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Sarah Hurwitz, HERE ALL ALONG

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Sarah Hurwitz, HERE ALL ALONG

Sarah: Totally. So many of the trends in modern spirituality, we've been on that in Judaism for thousands of years. The first prayer that traditionally observant Jews say when they wake up in the morning, it starts "Modeh Ani," which is "Grateful am I." Literally, the first word you utter from your mouth is grateful. You basically sing a prayer that says, I am so grateful for my life. Gratitude journals are great. I'm so glad that people have joined the party, but we've been here for centuries, if not millennia. Meditation and mindfulness is great. There is a Jewish meditation tradition as well that goes back thousands of years. Just realizing so many Jews like me, citing myself, we kind of think, oh, Judaism, it's old and stale. It's not meaningful. We go to all these other traditions to find meaning, but we have it right here in Judaism.

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Andi Buchanan, THE BEGINNING OF EVERYTHING

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Andi Buchanan, THE BEGINNING OF EVERYTHING

Andi: I had to do a lot of research on my own life. I had to look at medical notes from doctors' visits. I had to look at the CT and MRI and other procedure results and interpret those. I had to look back on emails I'd sent to my family in moments of lucidity just giving them updates. I had some text messages I'd saved. When I was trying to look for clues about what exactly I'd experienced, I even came across some writing I'd tried to do, which was completely nonsensical. I didn't even remember having done it. I had to do a bit of investigation. Out of these breadcrumbs, I had the dates and times of appointments, and emails to friends and family about the results, and some other things that I'd jotted down at the time. I was able to kind of recreate that journey. It was tricky. For me, it called into question what I think is the real fundamental question of memoir anyway, which is, who is telling this story? How much of it is true? What is truth? What is the self? Who's the I that's doing this storytelling? I talk about that a lot in the book because it's so interesting to me and because my experience was very much about that, that questioning of, who am I if I can't think, if I can't use words? I'm a writer. Who am I? If I'm not there, who am I?

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Lee Matalone, HOME MAKING

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Lee Matalone, HOME MAKING

Lee: The novel follows these three characters who are on these individual yet intersecting journeys, if you could call it that, to figure out how they fit into the world. One of those characters is Cybil who is born in occupation-era Tokyo to a young Japanese woman and this French solider. They have this brief affair. This child is produced. Then this baby is subsequently adopted and brought to the United States by an American general and his wife. One thread of the novel follows Cybil from childhood to adulthood. The next major character is Cybil's daughter, Chole, who the narrative follows as she's trying to remake a home in the wake of her marriage dissolving. I'll try not to give more away than that. Then there's Beau who's Chloe's best friend. He's shepherding Chloe through this period of time in which she's grieving. At the same time, he's trying to reconcile his own romantic failing and rekindle this relationship with a man from his youth. All three characters are really united is this quest, I suppose you can call it, to isolate some sense of identity or belonging, however romantic that notion may be.

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Shonda Moralis, BREATHE MAMA BREATHE

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Shonda Moralis, BREATHE MAMA BREATHE

Shonda: I was a skeptic when I started. I started mediating when [my daughter] was about three. I was a very devoted meditator. I took a class where the homework was to meditate for a half an hour every day. I'm a recovering perfectionistic and people-pleaser, so was like, okay, absolutely. I'm going to do my homework. I did. After just a few weeks, what I started to notice was that by slowing down just a notch, I was actually more productive and more efficient. I was a hard sell because I like to get things done, and I still do. Writing these books, we tend to write what we need to read and remember for ourselves. It's still that reminder for me too. I have to remind myself to hop off this hamster wheel and pause and take a few deep breaths or take a mindful break because if we don't, then the pace of our day just feels so frantic and urgent.

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Gigi Levangie, BEEN THERE, MARRIED THAT

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Gigi Levangie, BEEN THERE, MARRIED THAT

Gigi: It's basically a funny take on a ruthless Hollywood divorce. It's about a Hollywood writer who one night finds herself locked out of her own home. Afterwards, she has to navigate a high-stakes divorce with her OCD producer husband with the help of her jailbird sister. At the same time, she's dealing with perimenopause and a prepubescent teenager. Basically, it's hormones and divorce all at once. Yay.

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Siena and Mark Siegel, TO DANCE

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Siena and Mark Siegel, TO DANCE

Siena: To Dance is a memoir. It's about a ten-year period of my life growing up as a young ballet lover who started taking ballet and then fell in love with ballet and wanted to just continue doing it as much as possible, and coming to New York to train at the School of American Ballet, and doing that at a very interesting and unusual time in the history of ballet where George Balanchine was still alive. He was still running the company that the school is associated with, the New York City Ballet. People were coming to New York from Soviet Union and defecting. It was all these amazing dancers arriving there at that particular moment in time. I was this little girl just swept up into it all and getting to dance with some of them in the same performances as a child at New York City Ballet.

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Dan Peres, AS NEEDED FOR PAIN

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Dan Peres, AS NEEDED FOR PAIN

Dan: As Needed for Pain is about my struggle with a massive addiction to opiates, prescription painkillers. The major part of my addiction, which lasted for about seven years, overlapped with my time as being the editor-in-chief of Details magazine, which closed in 2015 but was published by Condé Nast. I had this really great and exciting job in media that had me visible to the world and interacting with lots of people, but I had a huge secret. I was a drug addict.

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Alice Berman, I EAT MEN LIKE AIR

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Alice Berman, I EAT MEN LIKE AIR

Alice: The story has seven main characters. You find out on page one that one of them is dead. You follow that thread back in time through what happened to bring him to that moment in time. There's a traumatic event early on that affects all of these seven people. They are working through that while you as the reader are also trying to figure out what happened to Alex, who is dead. It's all centered around a wedding party and a wedding, which was always something I really wanted to do because I've been a bridesmaid a few times. I think it's really interesting to be in this combination of people where you're really close friends with everyone else who's a bridesmaid, and you don't know any of the groomsmen. You're thrown together over and over again for a year, year and a half. Then you never see each other again.

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Angela Himsel, A RIVER COULD BE A TREE

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Angela Himsel, A RIVER COULD BE A TREE

Angela: It's a memoir. It's about growing up. I'm the seventh of eleven kids. I grew up in Southern Indiana in what some people might consider a cult. Let's call it an alternative kind of religion. It was called the Worldwide Church of God. We believed that the world was coming to an end any second. We were going to be spirited away to Petra in Jordan when the world came to an end. I grew up that way. Through many twists and turns, I ultimately converted to Judaism. It's about that particular religious journey. I would hope that it's also about the possibly of change in any sense of the word.

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Jennifer Gefsky & Stacey Delo, YOUR TURN

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Jennifer Gefsky & Stacey Delo, YOUR TURN

Stacey: One of the things we've found is that in our business, Après, we focus primarily on women who have taken career breaks and helping them get back into the workforce regardless of how long those breaks have been. What's interesting is when you look at the data, there are fifteen million working women with children under the age of eighteen. The press focuses a lot on maternity leave and the need for paid leave, which we strongly agree with, and then that return back. Then we focus a lot on women returning to work. Yet there is this large swath of women in the middle, in that messy middle as we call it in the book, who are trying to make these decisions about whether to take a career break, whether to go part time, whether to go freelance. Often, they're left feeling very stressed about those decisions and what the opportunity costs are going to be when they make those decisions. Like Jen said, if you see the cover of our book, it's a career dial with many stops along the way. We wanted people to understand that they can turn it. You can go part time and still get a full-time job later when you're ready. You can take a career break and still get back into the workforce. Giving women these options and understanding that they have them and then how to make those decisions is really what the book is about.

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Emily Nemens, THE CACTUS LEAGUE

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Emily Nemens, THE CACTUS LEAGUE

Emily: My dad grew up walking distance from Yankee Stadium. I think he had a real itch to get back into baseball when he moved out to Seattle. He moved there a year or two before the Mariners showed up. Basically as soon as I was old enough to sit through a game, we started going. It was a great time to be a little kid excited about baseball because Ken Griffey Jr had just arrived in Seattle. He was this teenage phenom. He went straight from high school. I don't know how many years I had the Sports Illustrated for Kids cover with Ken Griffey Jr blowing this great, big bubble gum bubble. He was just the cat's meow for me. That, plus it was a chance during our day and our week that I got to spend time with my dad alone, was really nice.

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Caroline de Maigret, OLDER, BUT BETTER, BUT OLDER

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Zibby Owens: I'm here today with Caroline de Maigret who is the author, with Sophie Mas, of How to Be Parisian Wherever You Are from 2014 and most recently, Older, but Better, but Older. She is an international model and has been a Chanel ambassador since 2013. Caroline is also a music producer at Bonus Track Records and a fashion video producer. She is a children's and women's rights activist. Caroline currently lives in Paris with her twelve-year-old son.

 

Welcome, Caroline. Thanks for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

 

Caroline de Maigret: Thanks for having me.

 

Zibby: Caroline just got off the flight from Paris, through an hour-and-a-half line at immigration, and has landed at my desk. This is major bonus points for you for doing this. I am so impressed.

 

Caroline: I didn't want to miss the opportunity to see you. You have to be nice to me because my mind is a bit in the clouds still.

 

Zibby: I will go very easy on you. I just like listening to your beautiful accent. That's the best part. I don't think anybody else from France has been on my show. Sorry for whoever I just offended. [laughs]

 

Caroline: You know what? I thought the writer from The School of Life.

 

Zibby: Oh, Alain de Botton.

 

Caroline: Alain de Botton, he's not French?

 

Zibby: He's British.

 

Caroline: He is?

 

Zibby: Yeah.

 

Caroline: He just has a French name.

 

Zibby: Maybe his family was from France. He definitely lives in London now.

 

Caroline: He went to Cambridge or studied in Cambridge or teach.

 

Zibby: He identifies as British. Let's go with that. Anyway, please tell listeners about your latest book, Older, but Better, but Older. This is your latest book. What is it about?

 

Caroline: It's about how you're just living your life. You're in your thirties. Then suddenly you have little surprises one after the other of the dark signs of age, might it be from people around you or society, but also just you and your body. The idea was to give an honest and fun way of seeing it. There are some great sides about aging. There are some not-so-fun sides. We are always aware of what it is when you become old, like in your sixties, you know biologically. You learn about it at school. People tell you what happens, but not the forties. It's a strange feeling that's not always very nice.

 

Zibby: I agree. I'm forty-three.

 

Caroline: I'm forty-four.

 

Zibby: There you go. In reading this, basically everything I was agreeing with in the whole book. I'm like, oh gosh, oh yes, oh this too. There were so many funny things. I want to talk about how you decided on the format. I found that super interesting about your book. It's almost a multimedia type of book in that you have, not multimedia, but a range of formats. You have poetry. You have essays. You have lists. You have photos. You have guidebook options to Paris and back. You have all sorts of different things. Then you have pictures almost like Instagram Story-ish posts. It's the perfect book for an attention-starved busy person, which is part of why I liked it so much. How did you come up with this idea and this way of telling this story?

 

Caroline: I think I know no other way to do it. That's how my life is. I'm a music producer. I write books. I won't say I'm a writer, but I write books. I'm a Chanel ambassador. I'm a mother. I direct videos. I do all these things. I love to play with formats and do long things and short things and having ideas and put them down. That's why sometimes I want to tell a long story and sometimes I just want to make you laugh with really short poems. I don't know. [laughs] That's how I am.

 

Zibby: How was the collaboration? This is your second book that you wrote with Sophie Mas. How does that work? Do you sit in a room with her and write it all down? Do you email each other? What's the actual process the two of you go through to write these books together?

 

Caroline: What we do is we meet each other. We start talking about life, what happened last week and then the months before, stories, love stories, stories at work. Little by little, you realize that lots of things you're going through, like neuroses and fears, are often linked to your age. That's why it was very interesting. When you talk, you realize that sometimes most of your actions will be dependent on your age. For example, you've learned how to live with your neuroses, but sometimes you don't. It's a process. We do this. Then she'll go, "I want to write about [indiscernible]," because she went through it. I'll give her anecdotes I have from friends, stories. That's how we do. She's going to go and write it at her house, then send it by email. I correct it. She does the same for my text. It becomes like one voice.

 

Zibby: That sounds great.

 

Caroline: What's good is when you talk about a subject that's so large, the age, it's nice to have different voices to make it a bit more round.

 

Zibby: To have a sense of humor about it is also really helpful.

 

Caroline: That's the only thing I've found to make it okay. It's life. It's the pass of life. It's completely fine. You just have to get used to all the new surprises all the time. If you learn how to laugh about it, then it makes it easier.

 

Zibby: Do you think that because you were this international modeling superstar, that your aging has been harder? Nobody's looking at me or most people, I would argue, critically about their looks as intensely as they might somebody who had made a profession out of how they look. Do you think it affects people who are more forward-facing in their appearance?

 

Caroline: I don't think so. I think it affects the teenager in me. Suddenly, I'm not part of the youth club anymore while I still think I am. The fact that I'm still being taken, my photo, and do Chanel campaigns and stuff actually helps me. I'm like, I'm still okay. If they still want me, I'm still okay. At the same time, it makes me proud as well to be -- I'm still really young, I think, to myself. That's how I feel. It makes me proud to keep on going and to still be a woman that other women can look up to as an example, like, you're still okay when you're forty-five because you're still in fashion and your pictures are being taken.

 

Zibby: What's been the hardest part of aging for you aside from not being in the club?

 

Caroline: While I was writing the book, I had a midlife crisis. It was a few different things. The main thing was I felt one day that it was the last chance for me to change everything, to change of boyfriend. I've been with my man for fifteen years. We have a son. I was like, oh, my god, I'm going to be with the same man all my life. I can it be the goal of some people, but to me it was so frightening. It's my last years of being sexy, of being able to do whatever I want or whatever, to change jobs, to change everything. Then it took me a year to went through it with anxiety attacks and all this. It was all crazy. I was going out every night. Then I was like, wow, actually I'm fine. [laughs] It's fine to be with the same person. I can change if I want to. I realized how it was all cuckoo. It was almost like a hypochondriac. It was very megalomaniac. I understood it was something, I was going from a woman to the next woman. I do that every ten years. I always have a little burnout every ten years.

 

Zibby: Did you decide to stay with him, or you broke up?

 

Caroline: Yes.

 

Zibby: You did? You're still together?

 

Caroline: Yeah, we're still together. He's amazing. He's been so nice. I feel so much more alive since all those questions I went through. It was very interesting.

 

Zibby: You started the book with the section, which was hilarious, called "You know things aren't the way they used to be." Then you add all these things. Some of my favorites were, "You no longer know who the hip singers and actors are." I read Us Weekly. I basically stopped reading it because I don't know who anybody is. I feel terrible. My twelve-year-old daughter is telling me who the people are.

 

Caroline: I have to say, I kind of lie to my son sometimes.

 

Zibby: That you know?

 

Caroline: Yeah. I'm like, oh, yeah, yeah.

 

Zibby: I should do that. She sees right through me, though. I'm the worst liar.

 

Caroline: I don't think we should. I'll get over it at one point and I'll be completely [indiscernible/laughter]. It's just strange because age is a number. It's your bones and your cells aging. Your mind, your mind is aging. I learn so much. I love where I am. The serenity of it is amazing. Knowledge is the key of everything. I love where I am, but it's just so strange when your body is aging to someone else while your mind is still, it's not aging. It's getting knowledge, but it's not really aging. That’s the problem.

 

Zibby: My dad is in his seventies. He says he looks in the mirror sometimes and is like, "Ah! What's with the white hair?" Inside, he feels like he's twenty-five. Then sometimes he looks at me and he's like, "How can I have a daughter your age? I feel so young." It's true. Some days I'm like, aren't I still twenty-two?

 

Caroline: It's completely fine. It's just to have to get used to it, to all those ideas of not being a youngster anymore. It's fine. That's what the book is about, is taking a fun look of it.

 

Zibby: You also had this whole section which I think was my favorite, "All the times you tell yourself you're exercising when you're actually not." Today, I was literally at the Natural History Museum with my five-year-old son.

 

Caroline: I love this place.

 

Zibby: I was like, this is great. I'm getting a little workout here walking around to the cafeteria to buy animal crackers. [laughs] This is not a workout. I used to work out all the time. Oh, my gosh, it's amazing what you can convince yourself to do. Do you still work out? You must.

 

Caroline: No, I've never worked out. I started now because I understood I had to just to be healthy, and healthy in my mind as well. It feels good to the brain and just for the body to be not too stuck. No, I've never done it before. I hate it. I take no pleasure whatsoever in exercising. People tell you with time it will come. It never did.

 

Zibby: Was it you or Sophie in the book who's the one doing the yoga? Is it you? One of you said that in one of the tradeoffs -- there were all these catch-22s. The tradeoff is the pain of having to do yoga and the boredom that comes with it.

 

Caroline: It was me. I did a lot of yoga when I had my burnout ten years ago. Oh, god, I sound like a crazy woman. I did it. It was so good. I felt so good and so relieved. Every time, it was hell to go there. I hated it. I was so bored.

 

Zibby: Not for everybody. It's not for everybody. I also found it really interesting, your chapter on owning your insecurities. Maybe this was Sophie, about her butt. Was that you?

 

Caroline: No, it's me. That's how I found my style.

 

Zibby: You opened the chapter by saying, "I don't like my butt. I just don't. I've disliked it since the summer I was seventeen when a guy accosted me at the club to inform me that my ass hung low."

 

Caroline: [laughs] It's true.

 

Zibby: Some random guy just came up to you?

 

Caroline: Yeah, I think he was flirting. You know how you take the power over someone by saying something not nice, so then they're actually cool people because they're nice enough to talk to you while you're not that good? They break you to take the power. That was his strike.

 

Zibby: I was going through this whole essay thinking, oh, my gosh, if she hates her butt, the rest of us are just doomed.

 

Caroline: No, no, I hide it really well. It's fine. It's actually a section in the book on style and how you grow from flaws to find yourself. You hear what people say to you. You should not listen to guys in clubs who say stupid shit.

 

Zibby: You pretty much probably should not listen to guys in clubs, period, full stop. [laughter] Go on.

 

Caroline: It's more about how you listen to how people react. It's a style section. This guy who told me about my butt -- I had never looked in the mirror. I've never really looked at myself in the mirror. It was more about seeing if I had toothpaste around my mouth after brushing my teeth. Then I realized, oh, my god, it's true. Then I became really aware of that. I started making a whole masculine androgynous look. People reacted so well on it that I was like, wow. It was actually quite a good idea to go on that look, just to find bigger pants but that was not baggy pants. I went men's pants. It went really well. People were all excited. I was like, okay, that could be a look. It's fun that it went from a flirt line in a club to actually my style that I kept for the last twenty-five years.

 

Zibby: You have a whole philosophy of the difference between fashion and style which your first book dealt with more, correct?

 

Caroline: Mm-hmm.

 

Zibby: What's the difference, fashion and style? How do you keep your own style?

 

Caroline: I think style is about who you are and how you want to be perceived. It's part of the knowledge you have, I reckon that the books you read and how you feed yourself, watching movies and the exhibitions you go to or the painting you see. It feeds, probably unconsciously, your taste and your knowledge. I know that quite early, Katharine Hepburn had an impact in me aesthetically, style-wise with her high-waisted pants and her white shirts, always a little bit masculine actually but yet super sexy but very empowering. It's funny how it just melts on you. Knowledge melts on your taste. You understand better, who you are and how you want to look like. I would say that's the difference. It would be knowledge and being true to yourself and who you are.

 

Zibby: Okay, I'll try to do that more. Are there any items that you can't live without, either clothing items, makeup items? What do you depend on the most?

 

Caroline: Oh, god. Is my son an item? [laughs]

 

Zibby: Sure.

 

Caroline: I guess my leather jacket is like an armor. I always feel invincible when I wear that. Usually when I wear it, you know I'm not in a super good mood. It feels like nobody can hurt me or something. I'm not very attached to material things, to be honest.

 

Zibby: I like the insight into the jacket. I wonder if other people have those things, like big red flags to people who know them well. I'm trying to think if I have anything.

 

Caroline: I do have a few pieces. I think you do without knowing. You have the few pieces that when you are not feeling so good in the morning, you know those pieces will be okay. You know they're comfortable. You know they’ll fit you. A white shirt, I know is always --

 

Zibby: -- This is like my extra-large pajama pants and my son's extra-large school sweatshirt. That's my "I'm in a bad mood. Stay away" type of thing, which is not half as chic as your outfit. What's coming next for you? You're so busy. You have so many different things. What are you most excited about that's coming up?

 

Caroline: Directing. It fulfils everything I like, image and telling stories and people. I love it. I've never felt so at the right place than when I direct. I've done fashion films for now, for Chanel and other friends. Now I'm writing my first short movie. I'm producing it. I'm directing it quite soon. That's really exciting. It's a fiction. I'm very excited and very excited as well for future.

 

Zibby: What advice do you have for aging women who may not be supermodels? We're all going through the same thing at the same time, like you say in your book, finding the stray white hairs and all these little things that are creeping up, the wrinkles and all these very unpleasant, annoying, getting in the way of daily life things that are starting to happen. Do you have any advice?

 

Caroline: I'd say that first of all, perfection doesn't exist. Don't run after it. Take the pressure off. If not, you're just frustrated all the time. Get used to the idea of aging. Feed yourself with other things than looking at yourself in the mirror. When your centers of interest are stronger, physically doesn't become as important. Also, I say that a sense of humor in that always helps. First of all, it makes you shine. I think that's how you gain everybody in the room. I always say that, at least in fashion, all the biggest muses were never the most beautiful girls. They were the witty or the most [indiscernible] women. It's more into what you have to say and behave than your age, really. It's just a number. Also when you have a sense of humor, people can't talk about it because you talk about it first. When you laugh about your white hair or whatever, your diet, if you make jokes before everyone, they can't use it, which is a good trick.

 

Zibby: That is a good trick. I use that trick too. That's a good one. How about any parting advice to aspiring authors, somebody who's looking to undertake a project like yours?

 

Caroline: Parting advice?

 

Zibby: Any advice to aspiring authors?

 

Caroline: Sorry, I thought partying. I was like, whoa. Vodka. [laughs]

 

Zibby: No, parting like at the end of our -- we are about to part. Oh, partying advice. Do I need partying advice? No, I think I'm good. I'll read you this question. Do you have advice to aspiring authors who want to take on a book project like the one that you just did?

 

Caroline: I have never been, in my life, scared of failure. It doesn't do anything on me. What I love to do is create and do. I always do, do, do. There are lots of stuff that never went through, or that went through but that didn't work out. Just go for it. Do your things. When I lived in the nineties in New York, that's where I got that energy from, which is not French at all, which is just do. You can do it. Whatever happens, we'll see. You're allowed to do it. That's the biggest trick. Then you just put your ideas down and you go from that.

 

Zibby: Excellent. Thank you so much for coming on "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books."

 

Caroline: Thanks for having me.

 

Zibby: I really appreciate it.

 

Caroline: Thank you.

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Dr. Mark McConville, FAILURE TO LAUNCH

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Dr. Mark McConville, FAILURE TO LAUNCH

Mark: It's a book for parents, and specifically parents of kids who are entering emerging adulthood, being eighteen to thirty, roughly. That first part of emerging adulthood is usually referred to as the launching substage. That substage has, actually, a curriculum to it. There are things we want to see kids doing. We know if they're doing them, it portends well for where they're going to end up by age thirty. When they're not doing them, I encounter parents who are just perplexed. The fact is there is no handbook for, how do you parent a twentysomething? Today's generation of parents are much more, I don't want to say saddled, but they are engaged with their kids longer because kids need support longer, given all of the particulars about education and the economy. They're left still being close to the action, seeing their kid's behavior, unless the kid is doing it on his or her own. They're stumped as to how to intervene, how to exert influence, how to do it in a way that is constructive rather than just creating conflict and friction.

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Elizabeth Gerlach, BEN'S ADVENTURES

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Elizabeth Gerlach, BEN'S ADVENTURES

Elizabeth: Then I was driving in my car one day and I thought it would be really cool to do a children's book to create a legacy for us or for [Ben] or give tribute to him and show a kid in a wheelchair. You didn't really, at the time, see a ton of picture books that showed all types of people, all types of kids with different needs or different abilities. I thought that would be really cool to represent, in my way, a kid in a wheelchair that had different needs. I didn't want the books to be about disability, just to be about how he lives in a wheelchair. I wanted it to be about a child that was a kid even though he was in a wheelchair. He could have friends. He could have dreams. He could enjoy his life. He could have fun. The premise of my books is that it's Ben's Adventures. Ben's in a wheelchair. He dreams up all of these fun instances.

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Marti Bledsoe Post, RETROFIT: THE PLAYBOOK FOR MODERN MOMS

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Marti Bledsoe Post, RETROFIT: THE PLAYBOOK FOR MODERN MOMS

Marti: I was in a marketing agency career for almost twenty years, which in marketing agencies is like 250 years. I loved the work. I loved the pace. I loved the clients. I loved the teams I got to work with. I was exhausted and burnt out and really stressed. My kids were three and eight. We were juggling the beginning of elementary school and learning about how you get two kids at such different ages and stages through their life. I was a reluctant warrior on this. I was asked to give a tell-all talk on being a working mom at a conference. It was a women's conference. It was in my hometown. It was my industry, so I knew I would know a lot of women in the room. I was really scared. I had a VP title. I had a big team. I thought if I stand up there and really say, "This is kind of a mess most days," that my boss would say, "I'll find someone who's not a mess to do this role," and in fact every other boss in town would think the same thing. I really felt career jeopardy about it.

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Roz Chast & Patty Marx, YOU CAN ONLY YELL AT ME FOR ONE THING AT A TIME

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Roz Chast & Patty Marx, YOU CAN ONLY YELL AT ME FOR ONE THING AT A TIME

Patty: Most books about how to have a good marriage or a good relationship are so romantic. Living with someone isn't all that romantic. When you're loading the dishwasher, you're not starry-eyed.

Roz: They're romantic. Sometimes they're very, very serious. It's not like these fights aren't serious. They are, but they're just much more -- the things that my husband and I will have fights about, they're not really about -- recently, my husband got quite angry at me because I put the raspberries on the lower shelf as opposed to the top shelf where, evidently, raspberries belong in some sort of ideal universe. I was just amazed that he took that so personally.

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Ann Napolitano, DEAR EDWARD

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Ann Napolitano, DEAR EDWARD

Ann: [Dear Edward] is about a twelve-year-old boy named Edward who is the sole survivor of a plane crash. There's two storylines in the book. The book starts with Edward and his family, his brother and his parents and several other passengers that we get to know, boarding a flight in Newark Airport which is bound for LAX. At the end of the first chapter, the flight takes off. Then the second chapter starts later that same day after that plane has crashed. Edward wakes up in the hospital. He's the sole survivor. For the rest of the book, I alternate the two timelines. We do the arch of the fight and the crash, and the arch of Edward's life after the crash and how he figures out how to go on.

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Megan Alexander, ONE MORE HUG

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Megan Alexander, ONE MORE HUG

Megan: [My son] kept running back to me for "One more hug, one more hug." He must have asked me for five or six hugs. What started as being first in the line to get on the bus, by the time he was done running back for all those hugs, he was the last little boy to get on the school bus. This went on for almost two years, kindergarten, first grade. At first, my husband Brian and I were sort of hurrying him along, like, "Come on, time to go to school. Let's go," quick little hugs and then pushing him on his way. Then we realized, oh, my gosh, we need to slow down and cherish these moments and just be there for him. It became a little saying in our family where when he'll ask for one more hug, we'll say, "There's always time for one more hug." That happens at bedtime. That happens when Mommy needs to travel for work. That's how the book came about. In the book, we take the boy not just through childhood, but also into high school and then when he's going off, supposedly, to college. You can always come back for one more hug.

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Michael Frank, WHAT IS MISSING

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Michael Frank, WHAT IS MISSING

Michael: Typically, I need to see a place in order to inhabit it and then inhabit it with language. I knew I wanted to start the book in Florence, somewhere I had lived in my twenties and which has been a very central place in my imagination and in my heart ever since, as has the whole country of Italy for various reasons. Quite honestly, I had an image of a woman walking away. Her walking away, in a sense, pervades the whole book because she's often somewhat difficult to understand by the people around her. She's difficult to understand even to herself. That idea that you don't always read someone because they have their back turned toward you, whether it's actual or figurative, is another missing element that compelled me. I wanted to discover who she was and why she would do some of the things she does in this book. I don't know if I succeeded, but I tried. That's the role of the novelist, is not to have answers, but to pose questions and to do his or her best to try to find stories that will answer them.

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Thatcher Wine, FOR THE LOVE OF BOOKS

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Thatcher Wine, FOR THE LOVE OF BOOKS

Thatcher: I never set out to start a book business. Even when I started selling books, I didn't consider it to be a business, really. I really considered it to be a hobby that I enjoyed. I had fun going to estate sales, library sales, antique auctions, things like that, coming home with a bunch of books, describing them, figuring out if they were first editions, if they were signed, if there's some prominence to who had owned them before, and putting them up on the internet in the early days, roughly, of books going online. One thing led to another. A few years later, I was still buying books in larger and larger quantities. I'd hear about a bookstore going out of business. I'd go buy their inventory. These days, we have about 20,000 books in stock. The business really transformed over the years. It was about rare books and first editions back then, very antiquarian, the older the better. Then made a couple shift in the 2000s. Some people asked if I could curate a library for their house. A lightbulb went off. Maybe this could be my niche, curating collections for homeowners and hotel lobbies and things like that when they needed books. Eventually, it shifted to more and more new books and fewer used books and old books, but we still do some of both.

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