Oldster Bookshelf #2
The second in an occasional series, featuring books submitted by Oldsters.
Readers,
Instead of a Link Roundup today, since there have been sooooo many book submissions, I decided to publish the second edition of The Oldster Bookshelf. Lots of interesting titles here, of all sorts—fiction, nonfiction, memoir, photography, poetry. Something for everyone.
I’ve now received over 150 emails at oldsterbookshelf@gmail.com, which is both encouraging and frustrating, because I can only include a handful each time.
Once again, please keep these caveats in mind:
I will likely not have read most of the books I feature in Oldster Bookshelf. I have only one brain, and it is very busy editing Oldster and Memoir Land. I will have read descriptions of the books, which have come to me via the authors or others recommending them.
I will not be able to feature everyone. I will feature only those books that sound like they’ll be of interest to Oldster readers. Please be understanding about this.
Also, please be patient, as I will only be able to feature a limited number of books per installment, and the series will be occasional. If your book isn’t in this edition, it’s possible it could show up later. But I can’t go back and forth about it over email. I am too busy with everything else I’m publishing. Thank you for understanding.
Alright, with no further ado, I give you the second edition of the Oldster Bookshelf. Under each cover image is the author’s preferred buy link.
From Strength to Strength: Finding Success and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life by Arthur C. Brooks
Okay, this one I did read, in preparation for discussing it with my uncle for Oldster last summer. I enjoyed it, and thought it was worth recommending to this audience. A funny thing about it: It was originally recommended to me by a 40something acquaintance who said, “It’s by that old guy who writes for The Atlantic.” Then I learned Arthur C. Brooks is 61, a year-and-a-half older than me. 😂 It really is all relative.
“At the height of his career at the age of 50, Arthur Brooks embarked on a seven-year journey to discover how to transform his future from one of disappointment over waning abilities into an opportunity for progress. From Strength to Strength is the result, a practical roadmap for the rest of your life.
Drawing on social science, philosophy, biography, theology, and eastern wisdom, as well as dozens of interviews with everyday men and women, Brooks shows us that true life success is well within our reach. By refocusing on certain priorities and habits that anyone can learn, such as deep wisdom, detachment from empty rewards, connection and service to others, and spiritual progress, we can set ourselves up for increased happiness.”
I Can’t Remember if I Cried: Rock Widows on Life, Love, and Legacy by Lori Tucker-Sullivan
Published in June, 2024 by Bloomsbury
“As a journalism major in college, Lori Tucker-Sullivan wanted only to write about music and the musicians she loved. Meeting her future husband just as she graduated, sent her life down a different path, one of being a wife, mom and home renovator, among other things. Having always yearned for the music journalist life, she knew returning to that would be a way to survive grief when her husband Kevin died at age forty-nine. Hearing a story about Yoko Ono, Lori realized the people she really wanted to write about were not the rock stars, but the women left behind to maintain their legacies when they died, many of whom were very young. She set about finding and interviewing them over the course of six years. The result, I Can't Remember if I Cried: Rock Widows on Life, Love and Legacy, includes the profiles of fourteen women, including Judy Van Zant (Ronnie Van Zant, Lynyrd Skynyrd), Catherine Mayer (Andy Gill, Gang of Four), Janna Leblanc (Stevie Ray Vaughan), Ingrid Croce (Jim Croce), and others. Throughout the book, the lessons that Lori learns from each of the widows and how that helped her overcome her own grief acts as a thread bringing all of the profiles together.”
Rewilding: Freedom, Fearlessness, and Finding Our Way Home by Jane Green
To be published June 4th, 2026 by Harper Collins
“‘I was fifty-five when I finally stopped pretending.’ What if real freedom isn’t about reinventing yourself… but about letting the woman you buried years ago grow wild again? To the world, Jane Green had everything: bestselling novels, a beautiful home, the perfect family. Inside, she was disappearing, squeezed into the roles of wife, mother, provider, eternal people-pleaser while her marriage cooled, her children flew, and her own dreams gathered dust. Then she stopped squeezing herself into shapes that didn’t fit. Part memoir, part battle cry, Rewilding is for any woman who has ever felt invisible in her own story. And it’s proof that surrender could be the most radical act of all… and that the most powerful thing you can do is stop trying to be good, and start being free.”
On Retirement: How Aging Is Transforming American Lives by Daniel Horowitz
Published by NYU Press March 24, 2026
“Once considered a period of frailty and physical decline, aging and retirement have transformed into a chapter of continued vitality and growth for many Americans. Indeed, medical advancements and government policies have opened opportunities for people to live longer and healthier lives. Written from the perspective of a retired historian, On Retirement reveals how and why retirement, aging, and longevity have emerged as prominent issues in the United States. Daniel Horowitz assesses the factors that have shaped these discussions, from dramatic increases in life expectancy to shifting government policies. He explores how writers and entrepreneurs have seen and promoted long lives through movies, print and new media, senior housing, how-to books, and aging organizations….Providing an expansive look into the history of retirement and seniors' profound fears surrounding finance, health, and longevity, On Retirement examines the changing demographics that have allowed people to live longer and healthier lives and offers a critical assessment of popular retirement advice.”
The Boys: Photographs by Rick Schatzberg with an essay by novelist Rick Moody
Published by Powerhouse Books in 2020
“When two old friends died unexpectedly, Rick Schatzberg spent the next two years photographing the remaining group of a dozen men. Now in their 67th year, they have been close since early childhood. Schatzberg collected vintage photos that tell the story of this shared history and uses them to introduce each individual as they are today. These are paired with large-format portraits which connect the boy to the man. Mixing in text with these images, Schatzberg depicts friendship, aging, loss, and memory as the group arrives at the threshold of old age.”
Rick Schatzberg is a photographer and writer living in Brooklyn, New York and Norfolk, Connecticut. He received his MFA in Photography from the University of Hartford in 2018. Rick holds a degree from Columbia University in Anthropology (1978), played French horn with Cecil Taylor’s jazz ensemble in 1970s, and was a business executive and entrepreneur in the New York metropolitan area for many years. In 2015 he completed a one-year certificate program at the International Center of Photography. In the same year, his first monograph, Twenty Two North (self-published), was awarded first prize at Australia’s Ballarat Foto International Biennale.
Don’t Stop: A Novel by Bonnie Friedman
To be published April 21 by Europa Editions
“Ina is a 41-year-old literary scholar on the cusp of professional success. With a coveted university job, a kind husband, and a book on Eugene O’Neill due in months, her life appears enviably stable. But when an impulsive kiss with a stranger shatters her self-control, Ina finds herself plunged into an erotic and emotional freefall. She tells herself it’s research—a brief detour before returning to real life. But what begins as a flirtation becomes a reckoning with everything Ina thought she wanted: marriage, intellect, control. As she navigates the ecstatic confusion of newfound desire, she risks upending her work, her relationship, and her understanding of who she is. Set in Brooklyn and Manhattan at the turn of the millennium, Don’t Stop is a bold, immersive debut that explores what happens when a woman dares to want more—of the world, of her body, of herself. Bonnie Friedman delivers a novel of transgression, transformation, and unapologetic longing.” To be published two days after Friedman’s 68th birthday.
I’m Old, Not Dead: Dispatches from the Desk of an Aging Poet by Peter Johnson
To by published April 15, 2026 by Blazevox Books
“Peter Johnson has been praised and awarded over his long career as a prose poet, a fiction writer, an essayist, and editor of significant anthologies, including his legendary The Prose Poem: An International Journal, which was partly responsible for a prose-poem renaissance in the 1990s. In his new book of hybrid, seriocomic essays, I’m Old, Not Dead: Dispatches from the Desk of an Aging Poet, Johnson combines prose poetry, flash fiction, and autobiography in his attempt to examine our current zany zeitgeist.” Johnson publishes the newsletter Old Man Still Howling at the Moon.
Growing Married: Creating Stories for a Lifetime of Love by Karen Skerrett, Ph.D.
Published in 2022 by LifeCycle Press
“The longer couples are married, the more challenges they are likely to face with illnesses, job changes, parenting, finances and other pressures providing stresses that can test the relationship’s mettle. In her book, Growing Married: Creating Stories for a Lifetime of Love, well-known psychologist Karen Skerrett, Ph.D., pulls together cutting-edge thinking, research, and practical strategies to offer couples the keys to marriages that flourish despite inevitable adversities. She writes in the book’s introduction, ‘Every decade and big life event changes us, and our sense of identity is co-created with our partners as we navigate these changes. The more we think about our lives in full and about our stories, past and present, the more we will be able to shape a future we want for ourselves and our relationships. Applying this power of intention, we can choose to pay attention to what matters most in the grand scheme of life. When we shift our focus from merely feeling satisfied in our relationship to feeling a sense of meaning and purpose, our chances of having longer partnerships increase significantly.’”
We are Home: Becoming American in the 21st Century by Ray Suarez
Published in 2024 by Little, Brown and Company
Says Suarez, who published an essay in Oldster, “We Are Home: Becoming American in the 21st Century is the story of the modern era of immigration to the United States. It’s a history of American more broadly, punctuated by oral histories of people who came to the US from around the world after the signing of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which opened the United States to the world outside Europe. The book includes chapters on the way modern immigration is changing American religion, and the surge of new Americans from Africa. These are aspects of modern immigration rarely covered while both, in their ways, are contributing to the rising anxiety among some Americans about a changing country and their place in it. I think the book is an important contribution to both the debates about immigration, and American identity going forward. For me, personally, it was a way of insisting I was NOT done, after gross ageism closed a lot of doors in broadcasting, where I had made a good living for decades.”
Amy in Retrograde: Desperately Seeking Rewiring by Amy Ferris
Published March 31, 2026 by G Editions
“When the first storefront psychic took her fifty dollars (all the money she had) and declared ‘You will never find love,’ Amy Ferris swore she’d never see another spiritual adviser again. That didn’t work out. From Mary, the foulmouthed Hollywood psychic with a dagger tattoo and uncanny accuracy, to 900-number hotlines and past-life panic attacks, Amy Ferris spent enough money to buy a house in the South of France. With brutal honesty and laugh-out-loud humor, she chronicles her decades-long quest for rewiring from anyone claiming supernatural insight into her messy, uncertain life.”
Amy Ferris is an author, a writer, a screenwriter, an editor and a playwright. Her YA Novel, A greater Goode, was published by Houghton Mifflin in 1999. Her memoir, Marrying George Clooney, Confessions From a Midlife Crisis (Seal Press, 2008) was adapted into an Off-Broadway play in 2012. In 2026 Marta Kauffman will be directing her one-woman play, based on her memoir Marrying George Clooney and it is planned to be staged in 2026.
Girl Trouble: Poems by Diana Whitney
Published by CavanKerry Press on April 7
“In Girl Trouble, Whitney—whose work as a feminist activist and community organizer informs every page—surveys the landscape of female adolescence with care and precision. The collection acts as both a witness to the systemic harms of patriarchy and a celebration of queer identity and sensual experience. From whispers exchanged behind closed doors to public reckonings with predators like Jeffrey Epstein, the poems capture the relentless threats faced by women in America while offering a “love song for the too-often unsung feminist ways of knowing.”
“I wrote these poems to honor the courage of survivors,” says Whitney, who published an essay in Oldster. “In a culture that demands our compliance, this book is an act of resistance—acknowledging the constant possibility of harm while imagining a future of safety, a world where we can finally be at home in our bodies.”
The Gap Years: Climbing, Skiing, and the Journey Back by Tom French
To be published April 14, 2026 by Brandeis University Press
“A lifelong mountaineer and former McKinsey senior partner, Tom French sets out to rediscover his passion for the mountains after retirement—only to embark on a three-year odyssey from New England’s Presidential Range to the summit of Everest. Blending adrenaline and reflection, THE GAP YEARS: Climbing, Skiing, and the Journey Back is an inspiring memoir of endurance, reinvention, and the timeless pull of the wild.”
Write’s French: “I initially shared my post-retirement return to mountain climbing and ski racing with family and friends via a small blog. The blog went viral, and people encouraged me to share my experiences more broadly. I realized I had something meaningful to communicate to a wider audience and that it would be gratifying to do so. Writing a book became both a beacon and personal challenge: something I very much wanted to do but was not sure I would pull off. An inner voice pushed me to commit to it.”
There Are No Grownups: A Midlife Coming of Age Story by Pamela Druckerman
Published in 2018 by Penguin Press
“When Pamela Druckerman turns 40, waiters start calling her ‘Madame,’ and she detects a disturbing new message in mens’ gazes: I would sleep with her, but only if doing so required no effort whatsoever. Yet 40 isn’t even technically middle-aged anymore. And after a lifetime of being clueless, Druckerman can finally grasp the subtext of conversations, maintain (somewhat) healthy relationships and spot narcissists before they ruin her life. What are the modern 40s, and what do we know once we reach them? What makes someone a ‘grown-up’ anyway? And why didn’t anyone warn us that we’d get cellulite on our arms? Part frank memoir, part hilarious investigation of daily life, There Are No Grown-Ups diagnoses an in-between decade…”
Mapping the Darkness: The Visionary Scientists who Unlocked the Mysteries of Sleep by Kenneth Miller
Published by in 2023 by Grand Central Publishing
“A century ago, sleep was considered a state of nothingness—a primitive habit that we could learn to overcome. Then, an immigrant scientist and his assistant spent a month in the depths of a Kentucky cave, making nationwide headlines and thrusting sleep science to the forefront of our consciousness. In the 1920s, Nathaniel Kleitman founded the world’s first dedicated sleep lab at the University of Chicago, where he subjected research participants (including himself) to a dizzying array of tests and tortures. But the tipping point came in 1938, when his Mammoth Cave experiment awakened the general public to the unknown—and vital—world of sleep. Kleitman went on to mentor the talented but troubled Eugene Aserinsky, whose discovery of REM sleep revealed the astonishing activity of the dreaming brain, and William Dement, a jazz-bass playing revolutionary who became known as the father of sleep medicine. Dement, in turn, mentored the brilliant maverick Mary Carskadon, who uncovered an epidemic of sleep deprivation among teenagers, and launched a global movement to fight it.
Award-winning journalist Kenneth Miller weaves together science and history to tell the story of four visionary outsiders who took sleep science from fringe discipline to mainstream obsession through spectacular experiments, technological innovation, and single-minded commitment.”
True Roots: What Quitting Hair Dye Taught Me about Health and Beauty by Ronnie Citron-Fink
Published in 2019 by Island Press
“True Roots shares my personal journey examining the beauty aspects of going gray, and moves beyond the cultural moment to ask important questions about hair dye. After twenty-five years of coloring my hair, I took the leap and decided to grow out my chemically-dyed hair. People asked, ‘How’d you do it?’ and, ‘Why’d you do it?’ These questions prompted me to confront strongly held beliefs about beauty, choice and aging, an environmental journalist, I began to ask my own questions: What are the risks of coloring? Why are hair dye companies allowed to use chemicals that may be harmful? Are there safer alternatives? In my book, I answer these questions and explore much more. Using my own hair story, I wrote True Roots as an informative guide to the complexities of environmental health and revelatory beauty.”
Walking Wheel: A Novel in Verse by Molly Fisk
Published September 2025 by Sibylline Press
“Walking Wheel is a tender, lyrical portrait of pioneer love and labor that revives the quiet heroism of everyday life in 1875, where intimacy, resilience, and devotion shape the story of home. In this rich new collection, Molly Fisk braids together the ordinary tasks of love and work in 1875, a century we’ve almost forgotten but whose human concerns are universal and timeless. Fisk describes the journey of newlyweds Phoebe and Miles Imlay from their birthplace in central Oregon to California’s Surprise Valley. These are quiet, lyrical poems building a private world of intimacy and effort in alternating voices. From sawing timber, turning the heel of a sock, and measuring a pie’s baking with verses of a song, through sex, pregnancy, and childbirth, the couple’s first year of marriage working side by side is offered to us in resonant, unexpected detail.”
Unapologetic Aging: How to Mend and Nourish Your Relationship with Your Body by Deb Benfield
Published in December, 2025 by Sheldon Press
“My book, Unapologetic Aging: How to Mend and Nourish Your Relationship with Your Body (published December 16, 2025), brings together my 40 years as a Registered Dietitian specializing in treating eating disorders and my lived experience navigating the intersection of ageism and diet culture. In it, I push back on the relentless messaging that our bodies are problems to solve, and instead offer practices and reflections to help repair the rupture these messages create. I also explore body image and intimacy, intergenerational diet culture and body shame, and the possibility of body liberation as our legacy.”
Keep Sweet: A Novel by Victoria Waddle
Published in June, 2025 by Inlandia Institutie .
“Elizabeth Warren is a fourteen-year-old living in the ‘Community’ with her father, four mothers, and sixteen siblings. The prophet, Uncle Timothy, controls all facets of the cult. He assigns young girls to marry far older men, with whom they will have numerous children. When he has a vision that Elizabeth will marry her 19-year-old cousin, she has no choice. Demanding submission of both body and soul, the prophet destroys lives under the guise of correcting souls. Smart but poorly educated, Elizabeth at first submits to her fate…” Author Victoria Waddle published an essay in Oldster.
The House that Held Everything: A Family’s Hidden Hoarding and the Secrets Left Behind by Eileen Stukane
Published in 2025 by Bloomsbury
“What happens to families when “keeping” becomes hoarding? In my first-person memoir, I inherit the childhood home of a deceased cousin, a house I knew as elegant and cared for, but I soon learn is no longer the home of my memory. When I open the front door, I face what looks like a landfill, rooms crammed wall to wall, floor to ceiling, with piled up items from years of secret hoarding, as well as from the disciplined collecting, of clocks, glassware, Asian porcelain, toy trains and more. Over the course of a year, I, with my sister, separate significant items from garbage. I peel apart and expose the emotional underpinnings of hoarding, and make sense of the difference between collecting and hoarding. THE HOUSE THAT HELD EVERYTHING tracks my emotional shift from shock and disgust to compassion and understanding – a gripping detective thread (including a recovered 18th Century silver pocket watch that sold at auction for $16,000) alongside practical wisdom for anyone who has a family member who hoards, or who is facing an overwhelming clean-out. This book was published the same year that I celebrated my 80th Birthday.”
No Way Out of This: Loving a Partner with Alzheimer’s by Sue Fagalde Lick
Published in 2024 by She Writes Press
“No Way Out of This is not the kind of Alzheimer’s memoir where you read about a noble, self-sacrificing wife who gives up everything to take care of her husband. We see such spouses in books and movies; but they’re not telling the whole story. Nobody’s that good. Certainly Sue Lick isn’t. Sue’s much-older husband, Fred, is a forgetful man. She’s always found that charming. But when his absentmindedness worsens into full-blown dementia, she suddenly finds herself dealing with his illness alone. Struggling to care for Fred and manage their two loveable but incorrigible dogs and still find time to write and play music, Sue constantly faces impossible choices. Tell people about his illness? Let him drive? Put him in an institution? Treat his medical problems, or let him go? Every decision feels wrong.”
When We Were Very Old by Erica Swadley
Published April 2, 2026 by Fathom Publishing Company
““What would happen if A.A. Milne and Rumi were to meet in a celestial cafe to discuss a book about aging? Rilke sits at the next table and pulls up a chair. Mary Oliver has been invited but she’s out beach combing in Wellfleet. They suggest Billy Collins but he’s busy so Erica Swadley takes on the job. She has just the right mix of playfulness and ecstasy. Her poems address the adventure of aging with humor, compassion and tenderness. As the author spends couch potato time recovering from various joint implants, she explores topics some people would rather not look at such as loneliness and invisibility. She also makes clear that the elderly remain passionate, sensuous and engaged with life.”
Says Swadley, “In 2025 at age 85, I self-published my first chapbook, The Lives of Letters, under the anagram Lady Wiseacre. I’m trying to herd all my poems into book carrels before one of the pitfalls of aging grabs me.”
To be considered for a future edition of the Oldster Bookshelf, you can email me at oldsterbookshelf@gmail.com with the following:
A press release.
A brief synopsis of the book.
A brief bit on your background as an author and how you came to publish it.
A cover image.
Your preferred buy link.
You’ll be making my life easier if you keep it all short and sweet.
Thank you for including my book among these wonderful titles. I want to read them all. Thank you for everything you are doing. I'm always glad to see your name in my email.
Wow! Fun list, just reading the titles and blurbs got me excited. I'm thinking of ditching the books on my nightstand and adding a few of these instead. Thanks for promoting authors and oldsters; I am both.