went to a friend Thanksgiving, usually the weekend beofre the actual holiday, that was kind of a blowout affair. The meal was a pot luck, the host had an impressive wine cellar, and it was the sort of debauchery that you wouldn't want your kids to witness. As we got a bit older, the chenanigans ebbed, the wine got even better (the host had a bottle from each of our birth years, for example), and it was a welcome time to catch up with each other and to enjoy the traditional meal with the family that you choose. As out kids got older, they wanted a friends Thanksgiving, so we would have family of Thursday and that Sunday, when everyone who had gone out of town to celebrate, we had a massive do-over meal with our local friends and their families, often spread all over out first floor with furniture moved aside and lots of tables snaking through the rooms. Then the kids left home, and their friends as well as some of ours, moved on, and we were down to one traditional meal--but this year, the original host of our original friends Thanksgiving threw another one, for old time's sake, and it made we wonder why we ever gave it up! Happy holidays to all.

Cocoon by Zhang Yueran

This is a slow moving moody book that I am not sure I got everything about it. I saw on my nephew's reading list and decided to read it. The book is written by a young Chinese author and it reflects on the history of China in the second half of the 20th century, and so in that way is maybe a window into how that might be viewed or thought of by those who did not live through it, but whose parents and grandparents would have. Li Jiaqi and Cheng Gong grew up in very dysfunctional families and this is a main theme of the book. The book opens with the two childhood friends reuniting in their 20s, and is told from their alternate perspectives, chapters seesawing between the accounts told by each, as they tell the story of growing up from their perspectives, filling in gaps in each other’s knowledge to the point where it was hard to keep the two stories straight, they were so similar and overlapping. At the center of the story is how does the lack of a respectable father, a respected mother, loving grandparents and aunts and uncles, affect a child and how does that shape their lives as young adults. Their two stories lead each other and the reader towards the truth of a crime that occurred in their family before their time. It shows how targeting one man at that time triggered the cycle of dysfunction and destruction that shaped families for generations. The author does this not only through the actions of the various characters and the inability of any family member to escape this cycle, but also through the gloomy, pessimistic atmosphere that pervades the book. It is a hard read, but maybe one that can shed some inside light upon what is happening for people in modern China.

Hayward Oubre

I saw this exhibit this fall at the Birmingham Art Museum--which is free to the public--and really loved it. Oubre is best known for his work with an everyday material—wire coat hangers—which he used to create modernist masterworks. While living in Alabama and North Carolina, he made art in his vanguard style. These artworks fuse his lived experience, wide-ranging interests, and art historical influences in compositions that range from realism to pure abstraction.

Oubre shaped art in the United States not only as an innovative artist, but also as a distinguished educator at two prominent Historically Black Colleges and Universities. He served as the first chair of the art department at Alabama State University (ASU) in Montgomery, from 1949 to 1965. After leaving ASU, Oubre established the art department at Winston-Salem State University (WSSU) in North Carolina, building on the legacy he established at ASU. When he retired in 1981, he had taught and created art for more than forty years, educating generations of Black artists.

Shanghailanders by Juli Min

This is a series of linked stories about Leo Yang and his family that in the end sum up to a novel. The time is 2040 and neither China nor America come off looking like they have advanced in the near future. The opening story has Leo has just dropped his wife, Eko, and two older daughters, Yumi and Yoko, at the airport and is returning home on a high-speed train to teenage Kiko, the baby of the family. The older girls are returning to boarding school and college in Boston--but all is not as it seems. The girls have each gotten into their own hot water that has consequences that are more a product of where they happened than that they are deeply troubling. The stories hint at things that are revealed in later stories, including additional characters, and there is a sense of sadness and foreboding that pervades the book, but also a feeling of not wanting it to be over, that there must be more to know about this time and these people. Delayed answers to questions create a sense of unfolding and revealing that balances the disappointment one might feel about leaving the latest versions of the Yang's, and their interesting problems, behind. It is an oddly atmospheric book, but then Shanghai has that complexity as well.

Love, Guaranteed (2020)

This is part of my solo travel movie binging that was almost 100% light hearted romantic comedies. I read a review that characterized it as sufficiently bland and calmy cozy, and I would agree with that characterization. Susan is a plucky and uptight attorney with a strong sense of justice who works tirelessly for the little guy--she makes almost no money and often works pro bono. She loves her work but she is barely making it, as her underpaid office staff frequently point out. Strapped for cash, she agrees to take a case with the handsome and charming Nick, whom she initially clashes with, naturally. Nick has come to their office because he wants to file a lawsuit against an online dating company called – you guessed it – Love, Guaranteed. He says he's gone on 986 dates without having found love and wants to sue for fraud. This is the part that should have scared her--he has copious documentation related to each of these failed dates, but no, that is that part that makes her feel like they might actually have a case. The target of the lawsuit is the website's wealthy owner, a woman who feigns enlightenment and says "namaste" a lot but misquotes Buddha--very unlikable, in other words. The movie wends its way to its predictable end in a very inoffensive way, and I would recommend it for the sort of night where you con't want to think too much, which is me post-election.

The Summer Before The War by Helen Simonson

Yes, this is yet another book set in the lead up to WWI set in England. While WWII was devastating to almost all of Europe, England included, it was WWI that shook the British class system to it's core, and which led to the ultimate toppling of the British Empire world wide. While this was inevitable, they did not see it that way, and so books about England on the brink of that war abound. The book got off to a slow start for me, but I did enjoy it and reflecting back on it, I see that some of what I found uncharming about it was in fact the point. The heroine of the story is a charming young woman named Beatrice Nash, who arrives in the seaside town of Rye to serve as Latin teacher to the village's children. She enjoyed what she saw as an idyllic life being all things to her scholarly father--she was his secretary, his travel agent, his companion, and his intellectual equal--all of which ill prepared her to deal with her circumstances after his death. He father, who trusted her with everything in life, chose to tie her hands with a restrictive trust in death, and she is forced to earn her keep and finds herself constrained as all women were in the early 20th century. Beatrice soon falls in with a well-connected local family, the Kents. At the helm is Agatha Kent, who is subtly working to improve women's lot in life, her husband John, who is involved in national security, and her two nephews, one a poet and the other a doctor. The story invites us to look at all the ways that money and title tilted the table at the time, and how it was all going to change both in the short run and the long.

Domestique Coffee, Birmingham, Alabama

We went to a wedding in Birmingham and had a great time in the neighborhood that the hotel was in. This was the third wedding the family had hosted in their home town, and they had learned from their previous adventures. The hotel was very comfortable, but the neighborhood was hip and fun, with a lot of shops within a few blocks and a safe place to walk around. There were several coffee shops to choose from, but this was our favorite. The coffee is excellent, they have very good croissants that they heat up for you if you so desire (which is my favorite--the butter comes to life with a little heat, and that is after all the reason to eat croissants, you might as well get full enjoyment), and best of all, it is a shared space. The coffee shop is in the front and in the back is a bike shop--this is a large space with high ceilings--plenty of room for both, but the coffee shop space--which includes indoor and outdoor seating--is very nice and welcoming.

Just For The Summer by Abby Jimenez

I do not read much in the romantic genre, but I put this on my library hold list when it appeared as a recommendation in The Week as a good beach read--of course all of those four books took so long for me to wait for them that it was no longer beach season by the time I was able to check any of them out, but there are many opportunities for light reading to hit the spot. I found this entirely predictable, which is consistent with the genre, and none-the-less enjoyable. The premise is that Justin is the lucky rabbit foot for women who date him--after they break up with him, which happens pretty rapidly, the next person they date is their soul mate. Occasionally it is a friend of his, so his ex's are still around even, grateful and happy while he is vowing not to date again. Matters are complicated by his otherwise seemingly normal mother being on the brink of a long jail term after being convicted of embezzling a seemingly small amount of money she repaid, and he is going to be the guardian for his three younger siblings. Not exactly the stuff of romance. In comes Emily, who says that she too has the same curse as he, and they agree to date each other so that the next person they each date will be their dream come true. Emily has a lot of her own baggage, and it all conspires to break them up--or does it?

The Noel Diary (2022)

Still on my light and not altogether good romantic comedy adventure while traveling for work across southern Minnesota. Jake Turner is a damaged but likable and successful bestselling author who lives alone and is estranged from his parents. When he gets a call out of the blue that his estranged mother has passed away, he travels back to his childhood home to clean it out. One day while there, Rachel shows up at his door asking about someone who she believes to be her mother used to live in the house with his parents. She was there at the critical moment when Jake's older brother fell from a tree in the yard and died when Jake was four. She was also alone and pregnant with Rachel and Jake's parents took her in and let her live with them until she gave birth, and then gave her baby up for adoption. Thanks to the memories of helpful neighbor Ellie, Jake and Rachel discover that the person she's seeking was Jake's nanny and Rachel's biological mother. The discovery sends Jake and Rachel on a road trip to reconnect with Jake's father and to try to find out more information about Rachel's mother. The trip will force Jake and Rachel both outside their comfort zones in confronting their past and while this has all the elements of a romance, there is also a lot of grief, and the mixture is a good one, because the holidays always have a mixture of each.

You Are Here by David Nicholls

This is at core a romance novel, but it is genre breaking because you cannot tell where it will land until midway through the novel, and even then you cannot quite see how it will work out. When I think about it, this is my very favorite sort of romantic comedy, one that is smart, the people seem real, like you might know someone who is similar, and it is not all 100% predictable. Michael, 42, a bearded geography teacher from York, is walking 200 miles across Britain in order not to think about his recent divorce. His concerned friend Cleo gathers a small party to accompany him for the first few days, including her old friend Marnie, 38, a copy editor, also divorced, living in Herne Hill. Marnie’s friends have all married and moved out of London. Cleo wants to be a matchmaker, but she has a big fail at the outset when both of the potential matches for one of them bows out of the Coast-to-Coast hike (which has been oft described as a pretty rugged ramble--not impossible, but also nota walk in the park), as does Cleo's spouse. Bright, bookish Marnie therefore initially pursues the handsome Conrad, who isn’t very smart and doesn’t like books, but loves Formula One, overlooking Michael altogether. What follows, told in alternating narratives by Marnie and Michael, involves witty conversation, weather, overnight stops, mild drunken escapades and tugged heartstrings. There are a series of unfortunate events along the way, but it is an enjoyable walk overall, and it goes to show, you just never know.

Rodney Scott's Whole Hog BBQ, Birmingham, Alabama

We were once again in Birmingham for a joyous occasion--a wedding of the daughter of some of our oldest friends, people we have celebrated many a joyous occasion with over the years. The groom's dinner was hosted at this restaurant, which was a block from the hotel where most of the out of town guests were staying, so the location was spectacular.

My spouse was so excited to try this and so disappointed by the food. We have Rodney Scott's BBQ cookbook, and I really love the potato salad recipe in it. I have been making potato salad for almost 50 years, so have had a series of different recipes over that time, but this one is my current favorite. Here is what the problem was--the meat just didn't have much smoke in the flavor. There is always an issue with a buffet in a place where the food is not necessarily prepared for that delivery--but BBQ meat can be served at any temperature, and it should be great. This was not. The fries were amazing and so was the cole slaw (I like that recipe in his book as well)--but the cornbread was dry, the salad had a number of issues, and overall, we would not go back.

Memory Piece by Lisa Ko

I read this because it was on Obama's 2024 Summer Reading list, and I often love the books that he recommends, but not so with this one. It follows three friends, Giselle Chin, Jackie Ong, and Ellen Ng, through sixty years of their lives as they try to figure out what it means to create art, to care, and to make a difference. In the early 1980s, Giselle Chin, Jackie Ong, and Ellen Ng are three teenagers drawn together by their shared sense of alienation and desire for something different. By the time they are adults, their dreams are murkier. As a performance artist, Giselle must navigate an elite social world she never conceived of. As a coder thrilled by the internet’s early egalitarian promise, Jackie must contend with its more sinister shift toward monetization and surveillance. And as a community activist, Ellen confronts the increasing gentrification and policing overwhelming her New York City neighborhood. Over time their friendship matures and changes, their definitions of success become complicated, and their sense of what matters evolves. The shape shifting that occurs at the end of the story in 2040 is where the book lost me--it is an imagined future that is very bleak--wand may be exactly what is in store for us, but it was a bit much for me. I am not one to read post-apocalypse stories of any kind, and while this was not so much that, it wasn't my cup of tea either.

Lonely Planet (2024)

This is yet another low level romantic comedy (which means a movie that was never meant for theatrical release, doesn't have an adequate script, and something that my family would complan vociferously if I tried to watch it at home) that I watched in a fall that was full of work related travel with a lot of alone time (BTW, I love alone time, but by the time I was able to spend two weeks in a row at home I was all over the alone time and ready to re-enter home life and all that entailed). The vibe has been that I have liked movies less than audiences have liked them, but this one was panned in quite a few venues and I found it diverting. Katherine (Laura Dern) is a writer on a fancy writers’ retreat in Morocco. She arrives at the retreat, which is at a palatial resort in the country with gorgeous views, beautiful architecture, but poor upkeep and lots of things that don't work. She doesn't notice because she has just been kicked out of her home and her relationship and she has writer's block so cannot finish her latest novel, which is overdue. Meanwhile, the other writers also begin to arrive, including Lil, a bright-eyed youngster who is fresh off the critical and commercial success of her debut novel, elated but deeply insecure about her place in the literary world and she’s somewhat inexplicably brought along her boyfriend Owen (Liam Hemsworth), a finance guy who really isn’t much of a reader. Well, guess what? Lily pays no attention to Owen, who is also not much of a traveler. He is bored out of his mind--and then he is also both pushed aside and berated for doing some business related to an unfinished deal that was in the works before he left--so bad to worse, and he starts to cast about for things to see and do, and Katherine always seems to be a source of both witty reparte as well as solace. The whole thing blows up--some volatile ingredients at work--but I enjoyed the ride--as well as the gorgeous scenery.

Fatty Fatty Boom Boom by Rabia Chaudry

I feel a bit robbed--I got this out as an audiobook from the search terms "food memoir", which it totally is in one sense of the word, but no one looking for a food memoir exclusively would have been happy about this as an example. This is a memoir about Rabia Chaudry's life, both in and out of Pakistan, and food is very important to her, so there is an awful lot of descriptions of traditional Pakistani food as well as a few lessons on the various cultures that make up the country's fabric. It opens with how she became a plus sized adult--her family returned to Pakistan for their first visit since moving to the United States, two-year-old Rabia was more than just a pudgy toddler. Dada Abu, her fit and sprightly grandfather, attempted to pick her up but had to put her straight back down, demanding of Chaudry’s mother: “What have you done to her?” The answer was two full bottles of half-and-half per day, frozen butter sticks to gnaw on, and lots and lots of American processed foods. The saga continues in this vein--it is at once a love letter (with recipes) to fresh roti, chaat, chicken biryani, ghee, pakoras, shorba, parathay, and an often hilarious dissection of life in a Muslim immigrant family, Fatty Fatty Boom Boom is also a searingly honest portrait of a woman grappling with a body that gets the job done but that refuses to meet the expectations of others. Her tale of how she tries to reverse that is filled with myths and legends and all the wrong ways to go about it, but throughout it rings true. It is also entertaining and vulnerable and while it was not what I was looking for, I enjoyed it.

Hazelwood Food and Drink, Bloomington, Minnesota

Let me preface this by saying that when you are near either the Minneapolis airport or the Mall of America, you are not handed a lot of cute charming places to eat out. If you compound that by the fact that malls in general make me a little claustrophobic and dizzy (not a great combination to be sure), and so avoiding a place that requires you to traverse the biggest mall in the Midwest, your choices are even more limited. So I really enjoyed my meal here. I ate with someone who I really like and who I rarely see, and it was a good place to catch up and linger over the meal--we considered some ethnic food options, but that would have been harder to accomplish, and so not a consideration for everyone, but a plus for this place. I had the Minute Chicken (pictured here), which is a panko, herb, and aged parmesan crusted breast, served with angel hair pasta, wild mushrooms, shallots, capers, in a lemon butter sauce, and it was very good--simply prepared, enormous portion, and not so messy that you couldn't eat and talk. They have a nice cocktail menu, and I started there, and I would definitely come back if I was in the neighborhood again.

Ten Birds That Changed The World by Stephen Moss

The premise is that birds have, in various ways, led to “paradigm shifts” in human history. Had it not been for the Wild Turkey, for instance, the first Pilgrims to America, the English ones, would not, possibly, have survived, he says. And pigeons, with their uncanny homing instincts, have played heroic outsized roles in various of our human wars, including the First World War, where a bird named Cher Ami, shot and wounded in the chest, with the loss of the right leg and the sight in one eye, nevertheless made it home, and was credited with saving the lives of 194 Yanks – the “Lost Battalion.” The book is a grab-bag of facts about the ten birds, mostly culled from other works--do nothing earth shattering, but enjoyably stitched together. In his first chapter, on the Raven, Moss is an enthusiastic borrower from Bernd Heinrich’s classic The Mind of the Raven, and in chapter ten (about which more below) a good deal is sourced from a 2022 book, The Bald Eagle, by Jack E. Davis. The thing that is mostly left out is that man has irreparably altered avian life--mostly to their detriment, but that is for another book.

Love At First Sight (2023)

I spent most of six weeks on the road by myself for work and watched a string of romantic comedies that the rest of my family would blanch at watching, they are so formulaic and often badly written. This does fall into both of those pitfalls, and yet, in the end, I was glad that I watched it. There is so little of this, the understandable connection that people can make with each other when they are unexpectedly found sitting together for an enforced period of time--in this case, on a transatlantic flight--and then for whatever reason walk away, never to meet again. And to regret that they didn't do something to change that outcome. We first see Hadley racing through JFK Airport in New York to catch a plane to London. It is December 20, the peak of holiday travel, with over 193,000 passengers arriving and departing, causing an average of 23-minute delays at check-in and a peak wait time of 117 minutes at security. This explains why Hadley misses her plane by four minutes and has to wait for the next one when the only seat available is business class. It does give her time to look for a place to charge her cell phone, and that’s how she meets Oliver, who is studying, yes, statistics and data science at Yale. THey part ways, Hadley to attend her father's wedding and he to attend a party for his mother, and they do manage to cross paths, they find out that their lives are indeed more complex than they first appeared, and they have a chance to decide what to do about that.

Hard By A Great Forest by Leo Vardiashvili

Today is Veteran's Day in the United States, where veterans are honored on the anniversary of the Armistice that ended WWI. It was the Great War, the War To End All Wars. It was not a great war, or even the worst war, and it did not end all wars, but a lot of people died needlessly and it is worth remembering that. This is a pretty harrowing book that depicts a lot of aspects of war that are hard to picture and get a handle on without these stories to guide us. There are events in the book that are based on history: The Georgian Civil War of 1991-1993 and the Russo-Georgian War of 2008. Even the absurdly comedic opening scenes, where the book’s hero arrives back in Tbilisi, a home he fled as a child, to find the city flooded and populated by roaming exotic wild animals. This serves to pinpoint the book’s first events to June 2015, when a flood actually did free most of the population of the Tbilisi Zoo, leading to pandemonium in the city. The rest of this is a story, but one that is inhabited with believable and mostly likable people. When Saba and his older brother, Sandro, came to London as children with their father, Irakli, in 1992, their mother had to stay behind in Georgia, where she died. Years later, Irakli returns to Georgia and two months later writes his sons, now young men, that he’s gone to the mountains and they should not look for him. Sandro flies to Georgia anyway, emailing Saba that he’s found a trail to Irakli. Then Sandro’s emails stop, so Saba, an insurance salesman, also heads to Georgia. Saba is obsessed with finding Sandro and Irakli but also obsessed with the past. Although he hires a guide, the beguiling taxi driver Nodar, he also follows a host of voices from dead relatives and friends offering advice and grievances. As he continually eludes the shadowy police authorities tracking him, his pursuit becomes an increasingly desperate cat-and-mouse mystery--the tension rises and it feels like the reader is just as caught up in it as Saba. An edge of your seat sort of read.

Automatic, Birmingham, Alabama

If you are in Birmingham for any reason and need to have lunch, I would recommend this restaurant. It is located in the building in the Lakeview neighborhood in cool old building that was once an automatic sprinkler facotry--the rennovation of the space is upscale, but leaves the shell of the old factory intact--it was a beautiful fall day when we ate there and we took advantage of an extensive outdoor patio to eat, because we come from northern climes and the days we have to eat outside are indeed numbered. The chef is Adam Evans, who won a James Beard Best Southern Chef Award in 2022, which seems well deserved based on my one visit. The menu is repleat with seafood that largely comes from the Gulf of Mexico, prepared in a straight-forwad, unfussy style that enhances the fresh flavors and doesn't mask the underlying quality of the ocean's bounty. My husband requires fresh oysters when on a coast and this met tht requirement very nicely, with a couple of good accompaniments. They claim to have some relationships with local fishermen who keep them supplied on a regular basis with whole fish that they can then do with as they please, ocean to restaurant without setting fin in a market, and it shows in the food.

Up a Road Slowly by Irene Hunt

I bought this as a second hand book at the library in South Pomfret, Vermont--which is quintessentially Vermont, in that it is a very cool building, it had books for sale scattered outside, inside in the lobby, at the top on the basement stairs and then all through the basement (which, it being a funky house of a certain age, was surprisingly dry and intact). I used to passionately browse through used books stores and find gems to bring home--now I have shelves that groan with decades of this behavior and at the same time so much is available electronically--and easily--that my drive to do so has waned somewhat, but every so often I make a discovery that makes me think again about easing up on that endeavor. This book won the Newberry Medal in 1967 and it really is a reflection on that rapidly changing time, when young women could look towards doing something for themselves, not simply serving the needs of others, not being a family's answer to whatever problem they might have that required a warm body to see it through, to be able to be smart, educated, and independent. It is a story of a young girl growing up, falling in love, and getting ready to go to college in the 1960's and I read it at a time when it appears that quite a few men want to go back to a time when they had control over women and children. You can see the attraction--for them--no matter what goes on in the outside world, they have a place to be a dictator. The Handmaids Tale come to life. That is the crux of the gulf in America, that there are people who want no part of that and there are others who want a white supremacist patriarchy to prevail. They call it Christian, but it isn't--Jesus is too woke for them, they are more aligned with Old Testament hell and damnation. There really is no bridging that divide, you are either for or against it and there is no middle ground to be had any more. This story is told at just the time when there is an awakening power for those who wanted to change the way things had always been, and this is a beautiful look back at what seems like a long time ago, and yet where some would have us return to. This is well worth seeking out.

Find Me Falling (2023)

I have been traveling almost non-stop these days and one of the many things I like to do when I am alone in a hotel room is to watch movies that the rest of my family would not care for--which includes movies like this and more broadly, silly romantic comedies this improbable situations and outcomes that require the suspension of belief. This is also a good example of a flawed IMDB rating. This is a pretty so-so movie that has a higher than expected audience rating (and I say that as someone with a weakness ofr this sort of fare). The setting is Cyprus, which is gorgeous--one up side of the movie is that a visit to the long-inhabited island moved up from a 'maybe' to a 'definite' on my "Must Visit" list of countries. The scenery as well as the window into the culture, which is both ancient and complicated, are the best part of the movie.Harry Connick Jr. is a bit of a wooden actor, but he plays an aging rock star who has returned to Cyprus at a point when his career has stalled and he is pulled back to a place when he last found love. He isn't quite ready to heal, and on top of that he finds some surprises that he left behind, and while people are wary of what his motives are, it all more or less works out.

Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood

This book was long listed for the 2024 Booker Prize, which is how it came to my attention, and reading reviews it seems that the author is known for her succinct prose and for telling a story that is familiar, but told in a new and different way. That characterizes my reaction to this book, which is the 7th book of the long list that I have read--it is not my favorite to date, but it is well worth reading. The story grapples with climate change and what can one man (or woman, in this case) do? What are we going to do about global heating, about mass extinction, about our rivers? What ability do we have to change things when politicians and corporations do the opposite of nothing, they make it worse? The narrator of Stone Yard Devotional, who has been working in species conservation, chooses to chuck it all. She leaves her life and marriage in Sydney and checks into a religious sanctuary. She initially sticks her head in the sand, but eventually she joins in with the life of the convent – preparing food, cleaning, turning up to mass and the hours of office. There’s no great conversion moment, no sense of redemption, just women getting on with things. It is enough different from the usual response, in a novel or in real life, that it is worth consideration.

Heathers, Minneapolis, Minnesota

I was in (and have been in) Minneapolis for work, and the silver lining for that has been that I have been able to dine with some co-workers who I rarely get to see in real life. So the upside is huge, and it is less important exactly where wwe eat, but this was such a charming place it would have been fun to eat at even if I was by myself. The inside space is ecclectic and cool, with limited seating and would definitely recommend reservations for that. There is an ourside patio that is enormous and there were fleece blankets available to stave off the chill--later in the season they have heaters as well, but the night we were there I was just under dressed, but was quite confortable with the blanket. I had the Cuban sandwich with a side salad--I was tempted by the description of it which included: Roast Pork Loin, Ham, Gruyere,Pickled Onions, Pickled Jalepeno Peppers, Green Chilis, Sweet Mustard Sauce, on a French Roll--all the components that you would hope for and oh my, it was delicious. The pork was perfect, and all the accoutrements made it an excellent version of this classic sandwich. The bonus was that it was enormous, and I had the other half for lunch the next day. I accompanied it with a very nice white sangria and was very happy. My dining companion had the Teryaki Salmon Bowl, which included Edamame, Pickled Onions, Peppers and Onions, Avocado, Rice and Broccoli, which looked great as well. The source for the delicious pork in the Cuban is where they get their bacon, which I suspect is also delicious, and they do source locally, which I always appreciate--especially when you can taste the difference.

Enlightenment by Sarah Perry

The plot for this combines astronomy and a 19th-century mystery to propel a deeply thoughtful plot forward. Thomas Hart, a 50-year-old columnist for the Essex Chronicle in the small English town of Aldleigh and a dedicated star gazer, makes furtive trips to London for secret trists, even though he belongs to a Strict and Particular Baptist sect that basically forbids it. He might well have left his small town behind years ago except for his devotion to Grace Macaulay. Much like him, 17-year-old Grace also finds herself torn between her religion and her desires when she falls in love with Nathan, a local boy not a member of her church. Meanwhile, Thomas becomes intrigued by some letters found during the renovation of decrepit Lowlands House—and by James Bower, the handsome museum employee who calls them to his attention. The letters were written by Maria Văduva, who lived at Lowlands but vanished mysteriously sometime around 1887. An assignment to write about the Hale-Bopp comet passing overhead leads Thomas to figure out that Maria was an astronomer who may have made an important discovery, and Grace’s chance encounter with an enigmatic homeless man supplies an important missing piece of Maria’s puzzle. As they pursue a series of expertly dropped clues about Maria’s intent and ultimate fate, things go a bit asunder for the two, and while we have a pretty good idea about Maria, it is less clear where things will land between the two of them. This was longlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize and as is true of many in that category, it is thoughtful, sensitive, and beautifully written.

Paper Crane, Iowa City, Iowa

Wow, wow, wow. There is just so much to love about this newly opened dining experience in Iowa City. First and foremost, I love the owners. They opened The Webster just as COVID was being tamed by a vaccine, which was both very brave and a much needed injection of excellence into the Iowa City dining scene. I love everything about their first restaurant--the small plates, the pastas, and the mains, all designed to share in a place that feels like a celebration each and every timne I walk in. This place is both different and lovely to behold, and it benefits from their attention to detail--the decor is lush, it immediately creates an atmosphere, but this one is more casual, more fun, but no less beautiful. The most important thing for me, though, is the food, and they knock that out of the park--days after my first meal I am dwelling on the dishes I had and thinking "Is it woo soon to go back?" and "I don't think it is possible to get enough of it". It is that good. There are two separate spaces with two different menus. You might have to do one of each. The ramen shop is spectacular--the ramen is perfect, both the broth and the noodles. Second to none. But on top of that there are small bites, meal options for someone who doesn't want ramen but wants to eat with you, and for me, the ability to have a good salad is such a plus. Then there is the cocktail lounge with its Japanese Izakaya cuisine--do not miss the grilled squid! You cannot take anything from one to the other, so you do have to choose, but the whole experience is fresh and fun and delicious, and the change is welcome--do not miss trying it all out and hope to see you there!

Wild Houses by Colin Barrett

I had a three 2024 Booker Prize long list nominee vacation over Labor Day and this was one of them. It did not make it to the shortlist, but as is so often the case for me, I am glad that I read it, I would not have been likely to find this one on my own, and I often like some of the long list more than those that make the cut to the short list. This is a short and ruthless story--apparently the author's first full length novel, and maybe it's sparseness is a result of a story teller who does so succinctly. What happens is that Donal's brother Cillian falls in with some drug smugglers to make a bit of cash on the side, and gets into trouble when his stash is below the water line and it literally dissolves away. To pressure him into paying them back, Gabe and Sketch Ferdia, kidnap Donal and stash him in a gigantic loner's house. The Feria's are thuggish, unpredictable, prone to sudden bursts of rage and violence, and yet capable of tenderness and camaraderie between themselves. The story alternates between what is happening to Donal with the slow realization of his family as to what has become of him, leading up to a dramatic finale.

His Three Daughters (2023)

This is a bit of a departure from my usual solo travel work movie watching fare--it is a serious movie about a serious--and universal00life experience of having a parent die. True, some dodge it, but that is usually a tragedy of a different sort. The movie opens in a New York City apartment where we meet we meet Katie (Carrie Coon), Christina (Elizabeth Olsen) and Rachel (Natasha Lyonne). The scene is painful to watch and yet as the movie rolls out over the next hour and a half, it also is a scene that doesn’t really capture who they are. Yes, they are sisters and daughters (and two are mothers). But in the days leading up to their father’s death, they’re reminded of the complexity of human emotion, behavior, and understanding. There is a lot that the daughters do not agree upon, and are left to grapple with as their father dwindles away, and it is a microcosm of the things that happen all too often for families that leave a lot unsaid and for whom there are misunderstandings, resentments, tensions, piled on top of the challenges of everyday life. When you don't communicate, you don't communicate and grappling with death does not make it any better. The script is pitch perfect, and while it was painful to watch, it felt very real. Grief tears down what we think of ourselves. It’s cruel. It’s harsh. It’s inevitable. It shatters the walls we put up around our personalities that so often reduce us to easy descriptions like sister, daughter, and mother, and none of that helps to get through to the place you need to get to move on.

Noise by Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, and Cass Sunstein

This is a book that takes a deep dive into unconscious bias, and tries on a number of different levels to point it out, and to help the reader to see that no one escapes this one, we all succumb to it to a greater or lesser extent, and the trick is to constantly be on the look out for it and to try to counterbalance it. This scattergun variability in judgments of all kinds, from court sentencing to insurance underwriting to medical diagnosis, is what the authors call, well, noise. Like its more famous cousin, bias, noise is an error in judgment. The authors distinguish between the two using a shooting-range metaphor. If all the shots land systematically off-target in the same direction, that’s bias; by contrast, noise is all over the place. Some of the shots might even be on target, because the issue here is not missing the target but a lack of consistency. Given the same facts, one criminal gets life and another who is equally guilty gets off. Which brings us to the other significant distinction between bias and noise: to detect bias, you have to know what the right answer is, or to use the book’s metaphor, you have to be standing at the front of the target, so you can see the bullseye. Noise requires no such particulars. It is detectable no matter which side of the target you’re standing on, since all you need to know is whether or not there is variability. One insurance company executive estimated the annual cost of noise in underwriting in the hundreds of millions of dollars. And you should want to detect noise, the authors argue, because it is not only unfair, it can be hugely costly--in money, in opportunity, and in human capital.