I think drawing distinct lines between generations is dumb—I was born in 1981 and you’re telling me I belong to the same cohort as someone who was born when I was a freshman in high school?? Get real. There are only three and a half years between me and my husband, and even that occasionally becomes a hilarious generational divide, when he’s like “I watched this TV show all the time as a kid” and I’m like “My [decade+] younger brothers watched that. I was an adult.”
So then they try to make a gray area—the Oregon Trail generation had exposure to computers as children, but were otherwise offline/pre-internet; Xennials are the overlap between the Gen X experience and the Millennials. I obviously didn’t have the full Gen X experience, but college was affordable (when I started, anyway; it went up a TON during my tenure, partly because they were trying to turn it from a party school to a Real University), I graduated without student loans, I own a house. That’s basically the opposite of the Millennial experience.
There have been a lot of posts (and I think even merch) with a variation of “Be patient with me, I’m from the 1900s” with like, an Oregon Trail covered wagon or skeleton or some other visual indicator that we are ooooold (I’m particularly fond of the one that features a Nokia 3310 cell phone). And you know what, yeah, I am. My college diploma will be old enough to drink in December. I could theoretically have adult children (my oldest is about to turn 11, lol). People I went to high school with do have adult children. We’re all letting our gray hair grow out. We say things like “That’s a good box, we should save that.” Sleeping until 9 am is a shocking indulgence. We’ve got sensible shoes and grandma hobbies. We’re old and we know it.
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Middle age isn’t all fun and giving no f*cks, though. I turn up the brightness on my phone to try to read small print, like turning down the car radio when you’re lost. My body is just gently falling apart, like nature reclaiming an abandoned city. The more I learn about menopause and perimenopause, the more I realize that when it comes to women’s health, doctors are just like:
It doesn’t seem like people have mid-life crises like they used to, either. Where is my convertible? Or what do I get instead? Is it that we just can’t afford it? I guess it's hard to have a midlife crisis when you can't afford rent and are already in an existential crisis. Kind of a bummer. Just one more thing the Boomers have taken from us.
But there are more of us than there are them! The Boomers are dying and the Millennials are…well, if not thriving, the largest population cohort at least.
When will society cater to us? To ME? They can start by writing more books about us. There are not, in my opinion, enough Romance books with middle aged characters. For one thing, there are just so many of us, it's kind of odd that there aren’t more books about us, some light pandering to capture our book dollars. But also, there's so much plot potential! Widowed, divorced, late blooming, career change, burnout, sandwich generation, take your pick. Usually it’s young people who are like, Finding Their Way, which is fine, but mix it up!
Thus I am very excited when I find a book about Olds. So rather than a single book rec, we're going to do a lightning round of books that feature older characters, as provided by my very dubious memory.
The Undermining of Twyla and Frank by Megan Bannen is the just-released follow up to the fantastic The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy. It’s about Twyla, a middle aged, widowed mother of adult children and oh yeah, badass Tanrian marshal. There’s mystery, there’s an orphaned dragon, there’s the invisibility of being a woman who is used to putting everyone else before herself. There are also donuts.
Come as You Are by Jess K Hardy is about a divorced woman trying to run a family ski mountain, her asshole ex-husband, and the residents of a sober living house who come to work for her. Everybody has Been Through Some Stuff, there are trust issues, the ex-husband gets his comeuppance. There’s also a second book, Lips Like Sugar, which I haven’t read yet, but which includes a grandpa rock star, which sounds like a hoot.
Role Playing and Do Me a Favor by Cathy Yardley is another two-for-one. Role Playing has an epistolary element, as they initially only know each other through the video game they both play, with a rather hilarious mistaken identity situation, as she thinks he’s some 20 year old kid and he thinks she’s some 70 year old friend of his mom. (It also has some great queer rep.) Do Me a Favor comes out in two weeks, but of course I, your favorite microinfluencer (let’s be real, more like nanoinfluencer, lol) have read an advance copy. It also features 40-something characters, aging parents, adult children, dead husband…all the fun things that start happening in middle age.
Birding with Benefits by Sarah T. Dubb came out a few months ago, and is about middle aged birdwatchers, which, come on, is an amazing premise. When I read the ARC (hashtag humblebrag) I gave it 7 out of 5 stars: an extra star for the 40-somethings and one for being set in Tucson. Sorry, but I make the rules, and Arizona settings get an automatic star bump. Especially when the setting is so lovingly and vividly described. It will make you want to go outside and look for birds. Unfortunately it is July, so you will have to settle for imagining doing it in three months.
At First Spite by Olivia Dade gets an honorable mention, because Dr. Matthew Vine the Third is 39, and Athena is 36 (I think?). I like to see everyone in their 40s, but based on my family history, 39 could very well be over halfway through your lifespan. I also think it deserves honorable mention because caretaking and what you have accomplished versus feel like you should have are both very middle aged themes. It’s also just a really good story, as Athena lives in a spite house between Johnny, the Vine brother who broke off their engagement mere weeks before the wedding, and Matthew, the Vine brother who convinced him to do it.
Thank you for joining us for this episode of Recent Books I Could Think of that Feature People My Age. Did I miss any good ones? What do I need to add to the TBR?