Reading Glasses: Our lens on best books to read now
We’ve been checking out some books that might interest the Girls Gone 50 community, from self-help and spiritual essays to dating advice. Here’s a round-up of recent releases that embody our approach to aging.
Love After 50: How to Find It, Enjoy It, and Keep It
by Francine Russo
Think finding love now is impossible? Francine Russo shows us that dating over 50 offers unique advantages: Some of the competing interests that might have derailed previous relationships are no longer impediments—you are less likely to be caring for young children, building a career, or establishing financial security. You don’t have to look for a partner who will fit your parents’ idea of an appropriate match. Your “checklist” of required traits may be a bit shorter!
Remember, our life experiences and past relationships have given us the emotional maturity to succeed where we might have failed in the past. “Even if [dating] doesn’t come easily to you, your age is an advantage,” she points out.
Russo herself, after losing her first husband to a heart attack, has had two happy marriages post-50. Her advice covers the many phases of finding love later in life, or as she calls it, “love in the time of wisdom.” We love that!
She also interviews experts on relationships, online dating, and mental health, offering advice appropriate to those new to dating, or for someone who has struggled to find success.
Our takeaways:
Let go of your past relationships. That might mean getting over your ex, grieving a beloved spouse, or identifying what went wrong (and how you might have contributed to it) in a past romance.
Do your own headwork, as Russo advises, so you are truly ready to identify what you want and need in a partner.
Address the real-life issues of love, where many daters experience pitfalls. Russo offers advice for how to navigate a new sex life, the practical issues of joining two households, and how to handle the opinions of adult children involved.
Dusk Night Dawn: On Revival and Courage
by Anne Lamott
Anne Lamott issues another dose of wry wisdom and thoughtful life advice in her new set of essays, Dusk Night Dawn. The Washington Post calls this her “19th book, her 12th faith-based essay collection and a strong contender for her 16th bestseller.”
Speaking of love after 50, Lamott got married for the first time at 65. Asked how it was going, she says “Great,” without thinking.
“But what is it really like, one month in?” she muses. “Is it supposed to be this ordinary, where you’re still mostly madly in love, and you’ve never met someone so brilliant who is also kind 95 percent of the time, but who is as set in his annoying ways as you are in yours? We got married with the Trump blimp flying figuratively overhead, plus there’s always laundry!” Lamott gives us the permission to say things are not perfect, or great, or even okay.
Lamott, now 67 is living in the phase of her life she calls “the third third.”
She has lived through addiction, eating disorders, emotional abuse—and yet, this collection is hopeful. It focuses on intimate, small, and everyday ways we can move through hardships and support one another.
She addresses her own aging during the Covid pandemic with her trademark humor: “And I’ve gotten so much less young. I got Medicare three days before I got hitched, which sounds like something an old person might do, which does not describe adorably ageless me.”
For a little optimism through thoughtful essays, this is the book to pick up.
FACE: One Square Foot of Skin
by Justine Bateman
Actress Justine Bateman released this collection of essays about women’s experience with the physical process of aging earlier this year, and its success has led to her develop an upcoming crowd-funded film of the same name.
In the book, Bateman interviews dozens of women and then reimagines their experiences in her own words.
The short, punchy essays cover myriad aspects of aging, from women in industries where there is an expectation of beauty—think actors and models—but also women who are experiencing age bias in jobs and roles you might not expect, from housekeepers all the way to CEOs.
Going from a teen heartthrob to a 55-year-old woman who has eschewed plastic surgery in the public eye has not been easy for Bateman. She had always admired women’s aging faces, and looked forward to her own crow’s feet and wrinkles. But when people began to criticize her natural aging, she felt shamed and distracted from her goals.
“For me, it felt like a ploy to somehow shut me down, to get me to hide, to be quiet, to erase myself, all at the exact moment in my life when I had gained the most intelligence, the most wisdom, and the most confidence. What an easy way to try to make sure that I stopped accomplishing anything further. To keep me from enrolling in college, from writing books, from writing scripts, or from directing and producing films (all of which happened in the post-face-criticism years).”
The way women’s aging is judged, disdained, and medically avoided clearly upsets her, as does the accompanying shame. Bateman narrates the audiobook herself, and in it, you can hear the passion in her voice.
This book brings forward a variety of emotions about how aging women are treated—indignation, insecurity, frustration. But ultimately, FACE highlights the strength, wisdom, and autonomy that we have in choosing how we age, and you’ll finish it feeling fierce.
What have you been reading lately? We want to know your favorite authors on aging, the best over-50 female characters you’ve read, and any women in the written word that inspire you!
