Mel Brooks Keeps Making Me Cry

Childcare, book tours, and crying!

Hi friends.

Does anyone else feel like they’re moving at 1.5x speed? I wanted February to be over but in four seconds it’s going to be March and then it’ll be April and then my children will be adults and I’ll be dead, you know? Keeping things Light n EZ over here!

I’m still signing many sheets of paper every day, which is actually quite fun, mostly because it means that I can listen to Mel Brooks tell me about his life. Mel Brooks is my favorite grandpa. Every single story ends with him saying “(A friend’s name, who he worked with for decades) died in 2008, and I still miss him.” I cry once every fifteen minutes. In addition to stories about all of his movies, it’s also a lot about his various standing lunch and dinner dates. I want standing lunch and dinner dates. How the hell did he have time for all that? This is a man’s memoir for sure. There is not one moment about childcare, except when Mel talks about how Anne Bancroft retired from acting to devote herself to advocating for their son’s dyslexia. (He is, of course, a best-selling novelist and goddamn I love Anne Bancroft.)

I’ve been on a hot streak with books, actually. Don’t you love that, when after some fumbles, every book you read is fucking great? This week I read my favorite podcaster’s debut novel! Bobby Finger’s The Old Place! What a delight! I was just going to say that it has nothing to do with gossip, but that’s not entirely true—it’s about two old ladies in Texas, and there is a heaping amount of small town gossip, but it’s very deep and rich. How wonderful. We love a debut! And I finally started Maud Newton’s magnificent Ancestor Trouble, which is out in a few weeks. I’ve known Maud for many many years, and it’s so satisfying to read what she’s been working for the last decade. If you have a strained relationship with your family, or are related to people you wish you weren’t, or feel skeptical of everyone flashing their 23 And Me results, you should read it. A truly thoughtful exploration of genealogy, and the human desire for connection across generations, even when we don’t always like what we find.

What else? It’s a gorgeous day in Brooklyn. I’m wearing some floral pants and my slogs. This Time Tomorrow comes out in three months. Three months! I feel nervous and excited. The plan is to have an honest-to-goodness in person book tour, which is a very, very thrilling idea for the following reasons:

1. Visting bookstores I haven’t been to yet!

2. Eating local delicacies!

3. Being alone in a hotel room!

4. Room service!

5. Meeting/seeing readers!

6. Asking other booksellers’ nosy questions about how their bookstores work.

7. Buying more books than my suitcase can reasonably carry.

8. More local delicacies!

Fingers crossed. I won’t believe it until I’m sitting on a stool in a room full of masked people, talking about Mariah Carey and NorthFace jackets and my dad and time travel.

Pre-order This Time Tomorrow here.