Cleaning up New York

Cleaning up New York / Bob Rosenthal

A slender volume by a poet who made ends meet by cleaning up after people in New York in the 70's.  Some great cleaning tips and reflections on life and the people he worked for. Seems like that pivotal time in his life taught him many life lessons that work well.  Wish someone like him was willing to clean my place even though the $3.50/ hour Bob earned would probably be a bit more costly today.

One Plus One / Jojo Moyes 368 pages

My third Moyes read, following the terrific Me Before You and the not-terrific-but-still-good The Girl You Left Behind.  One Plus One falls into the latter category.  It's the story of Jess, a fine young woman whose life has jumped the tracks, with a lousy job, a damaged stepson, and a math-genius daughter.  At a desperate turning point in her life she meets Ed, a wealthy software whiz who's made some incredibly dopey decisions.  Incredible is the word here - the plot is so implausible that the book should stink, but Moyes creates believable characters with excellent dialogue and interior voices so that the plot hardly matters.  She's cranking them out very quickly these days - we have Silver Bay and The Ship of Brides yet to come in 2014 alone -  and I worry that my favorite light pleasure reads may lose their appeal.  We'll see.