A blog about New York City, my books, and my cats. Mostly.
From my walk yesterday. It looks busy in this shot, but it was not. Everything is closed except places that sell food. It looks like I happened to press the shutter just when there was a car and a few people in the shot.
I took a nice 4/5 mile walk yesterday, walking down streets I don’t think I’ve ever walked down before. It felt so good to just be out. It’s the same all over. The only people I see are runners, and people looking for food.
A small greenmarket under a bridge. Please note the cute puppers in the woman’s arms on the right.
Did I mention that everyone should read The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel? Actually, read her book Station Eleven first, then The Glass Hotel. I adored both, but I loved The Glass Hotel a little more. The reason I’m suggesting this order is, Station Eleven is a post apocalyptic novel about a pandemic and it sucks you right in. It’s like no other post apocalyptic novel, it’s truly wonderful. The Glass Hotel may sound like something you’re not interested in. It revolves around Bernie Madoff’s ponzi scheme, except she creates new characters that are not based on Madoff or his cohorts or family. If you read Station Eleven first you will be so in love with her writing you’ll think, okay, I’ll give this book a try even if a financial crime isn’t my cup of tea. The Glass Hotel book took my breath away.
What shall I read next? I need to read The Big Short (about the 2008 financial crisis) for research for the book proposal I’m working on, but I want to also read something just for the sheer pleasure of reading. I’ve started a few and they just didn’t hit the spot. I think the winner might be Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day.
A Remains of the Day-like scene I came upon during one my recent walks. The sign says that 20 gingko trees were planted on 5th Avenue in 1960 in memory of Dorothy Shaver, the late president of Lord & Taylor. But the plot in front of that sign was empty, and when I looked up and down 5th Avenue I didn’t see a single gingko tree. It was a little like the last line from Shelley’s Ozymandias: “Nothing beside remains …”
I am enjoying all the time with the cats. Animals are such great mood-regulators, aren’t they? They make everything better. This is them inspecting my candy delivery.
This is them about do something destructive. They’re still relatively young (three years old) so knocking over things, ripping up things, is their reason for living. I keep having to replace my shower curtain because for whatever God forsaken reason they like to eat it. This scares me because one of them swallows the plastic pieces and I’m terrified it might become a foreign body. At the ASPCA hospital we’re always seeing animals with foreign bodies. If they pass it great, but we perform a lot of surgeries to remove them and that doesn’t always lead to a happy ending.
Seen on my search yesterday for single serving Amy’s Margherita Pizzas. I only found three, so I had to buy the large size which I break in half by banging them on the side of my kitchen counter. It’s a good day when I get mostly equal halves.
The upside of my quest was coming across this pupper on my way home. Well hello there, sweetie pie!
