WWW.WEDNESDAY

WWW. WEDNESDAY asks three questions to prompt you to speak bookishly. To participate, and to see how other book lovers responded, click here. 

PS I no longer participate in WWW.WEDNESDAY via that link because her blog won't accept Blogger comments. I mention this only to save you the frustration I experienced trying to link up.

1. What are you currently reading? Siracusa by Delia Ephron. Two troubled couples take a Sicilian vacation together. Taylor is a beautiful but tightly wound working mom, married to restaurateur Finn. Lizzie is a journalist, married to Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Michael. Lizzie is annoyed that Taylor and Finn brought their 10-year-old daughter along, and confused by Michael's attention to the girl. Does this mean Michael regrets he and Lizzie never had children?

Each chapter is narrated by a different member of the quartet. Delia successfully established separate voices for each of them. So far (about a third of the way through), I like Lizzie best -- not that any of them is especially likeable. There's a tingly sense of dread enveloping this trip. I don't know what's going to happen to these four, but I'm here for it.

2. What did you recently finish reading? If Death Ever Slept by Rex Stout. Do you know anyone who lives with their extended family? I don't either. It's probably just as well, because according to mysteries and melodramas, big multi-generational households are just a hotbed of crime.

 

Let's take the Otis Jarrell penthouse as an example. Mr. Jarrell is a millionaire businessman (back when a million dollars meant something) who shares his home with his wife, his wife's brother, his adult daughter and son and daughter-in-law, his personal assistant and his stenographer. First Jarrell is disturbed when it seems one of them is engaging in industrial espionage and costing him money. Then people in their circle start getting dead. There are many suspects, all with shifting allegiances. It's all too complicated for me!

But not for Nero Wolfe (and Archie Goodwin). A fun and worthy entry to the series.

 

3. What will you read next? Don't know.

 

This Old Heart of Mine Been Broke 1,000 Times

Anthony Rizzo is 1-for-June. I can't believe I'm writing this, but my favorite-most ballplayer simply cannot connect for a bloop single, much less a home run. He was benched for the first time I can recall, and tonight he got back in the batter's box and went 0-4. He made an exceptional defensive play and did it with his joy and enthusiasm. But Yankee fans are still calling him a bum, saying he sucks. The New York press is using words like "fried."

He deserves better. He is such a good man. Last weekend, 500 people -- pediatric cancer patients or their family members -- enjoyed a June afternoon at a Chicagoland amusement park. Free.

That's just here. Before this season started, Anthony got to party with pediatric cancer patients and their families at the Boomers Amusement Park in Boca Raton.

In New York, the $255 entry fee for the NYC marathon was comped for 27 runners who were competing on behalf of the Children's Hospital at Montefiore.

Then there are the grants. Unpublicized but more important than the big events. Parents of kids with cancer can apply for financial help to pay for what insurance won't: Parking and meals in the hospital, daycare for siblings while parents accompany their children to treatments, rent/mortgage assistance for parents who have to skip work to care for their pediatric cancer patient ...

And the letters! Anthony sends personal letters to young people all over the country who are battling cancer, giving them hope with the story of how he beat the disease as a teenager.

So during the first six months of 2024, Anthony Rizzo has done more to help others than some of us do in our entire lives. That's why watching him struggle hurts me so. He deserves more from life, from baseball, from karma. The public embarrassment of being told he sucks, that he's a loser, that he's fried ... I hurt with him.

Meanwhile, in Tampa, my Cubs lost in the bottom of the 9th.

Just because I love baseball doesn't mean it loves me back.