List 17

Love: I'm just part way through it but I am devouring and loving Jonathan Franzen's Freedom: A Novel (much as I did his last book, The Corrections). In both novels, he uses a family from the Midwest as a subject and a prism through which to observe and comment on contemporary American life and culture. Believe the Great American Novel hype.

Like: Alterra Coffee in Milwaukee. Started by some old friends, Alterra roasts and brews great coffee and they've created a mini-empire in my old hometown. The un-Starbucks, they take historic locations - like the long-abandoned Milwaukee River Flushing Station, built in 1888, on Milwaukee's lakefront - and create cafes unique to those spaces.

Discovery: The Midwest has a perhaps surprisingly strong art scene. Of course, the Chicago Art Institute has always been world-class, and its new modern wing only cements its status. But the Milwaukee Art Museum and Minneapolis' Walker Art Center with its Sculpture Garden are worth a trip too and proof that you needn't be on the coasts to experience a great art museum.

Obsession: The Friday Fish Fry is Milwaukee's (and Wisconsin's) own unique tradition/obsession. Nearly every restaurant serves some form of it. It's crispy, beer-battered goodness, rooted in old-fashioned no-meat-on-Fridays Catholicism. I've been contemplating starting a monthly Friday Fish Fry dinner party in Berkeley.

Complaint: It's not the heat it's the humidity. Of course.