gelato and delia

My book club is reading Siracusa by Delia Ephron this month.

The way our book club works, because I'm sure you're DYING to know, is that when it's your month to choose, you nominate 3-4 choices, and then everyone votes. Does rigging ever occur? The first rule of book club email voting is you don't ask questions about book club email voting. (And really, who actually won the presidential election this year? Voting is complicated.)

Anyhow, it was my month to nominate, so along with Siracusa, I threw Peyton Place and Valley of the Dolls into the mix. (Judge away, but B.B.C (boston book club, I just invented this nickname) was due for some trash. We'd just read A Little Life and Handmaid's Tale and, though both of those books are lovely in their own DEEPLY DISTURBING AND DEPRESSING WAYS, peeps were ready to jump off a cliff.) I did not rig the results of the election (this time #fakenews) but I am quite happy Siracusa was chosen. I have yet to start it but I am positive I will love it, because, um, it takes place in Italy and it's about rich people on vacation? There's sex and gelato involved, and I'm assuming everyone is vaguely miserable and horny, so sounds like a pretty great book already.

And yes, if you're wondering, our book club has already read Beautiful Ruins (my pick a couple years ago, obviously) and just recently I found myself bee-lining toward a new paperback in a bookstore, solely because it's called The Rocks and had this cover.

I mean, HELLO look at those cooooo-veeeeeers! Don't you just want to board a Bolt Bus, get to NYC after sweating in five hours of traffic, find Gwyneth GOOP-Y Paltrow at whatever female tech + wellness guru panel she's running like the Oscar-winning/organic-face-cream-conglomerate she is and be like PUT ON YOUR SILK SCARF AND VINTAGE LINEN SHORTS GWYNNY WE'RE GOING TO PORTOFINO!!!! (Is Portofino a place in Italy? I think so?) Anyhow, I have no qualms whatsoever about falling into the exact stereotype that the evil geniuses at Random House dream up whenever they need to sell a book to a woman who is often googling "need to cover my newly sprouting grays." If there are pastel colors and stones on the cover, it will be bought and read, and then I will spend 45 minutes on Pinterest "pinning" shit like the photo below and pretending it's somehow real life.

But, yeah, Siracusa sounds good. Apparently the book unfolds "Rashomon" style which is an important movie I pretend to have seen and never have, but I think it means that the narrative is cool and confusing, or something like that? More importantly, it's the second Ephron book our club has read. BBC started after Nora died. We read Heartburn. Oh, no, I'm tearing up and about to start rambling about the Ephron sisters...

I'll save that post for another day, but they are national treasures. Both of them. And book clubs, much like the costume department in The Talented Mr. Ripley, are things that bring me beauty and joy.