Summer is back and it is a hot day but the leaves are already starting to turn. Fall is coming.

I had a small flood in my house due to a faulty shut-off valve on my furnace to I spent most of this week entertaining various workers who removed my old floor and then installed my new floor. It is an improvement. I like it.

My son came over and helped me move all my furniture back and then we went to a good Kurdish restaurant not far from my place – Babani’s Kurdish Restaurant. We started out with Kurdish bread with feta cheese and olive oil. I had a delicious lentil soup (my favorite food) and then I had Sheik Babani – Named after a distinguished man’s striped trouser, this Kurdish delicacy is cored eggplant peeled in decorative stripes and filled with spice meat and vegetables serviced with a red sauce over basmati rice.

I read a couple of books. One I read for book club – A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley. Now this book won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction in 1991 and was adapted to a 1997 film of the same name. I personally hated the book. I don’t often hate books but I had a very negative reaction to this one. Maybe it lost something over the years and is now dated. I did read the whole thing. I usually just stop reading if the book doesn’t hold my interest but this one I read all the way to the end and after I read the last page I wanted to just throw it across the room (it was an e-book so couldn’t really do that…). Okay, what was so terrible. There was not one character I cared about. They were all terrible people. It dragged on and on and on. People did things that made not sense. If your father raped you every night when you were a little girl would you really just nonchalantly mention it to your sister and have to convince here that he did the same to her? All very odd. Anyway, yuck.

The other book I read was Our Woman in Moscow by Beatriz Williams. This one was published in 2021, and is, obviously, a spy novel. It had some interesting twists and turns and the characters were very well developed. I found it easier to read than LeCarre. It wasn’t so convoluted. Not a lot of rabbit holes. Easy to read and held my interest. Hey, it’s a spy novel, what’s not to like?

Although I am still trying to slog through LeCarre’s Agent Running in the Field. which I think is the last book he wrote. It has a lot of rabbit holes but I will finish it and hopefully everything will tie together neatly.

I met an interesting artist this week who travels the world and makes very cool art. He gave me this print of one of his pieces.

Daniel Kerkhoff
The Pros and Cons of Manipulation (the Least Among Us) 2021
http://www.danielkerkhoff.com

This week my social calendar explodes. I’m looking forward to going to see this art exhibit:
https://z.umn.edu/human-condition-umncal
“Though we come from all different walks of life, what binds us together is our humanity. “The Human Condition” explores the feelings, experiences, and connections that are uniquely human through myriad mediums and styles. Come look through someone else’s eyes, or find your own looking back at you. Works by University of Minnesota students and local artists.”

Now…. now to get a visa for New Zealand….