Let’s BeReal
from my email newsletter | issue no. 12 | February 1, 2023
Sometime this autumn, I became a BeReal-er. (I just made up that term. We have TikTokers, so what shall we call people who use the app BeReal?) If you’re not familiar, BeReal sends a notification at a different (i.e. unexpected) time each day to all users with the cue, “It’s time to BeReal!” Users then take a photo of whatever they’re doing, wherever they are at the moment — simultaneously, the app takes a quick snapshot of your face. Here's a rundown of the app from the New York Times Magazine back in August.
Sometimes (oftentimes), they’re boring. Sometimes the notification goes off so late (for me), that my BeReal is a groggy-eyed picture of me getting my desperately needed cup of coffee the next morning. But once in a while, BeReal goes off at a time that prompts a bit of gratitude on my part because it’s the perfect opportunity to memorialize a moment of greater import than me sitting with my computer or me in the grocery store.
This was my BeReal from December 21.
I was with a friend in a coffee shop — a friend who has recently experienced an incomprehensible loss. I text, “I have a gift certificate to The Concord Bookshop. Let’s go together…I’ll share!” So we do, and we stop off beforehand for coffee next door. I know that any outing for this friend must take a lot of bravery and gumption, and I feel honored to share her company.
Here’s the thing about bookstores: The conversation-starters, the things to ponder, the ways to allow someone to share something sad or awkward or truly funny are right in front of you. Books are the foil; books are the muse. My friend and I wander through the fiction section and our conversation ping-pongs back and forth from simple “Have you read this?” to “This one probably isn’t a great one for you/me right now.” In the nonfiction section, we stumble upon books that have helped this friend as she starts this long emotional journey and she shares about things she is learning. And then not two minutes later, we come upon books that make us giggle about something ridiculous. We say, “Oh, my friend from college said this one was good.” “Didn’t this author teach at Tufts?” (I should mention that my friend has an iron-clad memory.) The conversation bends and flows, and while I don’t want to put words in my friend’s mouth, I wonder if letting the books somehow prompt the conversation provides the space and freedom to just go wherever they’re leading us.
Sometimes people talk about “comfort reads” — the books that we read over and over because they transport us to whatever we deem to be our “happy place.” Some of my comfort reads include Peace Like a River (Leif Enger), the Anastasia series (Lois Lowry), and everything the late Carol Shields wrote. The New York Times just published a piece about Elin Hilderbrand and the “Bucket List” weekends on Nantucket for all her fans (“Hilderbabes”). The piece quotes one reader who explains how she became an ardent Hilderbrand fan after relying on her books to get her through her parents’ illnesses and deaths. “They were comforting to me. It was like revisiting an old friend, knowing what to expect.”
I’m all for comfort reads. In fact, I wrote a blog post about this idea a year ago. I hope you can find a comfort read or two that might be your North Star when you need a break from reality — or, conversely, when you feel like a book might recalibrate you with your present reality. However, I’d love to encourage you spend 20 minutes (or more!) in a bookstore with someone. Yes, the comfort is in the pages. But maybe, too, the comfort is in the open-endedness of sharing art together. The pages can be fleeting, but it’s the real-life connections that allow us to BeReal.
January Reads
Here's what I read in January. Et toi? I love snooping people's bookshelves, virtual or otherwise (who doesn't?!), so feel free to reply to this email and let me know what book has been a hit with you.
*** If you're looking for an easy way to come up with ideas for your next read, you can screenshot or save the graphic below. ***
Seven Empty Houses by Samanta Schweblin
Trust by Hernan Diaz
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
Happy All the Time by Laurie Colwin
At the Bottom of the River by Jamaica Kincaid
Unaccompanied by Javier Zamora
The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan
Read This! (i.e. some quick links)
< "In 2022, I decided to get away from screens and read more books. It was wonderful." Author Nancy Jo Sales on how — and why — she upped her reading game in 2022.
< "The Unlikely Bookstore of my Dreams." Ezra Klein on the ubiquitous Barnes & Noble.
< "What if you gave a book signing and nobody came?" Apparently this has happened even to Margaret Atwood and Jodi Picoult — but even if you're not an author, this piece has a nugget of wisdom for everyone.
Am Reading
“To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life.”
— W. Somerset Maugham
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