Feeling no pain in this production of Damn Yankees

Two of the things I enjoy the most are baseball and musical theater, so naturally I've long been intrigued by Damn Yankees, a show that really isn't performed much lately. (Other than by my husband's high school back in 2001. Though I assume other schools have probably performed it in the last 25 years, too.) Luckily, Arena Stage has just opened a new production (what they're calling a "revisal") of the show.

Written in the 1950s, it's the story of Joe Boyd, a huge fan of the Washington Senators (then an American League team; the old saying was that Washington was "first in war, first in peace, last in the American League"), who bemoans the "damn Yankees" who always win. After saying he'd sell his soul for "one good long ball hitter" on the team, a guy named Applegate shows up to help him do just that. Joe leaves his wife, Meg, and becomes Joe Hardy, a young slugger who's quickly welcomed onto the Senators. Joe loves playing for the Senators, but desperately misses his wife...even as Lola, a seductress who also sold her soul to Applegate, tries to change his mind.

My understanding is that the Arena wants to bring the show to Broadway, which hasn't had a revival of it since the 1990s. With that in mind, they brought in a team to update the show; now set in 2000, Joe is a big Orioles fan, and is dealing with the knowledge that his father was a Negro Leagues player who toiled in MLB's minor leagues due to his race. They also change a bit of the scandal in Act Two, so the show touches on steroids (though that wouldn't really be an issue until later in the 2000s), and they tweaked the song order in the second act (source: my husband).

Changing the team from the Senators to the Orioles? I was ALL IN. It was truly delightful watching the actors on stage wearing Orioles uniforms and gear. I would've liked a few more lines that would personalize it to Baltimore (why not have Joe Hardy hit the warehouse?), but seriously, it was a joy. Orioles fans, get thee to Arena.

I honestly can't say enough good things about the cast. Rob McClure is clearly having a blast playing Applegate, and he impresses. Applegate is a fun role, to be sure, and he makes the most of it; he's generally playing it fun, but there are times when the menace comes through. 

The other standout in the cast for me is Ana Villafañe as Lola. Her voice? Amazing. Her dancing? Phenomenal. Her acting? On. Point. The script could make Lola and Joe's relationship a bit stronger, I think, though their "Two Lost Souls" was a highlight, particularly for Jordan Donica as Joe Hardy. 

Donica's voice is fantastic; an absolute dream (and it only makes me crankier about The Gilded Age not being a musical; I need the Peggy/Dr. Kirkland duet!). However, the role of Joe Hardy isn't a particularly flashy one. Donica gave an interview where he said he played Applegate in high school and was bummed he didn't get the role of Joe Hardy--he wanted the lead. His director told him "You’re a great actor and we need that for Applegate." And look, I'm not saying that playing Joe Hardy doesn't require acting skills, but it's just a quieter role, as this young man deals with pining for the wife he left, a woman he hangs out with but whom he can't tell the truth. But "Two Lost Souls" was the only time I really felt his charisma.

The show itself is sweet, with Joe's love of his wife Meg being his driving force. Joe's Orioles teammates were fun, even if nothing about the story is, you know, how baseball works. And I liked the nod to the Fosse choreography in "Who's Got the Pain." Overall, it's a really fun show and I'm really glad I got to see it. I hope it makes its way to Broadway. 

Also, kudos to whoever create the preshow/intermission playlist. The songs were just completely correct; I was very much brought back to my late college years. Spot on. 

The show the Kennedy Center needs

I sat watching Parade, and as soon as the first song ended, I found myself thinking, "Why am I doing this to myself? This story is so depressing." I remember having the same exact thought the last time I saw this show. 

(Though at the same time, I'm like, "The 2011 production at Ford's was so good! I had the best time with that show! So fun!")

So why do I do it to myself? It's because the show is just that good. Jason Robert Brown's songs are phenomenal; I get them in my head on the regular and then get annoyed that "The Old Red Hills of Home" is such a catchy song. And the story is told so well.

Parade is a true story. When I tell people the plot, they're bewildered at it being a musical, and I don't blame them. It's the story of Leo Frank (Max Chernin), found guilty of murdering a 13-year-old girl who worked in the pencil factory where he was superintendent in 1913, and his wife Lucille (Talia Suskauer), who did all she could to get him exonerated. But after his death sentence was commuted to life in prison, a mob found him and lynched him. Leo Frank was Jewish, and from Brooklyn, living in Atlanta less than 50 years after the end of the Civil War.

It's currently playing at the Kennedy Center and while the current direction of that institution is, um, not great, it's the perfect place for the show right now. Brown has a great post on his Facebook about the meaning of the piece. Watching it, Leo Frank's story resonates strongly over 100 years after it happened--in the bored newspaperman who's excited to have a big story to cover, in the would-be politician/media owner inciting the crowds to rise against the outsider Jew, in the Black bystanders who see what's happening and bemoan the lack of attention given to the injustices inflicted upon them, in the district attorney who finds an someone to blame for crime whether or not he did it. But there's also the governor who goes against the prevailing opinion and stands up for truth, even when it costs him his position. And a sweet love story.

The staging of the show--a national tour of the recent Broadway revival--is excellent. The set itself is incredibly simple, with just a small raised platform and occasional furniture. The show relies heavily on projections, both to give backdrops for the various settings but also to show us pictures of the actual people involved. I was particularly struck when the other pencil factory girls had their pictures shown, labeled as "Mary's Co-Workers." These are teenage girls, maybe 14 or 15 years old. That they're working in a factory is horrific. (That parts of the country have passed laws to make this legal again is even more horrific.)

The performances themselves were fantastic--consistently, all around. I may have preferred Euan Morton's transformation in the Ford's production during "Come Up to My Office" a touch, but I can't complain about Chernin or Suskauer in any way. "All the Wasted Time" is a favorite of mine, and heavens, the two of them had some chemistry during that song.

Talia Suskauer and Max Chernin--get these two a room! Photo by Joan Marcus.

Most of the cast was on the stage most of the time, with the main action on the raised platform as the rest of the cast frequently sat on the sides; they were generally, but not always, involved in the action from there. Particularly noticeable was that the Black actors did not participate in many of the songs, especially in the first act. They would look at each other with "Can you believe this?!"-type faces that were just perfect. This is a show where it's worth watching everyone who's on the stage at any given time.

It's a hard show but it's a great show and one well worth your time and money. 

Authors: It's OK to tell a story chronologically

⭐⭐⭐

I don't know if it's just the books I've read lately, but I'm kind of over storytelling that involves a lot of time jumps. Most books tend to jump between "present" and "past" and follow the "past" story fairly chronologically. How to Start a Fire, by Lisa Lutz, tells the story of college friends Anna, Kate, and George, and time hops all over the place; looking at the table of contents, it goes 2005, 1993, 2011, 2002, 1999, 1990, 2006, 2000, 2010, 1994, 1998, and on and on. (I am very grateful that Lutz starts each chapter with the year and location, at least.) I was helped a bit because the main characters are my sister's age, so I could use that to ground myself. Even so, I spent the first chunk of the book annoyed by all the jumping around. Does your story not hold up to just being told in a straightforward manner? It was frustrating having to spend so much energy trying to figure out where in the timeline things happened and trying to remember who characters were when they popped up 100 pages after being introduced. And then I found out there's a character list and non-spoilery timeline in the back of the book! Unbelievable.

I liked the plot of the book pretty well and found the character dynamics interesting. I loved Kate's relationship with her grandfather, and the friend group relatable, particularly how sometimes one character wanted to interact with one friend but not another. That said, I want to know the characters more. The book jumps away from the storyline at moments when things got interesting, and it made me feel a bit removed from the characters. I feel like I got to know the core three women well enough, but there were moments of growth that we didn't actually get to see. I also wish the characters were a bit less one-note. I honestly don't know how much any of them grew or changed. I didn't particularly like any of the main three women; I did like Colin, Anna's brother, and would happily have read a book about him.

Additionally, it seems that the core of the story, and what the friendship ultimately centers around, is the night that George is attacked, Kate kills the attacker, and they all think it's because Anna left the door unlocked. Lutz leaves this as the central mystery around which the book revolves, but it gets lost amongst everything else. It's really the turning point for all three women, but the reader is just trying to figure out what's going on. After reading the whole book, you can see how it all comes together. But...why couldn't we have gotten the story chronologically? It's just frustrating.

Also, related, per the timeline in the back of the book, Anna starts sleeping with George's dad BEFORE Malcolm dies??? That...is very surprising to me.

The writing itself I liked well enough; a friend in my book club has read a lot of Lutz's other books and recommended those more than this one, and I would definitely check one of them out. 

Dance on, Play On!

There's a character in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, or What You Will, named Duke Orsino. You know who else is named Duke? Duke Ellington. Play On!, currently playing at Signature Theatre, conceived by Sheldon Epps, with a book by Cheryl L. West and music by Duke Ellington, is loosely based on Twelfth Night. It's Harlem in the 1920s and Viola (Jalisa Williams) wants to be a songwriter. Her uncle Jester (Wesley J. Barnes) scoffs at the idea of a woman being a songwriter, so she decides to approach the famous Duke at Vy-man, and quickly falls for him.

Duke, meanwhile, is in love with Lady Liv (Awa Sal Secka), a performer at the Cotton Club, who puts her staff (orchestra conductor Sweets [Derrick D. Truby, Jr.], dresser Miss Mary [Kanysha Williams], and club manager Rev [Chuckie Benson]) through the ringer. Duke sends Vy(man) to bring a song to Liv, who takes a fancy to the young man. Hijinks ensue.

As soon as Barnes and the ensemble came on stage at the top of the show wearing tap shoes, I was in. You can't go wrong with Duke Ellington music, of course, and the dancing in this is incredible; Barnes is fantastic. "Take the 'A' Train" is a masterpiece; the combination of the song and the choreography is excellent. I just wish there were more tapping! 

This really is a loose adaptation; I expected it to hew a bit closer to Shakespeare, but the play is really just an inspiration for this. There's no twin brother, various characters are combined, some beats echo the Shakespeare, but it's honestly best to put it out of your mind. (Like, I spent a large chunk of the first act wondering when Vy's twin brother would show up. Spoiler: He doesn't.) 

Unfortunately, a lot of the plot didn't particularly work for me. Vy is our main character, but I couldn't really tell why she fell for Duke. Lady Liv is awful to most of the people around her, but I think we're supposed to forgive her for that after a monologue about how everyone only sees her as a performer not a person. Except that we've seen how she treats the people who work for her, and I can't forgive it that easily. Duke doesn't really have a personality other than "in love with Lady Liv"; they have a history, but we never learn anything about it. We actually don't get any backstory for pretty much any characters.

Wesley J. Barnes as Jester and Derrick D. Truby Jr. as Sweets. Photo by Christopher Mueller.

The supporting characters are a lot more fun. Sweets, Mary, Jester, and Rev are all wonderful. Sweets and Mary have a falling-out that's unconvincingly patched up, but I honestly didn't care because their relationship at least had some depth. I'm intrigued by Rev--I want his full backstory!--but we again aren't given much info. All we know about Jester is that he's with one woman and cheats on her, but his tap dancing is so good that I don't even care. Sweets and Jester's "Rocks in my Bed" (pictured) is super fun.

It's all a bit frothy. There are glimpses of deeper stories and storytelling, but there's no there there. It's a show you'll watch and enjoy, but stopping to think about makes the problems with the book all pop up. But honestly, the dancing, choreography, singing, and music are all enough to make it worth the ticket.

Not one of Weiner's greatest, but still a good time

⭐⭐⭐⭐

More of a 3.5, but Jennifer Weiner's The Griffin Sisters' Greatest Hits was an excellent book for reading on vacation--I read this on long train rides and in a hotel at the end of long days of touristing, and this was perfect for that.

Zoe Grossberg wants to be a famous singer; she has the look but not the talent. Cassie Grossberg is a music prodigy, but is overweight and (probably) neurodivergent. Zoe talks Cassie into performing once; naturally this leads to incredible success, which ends abruptly after a year. The book jumps between 2024, when Zoe's daughter Cherry is pursuing fame herself and the sisters are estranged, and the story of the Griffin Sisters (because obviously they couldn't be the Grossberg Sisters).

I really enjoyed the story of the band and their rise and the peeks into the process of becoming a successful band in the early 00s. However, the big knock on this book is the somewhat pat characterization, particularly when Zoe and Cassie are in their early 20s. Their relationship was interesting, but they themselves at that point come across mostly single-dimensional. Even later, in 2024, Cassie remains a bit flat, possibly because she's hidden herself away. (Really, Cassie doesn't have much of a personality at any point in the book, which is a bummer.) Zoe is now a PTA mom, with three kids and a stepson (and, honestly, I probably could've done without that subplot). Her story after the end of the Griffin Sisters was probably the most interesting part of the book. Cherry is consistently fairly awful, even giving grace for her being an 18-year-old.

That said, I really liked the complexities of the various relationships--Zoe and Cassie, Zoe and Cherry, the various bandmates, Zoe and Cassie's family (with their parents, with their great-aunt), Zoe and her husband. I also really enjoyed the book's overall vibe.

So, not Weiner's best, but still well worth the read. Also, I read the hardcover version of this with really cool graphics on the sides of the pages so it looked neat when it was closed. Good job to the production team. Also, I rememeber Weiner asking on social media for potential band names in the early 00s, so it was neat to see that come to fruition.

Not shying away from the "crime" in "true crime"

⭐⭐⭐

Essentially, Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers is Caroline Fraser making the argument that the rise of serial killers in the 1960s and 1970s is because of pollution. She largely focuses on sexual serial killers in the Pacific Northwest, linking their depravities to the presence of smelters and leaded gasoline. She largely focuses on Ted Bundy, that most quintessential of serial killers, but discusses many others, including the Green River Killer, I-5 Killer, BTK, and Night Stalker.

Unlike the trend in recent true crime, Fraser very much focuses on the killers, their lives and upbringings--logically, since she's arguing that the pollution in their childhoods helped make them the monsters they became. She intersperses their stories with that of her own upbringing just outside Seattle, as well as with the story of ASARCO, a mining, smelting, and refining company. There's also a lot about the bridges around Seattle, particularly the dangerous Lacey V. Murrow Floating Bridge. Like, there is just a LOT of discussing the various accidents on it.

In detail. Fatal accidents, non-fatal accidents. Fraser writes about what happened in a lot of them. Similarly, she does NOT shy away from getting into the details of what the serial killers did to their victims. I read a lot of this book in a fairly compressed amount of time, and I going to the point where I just kind of let the horrors wash over me; it's really too much to contemplate.

And it felt unnecessary. Fraser's language at times was a bit flowery for me and the way she wrote about some of the attacks and murders and deaths struck me the wrong way. The level of detail she gave just seemed gratuitous. It was a LOT to read.

What Fraser did well was make the argument that companies like ASARCO should be regarded as equally evil as men like Ted Bundy. They knowingly polluted the air, the water, the land; they covered up the proof. They killed many more than the serial killers could dream of.

Did Fraser succeed in making the connection between companies like ASARCO and the rise of depraved serial killers? It's hard to tell because the book is case after case of correlation, which isn't the same as causation. Fraser focuses on the Pacific Northwest (and, for some reason, something called the Olympic-Wallowa Lineament, basically a "zone of crustal weakness" [p. 3], which Fraser refers to as "a route wreathed in bodies" [p. 4], as though the ground itself causes evil), but doesn't do a good job of comparing the emissions in Tacoma to those of similar facilities in other parts of the country (except El Paso). Plus, there are a lot of other reasons we've seen fewer serial killers (though how they're defined seems nebulous at best) in the past 30 or 40 years, like the increase of security cameras and people having phones on them and the "stranger danger" narratives of the 1980s that have been ingrained in children for years.

Still, I appreciated having the narrative laid out for me, and I honestly didn't know a ton about Ted Bundy (just sort of the broad strokes of his story and whatever I learned from The Stranger Beside Me: Ted Bundy: The Shocking Inside Story). The book was engrossing, I'll certainly give it that. An interesting addition to the true crime canon.  

Another winner from Emily Henry

⭐⭐⭐⭐

An enjoyable read. Like the other Emily Henry books I've enjoyed more, the two leads of Great Big Beautiful Life, Alice and Hayden, don't have a previous relationship, so we don't spend the book having flashbacks and only gradually finding out what went wrong (and usually being underwhelmed by what happened). Instead, we have Alice and Hayden on a small island on the coast of Georgia near Savannah, competing to tell the life story of Margaret Ives, heiress to a media empire and widow of music star. Yes, there are echoes of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.

Both Hayden and Alice can sense that Margaret is holding something back, but they can't discuss it. Instead, they get to know each other. It's a sunshine/grumpy trope, but Alice quickly gets past Hayden's outer layer and Alice's perkiness is never particularly annoying; plus, Henry does a good job giving both character the backstory that their personalities require. Alice can sometimes be a bit frustrating in how she interacts with her mother, but it's both completely realistic and completely earned. 

I continue to appreciate Henry's handling of the relationships of her protagonists and their families, both good and bad. She writes love stories, but the heart of Margaret's story is that of her family (not her relationship with her husband); Hayden and Alice's relationship is well-developed (if possibly being a bit racier than I would've liked, honestly), but their families and friends are also crucial.

On a more minor note, one of the running jokes/subplots is Alice and Hayden's heights--Alice is 5'9" and Hayden is 6'3" and there are not-infrequent comments about how, for example, it makes sitting in a booth across from each other awkward because they're both tall and their legs are always knocking into each other. And though that might happen at particularly small booths...look, I'm 5'9" and my husband is 6'2" and this is something we've literally never encountered. 

Even so, well-played, all around. 

This blog is an Eleanor Roosevelt stan

⭐⭐⭐⭐

I've loved Eleanor Roosevelt ever since I randomly picked up a biography of her in elementary school. (That I randomly picked out a biography to read for fun as a 4th grader tells you a lot of what you need to know about me as a person.) I've read a lot about her over the years, but it's been a minute since I read a biography of just her. (And, confession, I still haven't read Eleanor Roosevelt, Volume 3: The War Years and After, 1939-1962. I own it. I just haven't read it.)

In his single-volume biography, simply titled Eleanor, David Michaelis focuses a lot on Eleanor, the person, as opposed to her many accomplishments or events in her life. It veers into being more of a psychological biography; obviously the events of her life are covered, but there's a lot of focus on her relationships and why she relates to people the way she does. There were times, particularly during FDR's presidency, that entire years were skipped with barely a blink. Which honestly wouldn't be an issue, except that Michaelis will mention something in passing that hadn't come up before. In that sense, despite it being a fairly compact biography, it probably wouldn't be great for people who aren't already familiar with the beats of Eleanor's life and FDR's presidency. It does a good job of analysis but isn't a good introduction.

Also, it was a bit weird what relationships he focused on. Obviously Eleanor's relationships with her father and Franklin are the big two. Michaelis writes about ER's relationship with Lorena Hickock, mostly to be like, "It was TOTALLY A SEXUAL RELATIONSHIP!!!" and is clearly using diaries/letters to make that assertion. Which, on the one hand, I get. I definitely remember reading biographies of Eleanor that might obliquely reference her relationship with Hick but be like, "But that's just how ladies of Eleanor's age would write to their friends!" On the other hand, I think it was really just how he wrote it that was weird. I don't know. And he honestly spent a lot less time on Hick than I would expect; ditto Earl Miller, another significant relationship for ER.

I particularly felt that ER's relationship with Marion Dickerman and Nancy Cook really got short shrift. Again, this is another time when he alludes to a falling out and problems in their relationship, but we don't get the details about it (some of which I know from other biographies). These bothered me because Michaelis clearly did a ton of research and I'm sure he knows loads about these various relationships; I just wanted more of them.

He does spend a TON of time on ER's relationship with David Gurewitsch, her doctor/object of affection late in life. (To the detriment, I feel, of Joe Lash, who sort of fades out of the picture after WWII.) I didn't know a ton about him (mostly that he existed, he and his wife shared a house with ER at the end of her life, and she was fond of him), so getting more information was helpful. But it felt like he got too much attention, particularly compared to others in Eleanor's life. I can't tell how significant he actually was because I feel like this was the story Michaelis wanted to tell.

It feels like I'm nitpicking; truth be told, I did quite enjoy this books. Michaelis's affection for Eleanor is clear throughout the book. He sympathizes with her but doesn't shy away from her flaws. He includes a number of pretty awful quotes from her about Jewish and Black people; she became champions for both groups, but certainly wasn't born that way. One of the remarkable things about Eleanor is how she grew into First Lady of the World, into FDR's conscience.

I also appreciated learning more about her time after FDR's death. I read too many books as a kid that had a final chapter (inevitably titled "On Her Own," after ER's memoir, On My Own) about her life after FDR died, usually focused pretty solely on her work with the UN. She did SO. MUCH. MORE. (while FDR was around, too, to be fair) and I love getting the details about it.

Would I recommend this book? Absolutely, though with the caveat that it would be helpful to know some of the details of Eleanor's life already. It's a solid, compact biography of my favorite historical figure.

Key Quotes

Advice from her Auntie Bye, which forever guided her life
"You will never be able to please everyone. No matter what you do, my dear, some people are going to criticize you. ... If you are satisfied in your mind that you are right, then you need never worry about criticism" (p. 82)

On Eleanor's reaction to being hurt (relatable)
"When hurt, she suppressed her feelings, and when anyone tried to come closer, whether to help or to hurt more, her only instrument of resistance was to turn away and sulk" (p. 104)

Eleanor trying to cope with her own life
"It was almost as though I had erected someone outside myself who was the president's wife. I was lost somewhere deep down inside myself" (p. 383)

"Work had always been her antidote for depression. Loneliness, she maintained, was a state of mind or of the soul and therefore untreatable, simply 'the lot of all human beings.'" (p. 493)

On Franklin and Eleanor
"As a couple, they were foils. He endured her seriousness and intensity as she endured his pranks and swordplay. ... He was not intentionally unkind, but he could be cold; his sense of fun was often cruel; and the more defenseless the victim, the less Franklin could resist the impulse to bully" (p. 107)

"She yearned for closeness, and yet her own responses prevented it. She would never be kittenishly playful with him; he would never confront hard truth with her. They could scarcely ever relax with each other." (p. 145)

Their son Elliott "saw FDR as a great illusionist, and it was his mother who made the illusion stick" (p. 304)

Eleanor, during FDR's presidency: "I realize more and more that FDR's a great man, and he is nice, but as a person, I'm a stranger, and I don't want to be anything else!" (p. 334)

Eleanor on immigration
The Immigration Act of 1924--"bringing to an end the America that, as Eleanor rightly recognized, 'had profited a thousandfold by what they have brought us, many of them representing the best brains of the countries from which they came'" (p. 245)

Criticism of ER
Steve Early, a press secretary of FDR: "Sometimes I think the Constitution should require that the President be a bachelor" (p. 334)

Eleanor quotes showing how awesome she was
"Her speeches to college students sounded subversive: 'Study history realistically'--'Do not always believe your country is right'--'You'll love your country just as much, the same as you love your parents, although you might not always believe them to be right'" (p. 337)

"If ever any Americans go to a concentration camp, American democracy will go with them" (p. 394)

 

Bananaball in Baltimore

If you've been on social media the past couple years, you've probably seen clips of the Savannah Bananas. They appeal to me for obvious reasons--combining baseball and choreographed dancing? AMAZING. Naturally I was all in.

The Bananas came to Camden Yards this past weekend and we were lucky enough to get tickets (thanks to my Orioles season ticket plan; I didn't win the Bananas lottery). (They were also really awful seats; we had pretty much no say in where the tickets were--all I could indicate was the $40 right field upper deck because that was, I think, all that was available. I'm still pretty miffed at where we wound up, but oh well.)

It was a really good time. When they go to MLB parks, the Bananas line up former players to make cameos in the game; we got Adam Jones and former manager Buck Showalter, plus the band All Time Low. The crowd went absolutely nuts for all of them. 

It was pretty overwhelming. There was literally always music playing. Various "cast members" (Bananas staff and players not in the night's game--the pitcher with the hat above showed up in our section a few times) would appear in the stands randomly for things like a sing-off. The game would be actively going on and the Banana mascot would be wandering around the outfield, or a group of players would run down to the foul pole to climb it. There'd be a brief pause as players did an elaborate dance before an at-bat (and having watched countless of these online, it was interesting watching the logistics of the filming):

The Bananas do a dance for an at-bat at the game on Friday, August 1 at Camden Yards.

For the game itself, players would periodically make trick plays. It was very difficult to figure things out about what was going on during the game; there was only one place in the park that showed balls, strikes, and outs. (It also showed trick plays and the clock--Banana games have a limit of 2 hours) I had tried to remind myself of the rules specific to Bananaball, but a lot of them slipped my mind, which meant I was very confused when the Bananas left the field after scoring a run in a late inning (due to the complexities of the scoring system, which I will not bore you with). 

I had fun singing along and watching the million things going on. But I don't feel like I need to see them again for at least 5 years or so. It was all spectacle and craziness and I liked it, but I don't know that I'd call it exciting. I'm sure there are people with favorite players, but it's not like the result of the game mattered. (I can't actually find the Bananas' win-loss record for the year.) The Bananas PTB get offended when people compare them to the Harlem Globetrotters, saying that the games are real and not scripted (other than the various antics). And while they may not know who's going to win, the issue is, it doesn't matter who wins.

I chatted with a friend who isn't a baseball fan and went, and I said that people weren't invested in the game. She pointed out the many people in Bananas gear, which is true, but I couldn't discern much of a difference in crowd noise when the Bananas scored. People have Bananas gear because they like the concept and the spectacle; I don't think they particularly cared about--or wore involved in--the game on the field. 

I do wonder what it would be like to see a game in the Bananas' own stadium in Savannah. I'm pretty sure they do have season ticket holders; there probably are people who are emotionally invested. But those aren't the majority attending games at MLB (or NFL) stadiums. And clearly enough people are watching for ESPN to broadcast their games.

I also wonder about their staying power. They've been around for 5 years; I wonder what they'll look like in another 5. 

A lovely end to a charming series

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 

Dear Miss Lake is a fitting end to the 4-book Emmy Lake Chronicles by A.J. Pearce. We've experienced World War II with Emmy Lake Mayhew, from the early days of the Blitz, when Emmy joined the Woman's Friend magazine team writing advice, to the late days of the war. It's 1944 and Emmy and her Woman's Friend family know that the end of the war is getting close; even so, that doesn't mean life has gotten easier for any of them. They've lost friends and family, they have loved ones fighting, and they're trying to figure out what life in peace times will look like.

I have so appreciated this series for showing life on the home front in England and how it's highlighted the experience of women as they take up unexpected jobs and positions. Pearce manages to balance more global concerns with everyday life, showing wartime weddings and Christmas fairs. I've also really liked the glimpses at Emmy and co. having to balance writing the stories they want with publishing what the government wants them to say; there's a tension at trying to show that "Keep calm and carry on" attitude without seeming like the magazine workers have no sympathy for the hardships their readers are experiencing.

Pearce continues to have Emmy walk the fine line of being a naturally optimistic, driven person but not being irritating. She's chipper without being twee. And I have no doubt that I'll go back and reread The Emmy Lake Chronicles time after time; it manages to be a comfort read even as it tackles heavy subjects. Emmy is someone with whom you want to spend time.

The first three books in the series are Dear Mrs. Bird, Yours Cheerfully, and Mrs. Porter Calling, and all are very much worth a read; they provide insights into different aspects of the war, including life in London during the Blitz and what life was like for women factory workers. And because I work in publishing myself (though in a quite different sector!), I loved the scenes throughout the series about running the magazine.

Many thanks to Scribner and NetGalley for the advance copy in return for my honest review.