Archives - Weekly Update

We closed the office at 1pm today so everyone can enjoy the holiday weekend, and we are not reopening until Wednesday. With the holiday on a Tuesday, it’s always tough to plan when to close the office. This break will be great!

Holiday weekends are fun for binge-reading, and I have an idea for this. Last weekend, I read DEATH ON WINDMILL WAY by Carrie Doyle, the first in her Hamptons Murder Mystery series. It was such fun reading (I know, what does it say about me that I call a murder mystery fun?), with a great cast of characters that includes her protagonist, Antonia Bingham, who is both an innkeeper and a chef. It gave me great background on the history of the Hamptons, as well as some mouth-watering food descriptions. I cannot wait to dive into the next two books! Armchair vacation travel with a mystery; I love it.

In the midst of a very crazy busy week, I took an evening on Wednesday to kick it back a notch and just savor the arrival of summer. The weather was spectacular, and it was wonderfully restorative to just sit outside and watch evening envelop the patio. I was so relaxed until I realized that I had failed to leave on lights in the kitchen or on the patio, or to turn the pool light on (I am out of practice on what one does on a summer evening). Thus I was trying to navigate my way back to the house, in the dark, without falling into the pool. I crashed into the hibiscus plants a few times as I shimmied my way away from the water’s edge.

The official start of summer is fast-approaching (Wednesday at 12:24am EDT, to be exact), and as it’s the day of the year with the most hours of daylight, it’s also one of my favorite days of the year. I am hoping that the weather is lovely enough for me to enjoy an evening of sitting outside savoring every moment of it!  

Our big news this week: After 21(!) years in the same location, we are going to be moving our office in July; I am not exactly sure of the date of the move just yet. We are moving just a few blocks away, but it means everything needs to be packed up. It is amazing how much you can accumulate over two decades that now need to be packed or purged. I saved brochures from every conference that I attended and every conference badge/lanyard; the brochures are gone (after I contemplated no eBay value) and the conference badges/lanyards are in a pile. I also have been going through lots of old files. One article I found was about Amazon on its fifth anniversary. The headline: “Will Amazon Survive?” I think that question has been answered.

When we left off last week, the staff and I were at BookExpo where we heard about dozens of new books and crossed paths with many authors. I had sit-down chats with Lisa Jewell, who was visiting from the UK (her recent I FOUND YOU was a Bookreporter.com Bets On title); Kaira Rouda, author of BEST DAY EVER, which is a thriller I am crazy about (coming September 19th); Mary Kay Andrews, who was walking the floor, which gave me a chance to tell her about the recipes I made from THE BEACH HOUSE COOKBOOK; Nelson DeMille (I dressed to match up with the spirit of his book cover for THE CUBAN AFFAIR, which will be in stores on September 19th); and Leah Cesare, whose FORKS, KNIVES, AND SPOONS we reviewed a couple of months ago.

While the weather was not the stellar start of summer that I may have wanted last weekend, it was perfect for planting flowers (all 20 containers), weeding and getting the work of getting ready for summer done. I wintered over pots and pots of plants in the house, which meant less nursery shopping. I bought eucalyptus and rhubarb, both of which I have not grown before. (I think there will be enough rhubarb for a pie in 2018...and yes, I have noted that the leaves are poisonous!) The peonies popped and looked stellar, and I cut many for bouquets around the house. The petals are shedding less quickly, perhaps because the weather has been so cool.