The New York Times reviewed a restaurant today that's in my neighborhood, and I didn't have anything in my refrigerator for lunch, so I decided to try it. Never noticed it before. It's on a mostly residential street, in a residential-looking brownstone. Had the cactus quesadilla, which is less crazy than it sounds. Cactus roughly equivalent to green pepper, sort of. It was tasty. Not sure why I'm sharing, except I thought it was cool that the Times reviewed it and I acted on the review the same day. They weren't crowded. I mean, it was lunch, so nothing's crowded around here, but I would have thought that at least a couple more people reading the Times would have the same idea I did. I'd go back.
Random other notes on the day:
1. Cool that the Mets forced a Game 7. Thought Wagner was going to blow it at the end, but glad he didn't.
2. Reminder (see post below) that I'll be signing books at Harvard Law School tomorrow night at 8:00 at the Hark Pub. I stopped by at my publisher's office today and picked up some Anonymous Lawyer promotional materials to bring with me and give out. A bunch of pencils, a couple of stress balls, and maybe a t-shirt or two.
3. Friday Night Lights is an awesome show, streaming for free on NBC.com. Ratings have been terrible, but, really, it's good.
4. 30 Rock's second episode was pretty good too.
5. I saw Bill Bryson do a book reading / interview tonight at Symphony Space on the upper west side. His new book is good. Book readings are never as awesome as I imagine they'll be. I don't think it's been the fault of any of the three or four authors I've ever seen do readings. I think it's just the format. Books aren't meant to be listened to like that, I don't think. And the audience Q&A, for anything, is never that enlightening. Not exactly sorry I went, but it was just sort of blah. And I'm a huge Bill Bryson fan, and loved the book, so that wasn't it.
Mets Suck! Go Cards!
Posted by: Drew | October 19, 2006 at 03:49 AM
I like author readings! Maybe I just go to odd people's. When I went to Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez's, she spent half the time talking about identity politics, the crazies that want her to always talk about how she hates Castro and followed her to a couple readings, and some of the struggles she had trying to get Latino-related film projects made. Really interesting stuff, and better than "what's your writing day like?"
I also hear that T.C. Boyle readings are fantastic because he really gets into it and performs the work.
I used to do literary interpretation events way back in high school speech - so even if books aren't written to be read aloud, I'm used to thinking they can be to great effect.
See you tonight.
Posted by: Andrea | October 19, 2006 at 08:26 AM
Also, the restaurant is called "Holy Stick"??
Posted by: Andrea | October 19, 2006 at 08:28 AM
I think some authors' readings can be fantastic, especially if they write books where the characters clearly have distinctive accents and they do the voices. Clyde Edgerton is much better reading his books than the book are just by themselves.
Posted by: PG | November 06, 2006 at 03:29 PM