Suddenly humid

Wow, it is going to be over 80 degrees today.  Having a hot flash just thinking about it.  That is getting a bit over my limit of comfort.

I only watch a few minutes of TV each day.  Happened to catch Matt Lauer at the top of One world trade center at the moment the top spire was raised, lowered and attached.  1776 feet tall - is that a historical date or how many people died on 9/11?  We now have the tallest strictly office building in the western hemisphere.  Ain't America great!?!?  Other interesting facts were that it takes the workers 40 minutes just to get to the top to do their jobs each day!  And that the first businesses will get their keys in 2014.  I happen to be going to New York next Saturday.  Must add this to the list of things to do (it is short, so far).  Feel kind of bad that I haven't visited the site at all in ten years.

Book review: Winter journal, by Paul Auster.  I didn't/don't even know who Paul Auster is, but according to a Henry Holt & Co. ad I saw in the New Yorker, he is "one of the great writers of our time".  I did enjoy this memoir...which detailed all the places he has lived (in order) and traveled and the decline and death of his mother.  Also there is a New Jersey connection, which I always like to know about.  And he wrote this when he was 64, about the same age as I am.  I liked the first paragraph - "You think it will never happen to you, that it cannot happen to you, that you are the only person in the world to whom none of these things will ever happen, and then, one by one, they all begin to happen to you, in the same way they happen to everyone else."  I recommend this book.  You can borrow the large type edition from the Millville Public Library (LT 92 AUS).

Book review: Peaches for Father Francis, by Joanne Harris.  In which the characters from a previous book called Chocolat come back to Lansquenet, a small village in France.  There is an interesting addition of an Islamic theme and the push and pull between the cultures.  There is a bit of a mystery about who caused a fire and who is the covered up woman and why has she come to town.    Our heroine, Vianne, returns to the small town to straighten out some things. She gets very involved and has trouble getting back to her life in Paris.   I borrowed this book from the Vineland Public Library (FIC Harris Joanne)