Things I Love Lately

Uniqlo long underwear – In the winter I’m always cold.  There are two major places that I experience this, and I have finally fixed one!  I bought several long-underwear shirts by Uniqlo that are thin and soft and comfortable, and I wear them under sweaters.  Huge improvement.  Next stop: my feet.  Any suggestions?

A Mother’s Wish for Down Under – I read Lee Wooduff’s piece with tears literally pouring down my cheeks. “But I got what I asked for. His leave-taking, his curiosity about the greater world was my job. He is doing exactly what I raised him to do – to go pursue his own life.”  Yes.  Yes, yes, and yes.  I’m on the doorstep of some of this leave-taking, and wow, it’s beautiful and painful in equal measure.

Holiday Book Suggestions – I shared this list of the books I am buying for the holidays this year last week, but am sharing it again in case it got lost in the Thanksgiving shuffle.

Exit West– I read Mohsin Hamid’s book over Thanksgiving on Grace’s recommendation and wow.  It took me a little while to get into it, but once I did, I was awestruck by Hamid’s beautiful prose, by his observations, both lyrical and brutal, on being an immigrant, on the fluidity of the world’s population.  It feels incredibly, prophetically germane to this exact moment, too.

Homecoming – I watched the first season of this Amazon series, starting Julia Roberts, a few weeks ago.  It’s hypnotically interesting, full of confusing time jumps and wonderful acting performances, and as my sister and I recently discussed, the 30 minute format is just great.  I highly recommend it.

I write these Things I Love posts approximately monthly.  You can see them all here.

dark though it is

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow for the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water looking out
in different directions.
…
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us like the earth
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is

– W. S. Merwin

I’m not going to lie to you.  It feels dark right now.  I shared a line from this poem on Instagram last year, on the eve of my life plunging into even greater darkness.  And yet there is so much to say thank you for.  There is.

Holiday book suggestions

It’s become a tradition for me to post ideas for books to give this holiday season.  In my opinion, books are always the best gift! I wrote about my favorite books of the half-year in late June, and did not include any of those titles here, though I refer to that list as another resource for gift ideas.  Many of the books I give regularly don’t change year to year: Miss Rumphius, Space Boy, and Roxaboxen for small children, The Phantom Tollbooth for older children, Dani Shapiro and Katrina Kenison memoirs (especially Devotion and The Gift of an Ordinary Day) and Mary Oliver’s poetry for adults.  But each year there are current or recent reads (not always recent releases) that strike me as great gifts.  I wanted to share some of those here.

My posts about books for giving in the past few years are here: 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012.

For teenagers (I asked Grace and Whit what their favorite reads were this year):

Grace: The Hate U Give – Angie Thomas.  Once in a great while Grace presses a book she’s read into my hands and says: this.  you must read this.  She did this with THUG and she was right.  Wow.  That’s all I can say.  Must.  Read.  Probably a lot of teens (and adults) have read this by now, but if they haven’t, I think it’s a great gift.

Persepolis – Marjane Satrapi.  Grace read this in school and loved it.  She described it as eye opening and said it made her think about feelings of identity and safety.

A Walk in the Woods – Bill Bryson. Grace read this over the summer and fell for Bryson’s voice, as did I when I read it.  He is funny and warm and inspiring all at the same time. What a classic.

Whit: Ready Player One – Ernest Cline.  Whit tore through this over spring break and I want to read it too (I have a surprising-to-some affection for sci fi as a genre).  We haven’t seen the movie yet.

The Hungry Ocean: A Swordboat Captain’s Journey – Linda Greenlaw. Whit read this this summer and really enjoyed it.  Entertaining and thought-provoking.

Memoir

North: Finding My Way While Running the Appalachian Trail – Scott Jurek’s memoir is an inspiring story of persistence and determination.  Great gift for any athlete or person undertaking a large challenge.

There Are No Grown-ups: A Midlife Coming-of-Age Story – Pamela Druckerman’s book made me laugh, hard, and it also made me think.  This topic is one that’s near to me as I prepare for On Being 40(ish) to launch in February!

Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love – Dani Shapiro.  This is cheating because it doesn’t come out until 2019, but pre-order it for those you love anyway.  What a read. This book is written in Dani’s trademark poetic prose, and it is full of questions about who we are, where we come from, and what family, love, and secrets really mean.  I loved this book and reviewed it here.

Fiction As we’ve established, I’ve been reading novels which entertain and engross me this year.  Some of those that rise to the top of my list and which I’d gladly wrap up are:

Charlotte Walsh Likes To Win– Jo Piazza.  Entertaining story about a female politician clearly inspired by today’s world.  I really liked this story.

How Hard Can It Be? – Allison Pearson.  The author of I Don’t Know How She Does It revisits her characters a decade and a half later.  I am grateful to be the same age as Pearson, because everything she writes rings an almost uncomfortably-familiar bell.  I’m right here, right now: teenagers, career, parents: midlife.  Juggle, juggle, juggle.  This novel manages to be both hilarious and deeply reassuring.  I loved it.

Laura & Emma – Kate Greathead.  This novel is spare and observant, managing to build a fully-realized world out of short vignettes.  Greathead’s musings on motherhood made me think.

I’m curious to hear what’s under your tree this year!  Please share.

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what has always been

Again I resume the long
lesson: how small a thing
can be pleasing, how little
in this hard world it takes
to satisfy the mind
and bring it to its rest.

…

What more did I
think I wanted? Here is
what has always been.
Here is what will always
be.

-Wendell Berry

Another perfect passage I found (how did I not know this?  Berry is one of my favorites!) on First Sip.

A big announcement and a giveaway!

It gives me more joy than you can possibly imagine to announce that a book I edited, On Being 40(ish), will be released by Simon & Schuster on February 5th, 2019.  This book was a delight from start to finish, and working with my incomparable agent Brettne Bloom and editor par excellence Christine Pride was a complete pleasure.  Anyone who’s been reading this blog for a bit knows this is a lifelong dream for me.  I hope there will be more books.

The fifteen artists whose work is included in the book are all people I respect and admire, and I can say without hesitation that these pieces will make you laugh, cry, and nod in identification.  This book is about a particular decade of life, but it’s also about being an aware, sentient human being in general.  I will be giving copies to many, many people I know come the winter and spring, and I hope you will too!

You can preorder On Being 40(ish) and I hope you will.  Most of all, I hope you love it.  Please let me know!

Also, a giveaway: I’ll send an advance copy to someone who comments here  I’ll draw randomly tomorrow at 8am so please leave a comment for your chance to win our book!

I’m happy that our first two trade reviews were positive!  They are here:

Kirkus:
Fifteen women share their thoughts about life’s transitions. In her debut book, journalist Mead gathers essays by women in their late 30s to early 50s, reflecting on love, friendship, careers, family, dating, and self-image, among many other issues that have become important as they face a challenging new decade of their lives. Although the editor underscores the “divergent voices” in the collection, the majority of the contributors are white, middle-class, successful writers (one, Sujean Rim, is an illustrator who offers a cartoon about giving up skinny jeans). They do, however, reveal diverse experiences: Meghan Daum, memoirist columnist for the New York Times Book Review, has settled into single life and a fruitful career in Manhattan; still, she feels a “current of constant low-grade shock…about how old I’ve managed to become.” KJ Dell’Antonia, editor of the New York Times’ “Motherlode” column, apologizes for not answering an email message because of the many more important tasks (buying bread, snuggling her son) that occupy her time. Essayist Sloane Crosley assesses the changes in her middle-aged face. Two particularly moving pieces concern friendship: Catherine Newman’s chronicle of the outfits she and her best friend wore, beginning in kindergarten, in 1972, and ending in 2015, when Newman cherishes her friend’s tunics, yoga pants, and Ugg boots after she died of ovarian cancer. “I am wearing my heart on my sleeve,” she writes, “my memories like a crazy quilt of loss.” It took a shattered bone for novelist Allison Winn Scotch, who prided herself on being stubbornly independent, to see that friends and family can be extraordinarily caring, “more worthy than you realized, even when you already found them worthy enough.” The essays are interspersed with brief remarks about the biggest surprise, most important lesson, or most salient mantra gleaned from getting older and, the writers hope, wiser. “Everything looks better, feels better, and is way more manageable in the morning,” offers Lee Woodruff, whose husband’s (journalist Bob Woodruff) roadside bomb injury was the subject of one of her memoirs. Candid, often charming revelations from a host of articulate women.

Publisher’s Weekly:

Journalist Mead presents charming, relatable, and wise essays from 15 female writers between the ages of 40 and 50 on insights gleaned from reaching their fifth decade. Though the women have different goals, priorities, and accomplishments, certain commonalities emerge, most notably gratitude, confidence, and an ironclad sense of self they could not have imagined for themselves as younger women. Meghan Daum describes coming to grips with her preference for a solitary life devoted to work, while Jill Kargman recalls beginning an acting career at age 39, demonstrating there is always potential for a surprising new act in life. (She also evinces a flair for metaphor, declaring, “We become balsamic reductions as we age—our very best parts distilled and clarified.”) Other essays look back with a hard-won, sometimes wistful sense of perspective, as in Catherine Newman’s poetic piece, which uses decades of fashion choices to narrate the story of losing her twin sister to ovarian cancer. Taken as a group, these personal narratives argue that aging is a process of shedding the inconsequential and acquiring a laser focus on the truly essential. Without a hint of preachiness, this is a practical guide to navigating life for anyone who has passed the milestone of 40.

https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-5011-7212-0