The New Old Me

“A funny, seasoned take on dashed illusions.”—O Magazine “I love everything Meredith Maran writes. She is insightful, funny, and human, and the things she writes about matter to me deeply. Her memoir, The New Old Me, is a book I don’t just want to read—I need to read it. So does everyone else who’s getting older and wants to live fully, with immediacy and enjoyment, which is to say, everyone.”—Anne Lamott, author of Hallelujah Anyway For readers of Anne Lamott, Abigail Thomas, and Ayelet Waldman comes one woman's lusty, kickass, post-divorce memoir of starting over at 60 in youth-obsessed, beauty-obsessed Hollywood. After the death of her best friend, the loss of her life’s savings, and the collapse of her once-happy marriage, Meredith Maran leaves her San Francisco freelance writer’s life for a 9-to-5 job in Los Angeles. Determined to rebuild not only her savings but also herself while relishing the joys of life in La-La land, Maran writes “a poignant story, a funny story, a moving story, and above all an American story of what it means to be a woman of a certain age in our time” (Christina Baker Kline, number-one New York Times–bestselling author of Orphan Train). Praise for The New Old Me: “High time we had a book that celebrates becoming an elder! Meredith Maran writes of the difficulties of loss and change and aging, but makes it clear that getting on can be more interesting, more fun, and a lot more exciting than youth.”—Abigail Thomas, author of the New York Times bestseller What Comes Next and How to Like It “By turns poignant and funny, the book not only shows how one feisty woman coped with a ‘Plan B life’ she didn't want or expect with a little help from her friends. It also celebrates how she transformed uncertainty into a glorious opportunity for continued late-life personal growth. A spirited and moving memoir about how ‘it's never too late to try something new.’”—Kirkus

"Like the heart-to-heart conversations you share with your funniest, most honest, most unshockable woman friend, What It's Like to Live Now reveals the intimate details of a singular life as it is lived by a member of a singular generation." "In 1968 Meredith Maran was expelled from the elite Bronx High School of Science for leading protests against the Vietnam War. She was an active member of the generation that pledged to change the world, end injustice, and stay young forever. Today (despite all expectations to the contrary) she is forty-three, with an ex-husband, a lover, two teenage sons, and a mortgage on her dream house at the edge of the Oakland ghetto." "One thing hasn't changed: Meredith is still asking big questions. How do you justify your decision to stay in the inner city when your son wants to carry a knife to junior high to protect himself? How do you create a happy healthy family when nothing in your childhood taught you how - and your new life partner is a woman? How do you keep your heart open when breast cancer and AIDS are attacking your closest friends? And how do you stay true to your hopes for a better world when there's a living to be made and a homeless man at the front gate?" "Happily, Meredith Maran navigates these dilemmas without ever losing her subversive sense of humor. Whether she is challenging the nutritionally correct with her death-by-chocolate birthday cake or agonizing over what kind of nightgown to pack for her first weekend with a woman lover, her eye for life's contradictions is hilariously accurate." "What Its Like to Live Now is a poignant exploration of the gap between the dreams of the sixties and the realities of the nineties - and a reminder that even as youthful idealism goes gray at the temples, life can be lived with love, commitment, and integrity. Reflected in the mirror Meredith Maran holds up to her choices and experiences, you are certain to catch a glimpse of your own."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

These nuggets of wisdom are offered by an Academy Award–nominated actor (James Woods), a popular comedian (Aasif Mandvi), and a world-famous novelist (Jodi Picoult) to their sixteen-year-old selves. No matter how accomplished and confident they seem today, at sixteen, they were like the rest of us—often unsure, frequently confused, and usually in need of a little reassurance. In Dear Me, 75 celebrities, writers, musicians, athletes, and actors have written letters to their younger selves that give words of comfort, warning, humor, and advice. These letters present intimate, moving, and witty insights into some of the world’s most intriguing and admired individuals. By turns funny, surprising, raw, and uplifting, this singular collection captures the universal conditions that are youth, life, and growing up.

From the bestselling author of The Passenger and the Pulitzer Prize–winning novel The Road comes a "profoundly disturbing and gorgeously rendered" novel (The Washington Post) that returns to the Texas-Mexico border, setting of the famed Border Trilogy. The time is our own, when rustlers have given way to drug-runners and small towns have become free-fire zones. One day, a good old boy named Llewellyn Moss finds a pickup truck surrounded by a bodyguard of dead men. A load of heroin and two million dollars in cash are still in the back. When Moss takes the money, he sets off a chain reaction of catastrophic violence that not even the law—in the person of aging, disillusioned Sheriff Bell—can contain. As Moss tries to evade his pursuers—in particular a mysterious mastermind who flips coins for human lives—McCarthy simultaneously strips down the American crime novel and broadens its concerns to encompass themes as ancient as the Bible and as bloodily contemporary as this morning’s headlines. No Country for Old Men is a triumph. Look for Cormac McCarthy's latest bestselling novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris.

Join an unlikely trio for some irresistibly funny antics in this read-aloud gem from bestselling author Mem Fox and bestselling and award-winning illustrator Mark Teague. Once there was a huge, scary dog. Right? Wrong! But there was a cat. In this zippy, call-and-response-style adventure, a cat and dog are astonished to find a mouse in their house! The three circle each other while the story sometimes correctly describes their antics—and sometimes doesn’t. Young readers will love participating by pointing out which parts are right and wrong.

“The voices gathered here display incredible wit, sincerity, and generosity; we are lucky to be able to listen to them.” —Artforum If you had the opportunity to meet your eighty-year-old self, what do you think she/he would tell you? That is the question artist Susan O’Malley, who was herself to die far too young, asked more than a hundred ordinary people of every age, from every walk of life. She then transformed their responses into vibrant text-based images. From a prompt to do things that matter to your heart, to a reminder that it’s okay to have sugar in your tea, these are calls to action and words to live by—heartfelt, sometimes humorous, and always fiercely compassionate. This stirring celebration of our collective humanity unveils the wisdom we hold inside ourselves right now. “Everyone, regardless of age, can take something away from this uplifting work.” —Real Simple

Wild, dangerous, and flat-out unbelievable, here is the incredible #1 bestselling memoir of the Canadian actor, gambler, and raconteur, and one of the greatest stand-up comedians of all time. A Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year As this book’s title suggests, Norm Macdonald tells the story of his life—more or less—from his origins on a farm in the backwoods of Ontario and an epically disastrous appearance on Star Search to his account of auditioning for Lorne Michaels and his memorable run as the anchor of Weekend Update on Saturday Night Live—until he was fired because a corporate executive didn’t think he was funny. But Based on a True Story is much more than just a memoir; it’s the hilarious, inspired epic of Norm’s life. In dispatches from a road trip to Las Vegas (part of a plan hatched to regain the fortune he’d lost to sports betting and other vices) with his sidekick and enabler, Adam Eget, Norm recounts the milestone moments, the regrets, the love affairs, the times fortune smiled on his life, and the times it refused to smile. As the clock ticks down, Norm’s debt reaches record heights, and he must find a way to evade the hefty price that’s been placed on his head by one of the most dangerous loan sharks in the country. As a comedy legend should, Norm peppers these pages with classic jokes and long-mythologized Hollywood stories. This wildly adventurous, totally original, and absurdly funny saga turns the conventional “comic’s memoir” on its head and gives the reader an exclusive pass inside the mad, glorious mind of Norm Macdonald.

Meredith Maran lived a daughter's nightmare: she accused her father of sexual abuse, then realized, nearly too late, that he was innocent. During the 1980s and 1990s, tens of thousands of Americans became convinced that they had repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse, and then, decades later, recovered those memories in therapy. Journalist, mother, and daughter Meredith Maran was one of them. Her accusation and estrangement from her father caused her sons to grow up without their only grandfather, divided her family into those who believed her and those who didn't, and led her to isolate herself on "Planet Incest," where "survivors" devoted their lives, and life savings, to recovering memories of events that had never occurred. Maran unveils her family's devastation and ultimate redemption against the backdrop of the sex-abuse scandals, beginning with the infamous McMartin preschool trial, that sent hundreds of innocents to jail—several of whom remain imprisoned today. Exploring the psychological, cultural, and neuroscientific causes of this modern American witch-hunt, My Lie asks: how could so many people come to believe the same lie at the same time? What has neuroscience discovered about the brain's capacity to create false memories and encode false beliefs? What are the "big lies" gaining traction in American culture today—and how can we keep them from taking hold? My Lie is a wrenchingly honest, unexpectedly witty, and profoundly human story that proves the personal is indeed political—and the political can become painfully personal.