Tour MVPs, Upcoming Dates, and Big News

Top hotels, pillows, shampoo, and bookstore offices

Hi! Let’s start with some big news. This Time Tomorrow is #1 on the Indie Bestseller List for the third week in a row! Three weeks! Thank you so much to everyone who has bought copies, and who has posted reviews and pictures of the book next to their cat or dog or baby or swimming pool or coffee cup. I so appreciate it.

Quickly: this week! Three events! Tonight I will be at the Wee Burn Country Club in Darien with Jasmine Guillory and Jean Hanff Korelitz, Thursday I will be at Books Are Magic with Tom Perrotta, and Friday I will be at BookHampton in East Hampton! Join me, please!

And now…….the tour MVPs!

1. Hotel shampoo.

You know, this is one I never thought about much. Do I pack my own shampoo? No. Do I blow-dry my hair? No. Do I still have the same haircut as when I was 12? Yes. But let me tell you, all hotel shampoos are not created equal. In the lead, by a country mile—Palihouse, in Santa Monica, had Diptyque bath products. Diptyque! I took enough bottles of hand cream to last for months. I would have taken shampoo, but it was attached to the wall. A++, 10/10.

2. Hotel pillows.

The Palihouse also had great pillows, but they can’t win everything. The Eliot Hotel in Boston also had truly excellent pillows. Cool to the cheek, with just the right amount of squish. A++, 10/10.

3. In-flight Entertainment

Did you know that most airlines now make you use your own phone, and connect to wifi to watch The Proposal? They do. Did I? Yes. But the real MVPs for in-flight entertainment were Libro.fm (Thank you, Louise Erdrich and David Sedaris) for audiobooks and the Dead Eyes podcast.

4. Upgrades

I upgraded myself twice—on my flight to Tulsa and on my flight to Baltimore. Worth every penny! Especially on Southwest! Treat yourself, as the saying goes, especially if the alternative is C36 or whatever and you’re going to have to spend hours in a middle seat.

5. Under-eye squishy things

These are my favorite. Do they do anything? I don’t know. I talk about them at length on this episode of A Thing or Two, and tell a very good story about Jesse Williams, so you could listen to that, or you could just take my word for it that they feel good and who cares if they really work or not.

6. Kevin Wilson’s new book

Oh, I love Kevin Wilson. His new book, Now Is Not The Time to Panic, is about a strange, powerful summer in one woman’s life, and just like all of Kevin’s books, it is totally its own thing: mysterious, hypnotic, wonderful. I love following his brain, wherever it goes. Preorder here.

7. Bookstores, obviously

My favorite thing about visiting so many bookstores this month was getting to peek at how other places do things—the shipping stations, the back offices, the events set-ups, the vibes, the chit chat. I had dinner with the owners of Porter Square and White Whale, I got full tours of Warwick’s and Parnassus, I got chauffeured around by Jeff at Magic City—I was truly well taken care of by every single bookstore I visited, and it was an incredible feeling. Publishing a book can feel so lonely and weird, especially when you’re in an airport every day and don’t know where the bathroom is when you wake up in the middle of the night, because yesterday it was somewhere else. Thank you to every bookstore that hosted me—I had the best tour of my life.

8. And friends!

And friends. It’s not just booksellers that treated me kindly these last few weeks. My friend Siobhan Vivian drove me home in the rain. Stewart O’Nan brought beer. My sister Ann and her care package. All the writers (and one librarian and one journalist) who took the time to read my book and prepare thoughtful questions. I have moderated enough events in my life to know that it takes up real mental space, and I am so grateful to the lot of them! In order: Bobby Finger, Margaret Renkl, Jennifer Close, Kathy Blackwell, Antoine Wilson, Jeff Martin, Celeste Ng, Sarah Elaine Smith, Noah Weckworth, Jessamine Chan, and Emma Snyder. (This week I’m also event-ing with Jasmine Guillory, Jean Hanff Korelitz, Tom Perrotta, and next week with Lydia Conklin, Daphne Palasi Andreades, and Lauren Mechling.) THANK YOU. They are all the greatest.

9.My Pink Jumpsuit

Never have I received more compliments for an item of clothing. It’s from Rachel Comey, I bought it at the sample sale, it runs big, I highly recommend. It’s not on her website anymore, or I would link to it, but it’s the Barrie cut, in pink. ***Update! A newsletter reader found a link! It’s on sale!

10. Glasses

Before I wore glasses all the time, I used to wear make-up. Honestly, why? I’m never putting on mascara again. Lipstick, yes. If you want the color that Ann got me, here it is.

11. Hometown MVPS

My publicist, my assistant, and my husband! Claire, Crystal, and Mike! If I didn’t have a schedule to access, instructions to follow, and resourceful, kind people on speed-dial, I wouldn’t have made it a day. And my kids were so happy when I got home, because they have a good dad. This was the first tour in a decade that I didn’t have to worry about breastfeeding or naps or anything except my own body and my own work, and damn, it felt good. Three cheers for good teams.

Hope to see you at my upcoming events, and please keep me posted on whatever you think I should know about, vis a vis lipsticks or jumpsuits or under eye creams or audiobooks. Somehow it’s already June. Yikes!