Some things that are true:
I had a very good recent spate of book thinging. Launches, real and virtual, conversations on TV and at Book Passage with Nina Schuyler, talking about the necessity of collective action in the climate crisis, of the luxury of despair, of the joys of weird and wonderful books, of the need to push back against AI. I also got to hang out at the Sibylline Press booth at the Berkeley Book Festival. Threads of my life converged, too. Friends from every time in my life: childhood, high school, college, adulthood—even one beloved college professor (Hi Francisco!).
Something that is also true:
Today I cried actual tears after trying five times to record a 30 second promo video. Everything about it was awful, and someone younger would have known the right app, the right filter. Someone better would have not cared about wrinkles and sagging neck, age spots and more. Sometimes, I miss the pre social-media era.
Another true thing:
Some really lovely reviews of Fallout have been rolling in and not just from the usual suspects. Some of the loudest raves about a book driven by angry women trying to take down power-hungry men have been by men. This gives me something like hope.
This, too, is true:
I know it’s gauche to say you feel “old” if you are less than 90-something, but recent interactions with technology have left me feeling at a tipping point of irrelevance. We GenXers, let’s admit it, take an undue amount of pride in our feral-scrappiness, our dogged “can do” because we “had to.” We wear it like a badge of honor and stubbornness. While there’s a lot I can and do figure out myself, lately I’ve been hitting walls, taking longer than usual to learn something simple. Frustrating myself with my own pace, missing the obvious. It’s hard to ask for help when you’ve gotten good at not having to.
This other thing that is also true:
While sandwiched between so many people from so many different stages of my life this weekend, I felt whiplashed between selves across time, and I left my body, floated out of my own edges almost like a life review. Ohhh, I thought, if only my teenaged self had known what I do now, she would not have had to suffer so.
One final truth:
If I could just bottle the joy, the high, of standing around talking to cool people about books and life, I could be a bajillionaire. If a job existed somewhere between professor and bookstore owner, I would be an executive at it already. )OMG, is that job Librarian?)
Real books made by real humans are places of messy, necessary human truths, and I hope in this aggressive push toward AI into all of our crevices, we never fully lose that urge to make them. Never lose standing around bookstores to chew on ideas, diving into urgent topics of the day. Never lose that joy of page-flipping well past the bedtime hour. Never lose coming together for festivals to celebrate books and writing and readers.
What is something true for you this week?
Join me for my next bookstore event in Portland!
The audiobook of Fallout is IN PRODUCTION.
Maria Marquis is SO GOOD. I can’t wait for you to hear her magic.
Where to buy Jordan’s books ( reviews most welcome!):
As a former librarian, I chuckled to myself at your discovery. We used to appear to "know everything," then we "knew how to find everything," then we "knew where to look to find everything" and now we "know how to start looking to find everything." Is this aging? IDK. Congrats on your wonderful book launch(es)!
It was a joy to participate in a small way and a timely reminder of the importance of speaking radical ideas in public spaces. Thank you for putting yourself out there over and over again.