Moving Mountains: Gold Star Stay the Catskills Way

The first Elyssa Friedland book I ever read was The Floating Feldmans, which was a funny family drama set on a cruise ship.  Last Summer at the Golden Hotel is a lot like it, except the cruise ship is a hotel, and the main characters own it.  The Goldmans and the Weingolds have been the proud proprietors of the Golden Hotel for decades.  Nestled in the once-trendy Catskills, or as the locals call them, the Jewish Alps, the Golden Hotel has feted everyone from Joan Rivers to Jerry Seinfeld in its famed theater.  Families have come for generations to bond over brisket and shuffleboard, their happiest moments frozen in time in the hotel's Memory Lane photo gallery.  But time has not been kind to the Golden, and now it's falling apart.  These days, people want organic meals and Wi-Fi, and they're going elsewhere to get it.  Which forces three generations of Goldmans and Weingolds to ask themselves the dreaded question: should they stick it out or sell?  While trying to find the answer, they learn new things about each other -- and themselves.  

Last Summer at the Golden Hotel is fun and nostalgic, harkening back to the days of Dirty Dancing and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, both of which it references.  While reading it, I used the sunflower bookmark I bought at Beyond Van Gogh.  It matched the cover so perfectly that I couldn't stop looking at it. 

As they say, it's the little things.           

Ship Shape Escape: Family Feud Unglued

I was on Amazon when I found a book by an author I'd never heard of.  The book was The Floating Feldmans, the author was Elyssa Friedland, and it caught my eye because of its cover.  I liked the way the characters' faces peeked through the ship portals, my favorite being Mr. Man Bun.

So, I added it to my wish list, and my sister got it for me for Christmas.  Last week I finally tested its waters.  Which is a dramatic way to talk about diving into a book, but you never know with new authors.  Or new anything.  It's like that Seinfeld episode where Jerry takes Bania out to dinner (and lunch) in exchange for a suit and mocks Bania's always-annoying commentary.  That is, if you order your go-to meal, then you know it'll be good but the same.  If you order something new, then you get to have something different, but it might not be as good.  To quote Jerry verbatim, "it's a gamble."  And that's just how I felt before embarking on The Floating Feldmans.  Which is fitting, because the novel's about a cruise and cruises are all about food.  Also disease, not to put too fine a point on it in the current coronavirus climate.

Anyway, the Feldmans are complicated.  You've got overbearing mom Annette and distant dad David with two grown children: overachieving daughter Elise and slacker son Freddie (he of the man bun).  Elise has an overachieving daughter, Rachel, and slacker son, Darius, of her own.  She also has a nice-guy husband, Mitch, making for a neat parallel with her bro's trophy girlfriend, Natasha, who, is also -- you guessed it -- nice!  "Wait a minute," you may be thinking, "How can a slacker dude score such a babe?  Are things -- dun dun dun -- not what they seem?!"  To echo the sound of the ship's casino . . . jackpot!  This family has more secrets than a prostitute's diary, and they all come out on the Ocean Queen.  It's all hands on deck for domestic discord, with jaded cruise director Julian at the helm.  Friedland pulls out every cruise ship cliche, from the passengers duking it out over the soft serve machine to the dorky dad sandals to the overpriced offshore excursions.  And it's hilarious!  Really, the perfect fly-on-the-wall situation where you can soak up all of the laughs and none of the calories -- or ptomaine.  Here are some of my favorite parts:

"How Elise craved that soaring spike in adrenaline that shot pins and needles to her extremities and sent butterflies to her stomach.  She sighed and looked back at her cart, fighting off the urge to calculate.  The total couldn't be much.  She had tossed in maybe eight or nine hardcovers at most, three frozen cakes, a few packages of T-shirts for Darius, and a bunch of sports bras she'd need now that she'd signed up for Class Pass." (11).

Yes, Elise's shameful secret is that she's a shopaholic.  Like Rebecca Bloomwood, but not as much fun and without the rich husband (Elise's better half is a journalist; need I say more?).  One of her more unfortunate splurges is family sweatshirts plastered with Annette's (rather angry) face, which she got on -- wait for it -- Etsy.

Still, all roads lead back to that other over-indulgers' paradise, namely the buffet:

"On average, passengers aboard the Ocean Queen consumed six thousand calories per day, sitting down to no less than five full meals.  The midmorning "snack" consisted of pastries, a full salad bar, and a taco station.  Afternoon tea was the least dainty meal Julian had ever laid eyes on.  Instead of finger sandwiches and bite-sized lemon tarts, the kitchen staff put out twelve-foot loaves of streusel from which the guests could hack off as much as they liked.  And, as far as Julian could tell, they liked a lot of streusel." (2)

"A middle-aged woman wearing a sweatshirt that said I Have No Cruise Control shouted, "Where's my free pizza?  I was told there would be free pizza." (134)

This book is zany.  But it's also a little dark and deep and gives you a look inside that cattiest of cliques: family.  Like the meanest of mean girls, the Feldmans manipulate one another and freeze each other out.  But unlike their middle school monster counterparts, they actually care about one another, a truth that surfaces like filet mignon from a sea of expired bologna.  And that's kind of comforting.  Because although families are never easy, they've always got your back.

Even if that back's wearing a day-glo sweatshirt emblazoned with the matriarch's mug.

Strawberries: Not a Patch on Hue and Other Memorial Day Musings

Strawberry Patch Necklace

Dress: Jessica Simpson, Marshalls

Shoes: Payless

Bag: Princess Vera, Kohl's

Sunglasses: JCPenney

Bavarian Berry Necklace

Top: Aeropostale

Skirt: Xhilaration, Target

Shoes: Worthington, JCPenney

Bag: Candie's, Kohl's

Sunglasses: Rampage, Boscov's

Strawberry Cheesecake Necklace

Dress: Kohl's
Shoes: Payless
Bag: Loop, Marshalls
Sunglasses: JCPenney

This week's post celebrates that most transient of warm-weather berries, the strawberry.  Indeed, the Strawberry Patch, Strawberry Cheesecake, and Bavarian Berry necklaces (the last so named for my green, red, and yellow-sporting childhood Gretel doll) are the perfect way to say hello to summer, especially the Strawberry Patch, which owes its existence to a frozen fruit bar box.

Memorial Day weekend or not, I chose to spend a chunk of my weekend engaged in the decidedly unseasonable activity of indoor reading.  My muse came in the unlikely form of a scholarly tome entitled A Jane Austen Education: How Six Novels Taught Me About Love, Friendship, and the Things That Really Matter, by (according to the back cover) "self-styled intellectual rebel" William Deresiewicz.  I say unlikely because the book was all about how Jane Austen's novels had transformed the author's life, and of all the classic novels I'd been forced to read (or had forced myself to read) over the years, Jane Austen's had been my least favorite, on account that I found them boring.  Interestingly, Deresiewicz formed the same opinion upon his first Austen reading, an attitude he uses as a springboard for his book, setting the kind of I-couldn't-have-been-more-wrong challenge that results in him uncovering the many merits of Austen's storytelling style.  Deresiewicz does this by weaving his own coming-of-age experiences with his reading of the novels, illuminating Austen's genius for decoding social mores and manners by describing how growing up allowed him to appreciate them and apply them to his own life.  Deresiewicz's prose is so beautifully written, sprinkled with just the right ratio of self-deprecation and humor, that I ended up finishing the book within twenty-four hours, if not transfixed by Austen's writing (the excerpts that appeared were as hard to swallow as they had been in Intro to British Literature twelve years ago), then by Deresiewicz's writing about her writing.  This too reminded me of being in college, when I routinely read classics I hated only to enjoy writing about them in the papers that followed.  Books that I thought to be the literary equivalent of Brussels sprouts suddenly exploded with flavor -- did I detect a hint of cheddar in Lady Audley's Secret, and hey, was that bacon lurking in Dracula? -- revealing messages about things I cared about and the way that I looked at the world.  Reading Deresiewicz was no different, and although it didn't make me an Austen convert, it did make me more appreciative of Austen's craft and even understand just why I disliked her (something to do with me being more of a feeler than a thinker and valuing the self over community, both apparently qualities that made me more of a Bronte kind of broad).  I was surprised to find that I enjoyed reading Deresiewicz's book even more than the last few novels I'd read, a realization that made me wonder if I'd been foolhardy to abandon my old plan of becoming an academic.  Or, at least it did until I remembered that such a career would have meant a lifetime of reading classics, cross-country moves in search of tenure, and significantly less free time for trivial pursuits such as blogging and crafting.

Anyway, by the time I was done reading, I felt the old holiday weekend pressure to go play outside.  It was a beautiful weekend, and I knew that if I didn't soak in at least a little sunshine, then I'd be kicking myself come Tuesday. So late Sunday afternoon, the husband and I set off on a beach-bound stroll.  Although things started off with an-almost-too-cool breeze, the sun made its reappearance right about the time we were negotiating the uneven sand in our flip flops, a feat that felt curiously like doing step aerobics (or at least what I imaged step aerobics would feel like based on all the Jane Fonda workout videos I'd seen as a kid).  It was about that time that I began to lament my lack of sunscreen and finally decided that it would be better to return to true terra firma, a decision readily seconded by the husband.  

I have a confession to make (although something tells me that this is a confession I've made on this blog before).  I'm not really a beach person, and neither is the husband.  I like the idea of the beach.  I like the salt air, the tranquility, the feeling of crossing the bridge on my way home from work, even the sound of the seagulls.  But if given the choice, I'd much rather read on my couch than in a beach chair.  For one thing, being on the beach requires a lot of vigilance.  You have to make sure that you've applied enough sunscreen and that you keep reapplying it.  You have to remember your beach tag. You have to swat the flies and smile "that's okay" to kids who inevitably hit you with their Frisbees.  If you have to go to the bathroom, then you have to hold it -- unless you're one of those jerks who goes in the ocean.  And this is all before the tide comes in and you begin the tedious dance of inching back your beach chair lest it be claimed by the foamy surf (as my flip flops once were).  I know this sounds weird because most people find the beach relaxing.  Don't get me wrong  -- it definitely has its moments (especially in the off-season).  But I think you have to be born with a kind of beach bum/beach bunny gene to be truly at one with the waves. 

Still, the time outdoors made me more appreciative of the time I get to spend indoors, a phenomenon best expressed by that oh-so-wise Seinfeld shtick: when we're home, we want to be out; then we go out, and we want to go home.  So that's something.