Friday Ramblings

Barbara came over for lunch and we had our feast fit for the queens we are... lobster rolls with the crunchy french fries and great cole slaw, followed by cupakes from Little Red Hen -- carrot cake for her and red velvet for me.

As usual, we talked about everything. I had copyedited something yesterday, changing "plaid complexion" to "pallid complexion" (which the author agreed with) and I said I never use the word pallid and she said she didn't either. We also wondered why it has two L's, when squalid, valid and others only have one.

We talked about those dreadful ASPCA commercials and I asked her, that as an animal person, if they touch her. Neither of us like them but she told me that the one with the mournful woman singing has topped all donation records.

Speaking of commercials, there's one that makes me go EWWWW and turn my head away. It starts out with the family eating pizza, looking delicious, gooey stringy cheese, but then the kid dips the pizza slice in ranch dressing. Yuk. I can't imagine that tasting good.

Still early spring here, in the 40s, it stopped raining, but after a cool weekend, it's supposed to be in the 70s next week. That will be great.

By the way, I am really enjoying my man Bennett Cerf's book. He knew everyone. Took Theodore Dreiser to a Yankee game, was friends with Eugene O'Neill, Gertrude Stein, Irwin Shaw, every author you can think of with all these great stories. He talked about publishing Eugene O'Neill's play called "The Hairy Ape" and yesterday, going down Park Avenue in a cab, I see at the Armory these banners for "The Hairy Ape" and it's being performed there. Also learned that when Bennett wanted to publish an anthology of plays, George Bernard Shaw told him his work was too good to be in an anthology so they worked out a deal where Shaw would get double the pay that the other authors were getting. Just lots of interesting gossipy bits about classic authors.

It's made me want to devote my summer reading to classics, but I have not had good luck with most of them. I valiantly try to pick one up and plow through, but all the time wishing I was reading about a serial killer stalking Manhattan instead. Of the so-called classics, I do love Sinclair Lewis, genuinely so... maybe I should reread those... and I did love Steinbeck's Cannery Row, but could not get into East of Eden. Could not get past 20 pages of Madame Bovary... anybody have any suggestions for classics that are just plain good reading?