What I'm Reading/Scattered Thoughts

This is a novel about an isolated lighthouse post on an island near Australia in 1910. The couple tries unsuccessfully to have children. Then one day a boat with a dead man and a live baby washes up on shore. They don't report it, but rather keep the baby as their own. Then when they get their once every two years shore leave they find out that the baby has a family. So that's all I know.

Old Business: I loved Gone Girl. It's a trashy page-turner full of twists and turns and everything you'd want in a summer book. Very light, very entertaining, never saw the plot twists coming. This is her third book and I'd definitely go back and read her other two.

Summer produce: There are certain fruits and vegetables I feel neutral about -- strawberries, cantaloupe, tomatoes... I'll eat them, but not with any relish or fervor. The other night when I ate the strawberries, I realized that for nine months out of the year, we're eating crappy strawberries and good ripe berries is season are delicious.

Same with cantaloupe. I'm used to the hard, near-flavorless light orange cubes that we get most of the year. When I was in Oshkosh, I had summer ripe cantaloupe and my taste buds did a double take. I was eating from fruit salad for breakfast, speared a cube of cantaloupe and went Wow. I forgot how good and sweet and soft cantaloupe is.

I remember my father used to eat it, and my mother taught me that you shake a cantaloupe to see if it's ripe and you should be able to hear the seeds rattle. I enjoyed cutting the cantaloupe in half and scraping out the seeds for my father. In those days, it was only in season.

Then, of course, the tomatoes. I read recently that the same genes (or whatever) that are factored in to give them better transportability also actually do detract from the taste. One of my favorite smells is that warm summer sun earthy tomato smell... like a basket of freshly picked tomatoes that have sat in the sun. Oh my.

Second Avenue Subway: My least favorite public works project does it again. Yesterday I got an email that said "thank god you weren't hurt in the explosion" -- what?? Turns out they were doing underground detonation at 72nd and Second and it went wrong. It blew the metal coverings on the road off, broke store windows... saw a woman on tv who lives in a 4th floor apartment and she said she was knocked off her chair. I am glad I don't live in a big building on Second Avenue... I just can't believe underground detonations have no impact on nearby buildings. Miraculously, no one was hurt.