I’m a strong believer in finding the books that speak to us even when we are not looking for them. Many of us have experienced this bit of magic that can happen to readers. Welcome to our new regular feature where bookish folks from all over weigh in on a special book that found them at exactly the right moment. You never know, this may be how you find what you or someone you know most need to read right now.

Today we hear from , publisher of the wildly popular Oldster Magazine. I’ve loved this magazine since its inception. It’s not about aging, it’s about growth. Every article or interview or comment makes me feel seen or leads me to a new way of looking at where I am now, in my own body, in my own life. And the variety! looks at the afterlife here, Chloe Caldwell reawakens me to the reality of being 36, interview got me thinking about what it means for a young girl to grow up with grandparents – something very relevant to the novel I am working on now.

I don’t know how she does it, but Sari also publishes Memoir Land, and Adventures in Journalism. I was thrilled that she found time to share the book with us that found her at the right time.

What book found you when you needed it most?

Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith, by

When and how did it find you (or how did you find it)

In the early aughts, a friend gave me the book. It was the first time I’d ever read Anne Lamott, and I’d go on to read everything else of hers, past, present and future.

Why it mattered

I was going through a hard time as a single woman in my late 30s in New York City, a freelance writer who was struggling to land good bylines and gigs, and who was desperate to move away from journalism toward personal essays and memoir. I felt unmoored in my life and my career. As a wayward daughter of Jewish clergy, I struggled to connect with my faith. My friend seemed to think the book would help me spiritually, and also encourage me as a writer. And it really did. Lamott set an example for me, as a somewhat messy spiritual seeker, and as a writer with an irreverent, relatable voice.

Would you read it again?

I do read it again, often! And it always holds up. I have read the book at least ten times.

More about Sari Botton:

Sari Botton‘s memoir in essays, And You May Find Yourself...Confessions of a Late-Blooming Gen-X Weirdo, was chosen by Poets & Writers magazine for the 2022 edition of its annual “5 Over 50” feature. An essay from it received notable mention in The Best American Essays 2023, edited by Vivian Gornick. For five years, she was the Essays Editor at Longreads. She edited the bestselling anthologies Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving NewYork and Never Can Say Goodbye: Writers on Their Unshakable Love for New York. She publishes Oldster Magazine, Memoir Land, and Adventures in Journalism.

You can find her on Instagram, Facebook, Substack, Bluesky, and Linked In.

What about you?

What book got you thinking about faith in a way that made sense to you? How have the kinds of books that draw you changed as you’ve aged?

Leave a comment

I’m a strong believer in finding the books that speak to us even when we are not looking for them. Many of us have experienced this bit of magic that can happen to readers. Welcome to our new regular feature where bookish folks from all over weigh in on a special book that found them at exactly the right moment. You never know, this may be how you find what you or someone you know most need to read right now.

Today we hear from Brooklyn-based who has built her publication, CAFÉ ANNE, and her sizable audience with the kind of local stories you don’t read in the New York Times. Ever wondered what it would be like to ride the NYC subway for 24 hours straight? Or why someone might clean for free even it she has to wear a hazmat suit? She’s always ready to chase a story down, but she’s also got the antenna she needs to find a story right where she is. I’m thrilled she was willing to share a book she found at the right time.

What book found you when you needed it most?

How to Solve our Human Problems by Geshe Kelsang Gyatso

When and how did it find you (or how did you find it)

I was a new student at a meditation center in Brooklyn where the instructor was basing a series of classes on this book. I bought it, and I read it, and read it again, and read it again, and read it again. And now, ten years later, I’m a teacher at that same meditation center—and teach classes based on this book!

Why it mattered

It’s funny that while it’s called How to Solve our Human Problems , this book is pretty much devoted to a single topic: how to stop getting upset and develop patient acceptance. And as the book explains, being patient doesn’t mean gritting our teeth and putting up with things. It means to “welcome wholeheartedly whatever arises, having given up the idea that things should be other than what they are.” It promises that there is “no situation so bad it cannot be accepted patiently, with an open, accommodating and peaceful heart.”

I don’t know if you can relate, but at the time I came across this book, I was upset about a lot of things—large and small—a lot of the time. There was this ongoing dialogue in my head with folks in my life who I thought needed to shape up—including myself! I was always trying to improve and fix everything, often with poor results. It was exhausting.

After my first reading, I resolved to become a perfectly patient person—a lady who can welcome everything that life brings, and have fun with it! I’m not there yet, but I’m a lot further along, because this book provides super clear, straightforward methods for overcoming anger and developing patience.

And what I’ve found is that acceptance isn’t about passive resignation. It’s a transformative practice that dissolves difficulties away with love, curiosity and humor. Acceptance really does solve our human problems! Or, at least my human problems. I don’t work half as hard as I used to, but my life is so much better and the “problems” are few and far between.

Would you read it again?

I plan to be reading this book again and again for the rest of my life.

A little more about Anne

Anne Kadet, a former columnist for the Wall Street Journal, is the creator of CAFÉ ANNE, newsletter with a focus on New York City that takes a fresh look at the everyday, delights in the absurd and profiles unusual folks who do things their way. She is a volunteer teacher and minister of communications manager at Kadampa Meditation Center Brooklyn and lives in Brooklyn Heights.

CAFÉ ANNE

It's a wonderful world—meet the inhabitants!

By Anne Kadet

What about you?

What book will you be reading for the rest of your life? Is there a book that has helped you get where you want to go as a human being?

Leave a comment

I’m a strong believer in finding the books that speak to us even when we are not looking for them. Many of us have experienced this bit of magic and all of us can benefit from another reader’s experience. I’ve asked bookish folks from all over to weigh in on a special book that found them at exactly the right moment. These “micro-interviews” take only a minute to read but may lead you to a book that you or someone you know can use right now.

Look for a new voice and a new book to arrive in your inbox every other week between the regular editions of Spark. If you missed any, you can check them all out here: The Right Book at the Right Time.

David Roberts, Primo Levi, and the life of the mind

writes the Substack newsletter Sparks From Culture. His weekly personal essays focus on wealth, status, and family from inside the Manhattan bubble of generational wealth, something he does with grace and honesty that I’ve found compelling even when the world he describes feels foreign to me. Like Dickens, he understands that humans are humans and money alone does not render a human good or bad. He also writes about books and talks to writers which is always fun, right?

What book found you when you needed it most?

The Periodic Table by Primo Levi

When and how did it find you (or how did you find it)?

In 2006, my daughter Lauren, then a freshman at UPenn became involved in The Kelly Writers House (KWH) through her UPenn academic advisor Professor Al Filreis. I got to know Al and discovered why Lauren loved being part of the KWH community. It’s an actual house on campus where students who love literature and the arts hang out and where Al Filreis teaches classes, including one on the literature of the Holocaust.

He encouraged me to participate in a month long read and discussion of The Periodic Table, which is a book of beautiful, connected autobiographical stories organized according to the periodic table. The author Primo Levi was a survivor of Auschwitz, a chemist by profession, and one of the great literary writers of the 20th century.

Why it mattered

Throughout my life I always felt a tug between the life of the mind and the life of commerce. I was always a lover of history and literature. At the same time, I had ambitions for my career on Wall Street. In 1988, after five years on Wall Street, I decided to pursue a PhD in history, but that only lasted a semester.

By 2006, my time devoted to intellectual matters had waned. My wife and I were very close with and present in the lives of our three adolescent children, and my career was a second but important priority. Then, in reading The Periodic Table with Al Filreis, I rediscovered the pleasures of deep reading and analysis. And I rediscovered as well the magic of reading great writing. That experience reawakened my passion for the life of the mind. I began participating in other KWH book groups, started writing short stories, wrote a novel (unpublished) and eventually retired from my finance career to pursue writing on Substack and work on various philanthropic projects. Now I also have time to be with our five children (I include my son-in-law and daughter-in-law) and our three grandchildren who all live close by.

I can trace all of this to that first read of The Periodic Table in 2006.

Would you read it again?

I have! And writing these answers makes me want to return to it once again. It’s an old, dear friend that I miss. Early in my Substack efforts, I wrote a post on the issue of forgiveness based on one of the chapters in The Periodic Table.

A bit more about David

After a nearly forty-year career in finance, I left to pursue writing as well as to engage actively in grass-roots, high-impact philanthropy focused on fighting poverty.

I’m 63 years and live in New York City with my wife Deborah. We have been married for 40 years. My readers have come to know her well. We have a daughter and two sons in their thirties who live nearby. The two eldest are married so we actually have five children including our son-in-law and daughter-in-law. We have three grandchildren.

Plus, like every dog owner, we have the cutest and best dog in the world, our Shih-Tzu, Sophie.

David Roberts || Sparks From Culture

Weekly personal essays on wealth, status, and family from someone with generational wealth, writing with transparency.

I’m a strong believer in finding the books that speak to us even when we are not looking for them. Many of us have experienced this bit of magic and all of us can benefit from another reader’s experience. I’ve asked bookish folks from all over to weigh in on a special book that found them at exactly the right moment. These “micro-interviews” take only a minute to read but may lead you to a book that you or someone you know can use right now.

Look for a new voice and a new book to arrive in your inbox every other week between the regular editions of Spark. If you missed any, you can check them all out here: The Right Book at the Right Time.

Beth Ann Fennelly discovers poetry is not always polite

I am brand new to Beth Ann Fennelly but the title of her newest book The Irish Goodbye: Micro Memoirs hooked me. Then I read her hysterical post about discovering another book — one she really liked — with the same title and knew I had to reach out.

What book found you when you needed it most?

Sound and Sense: an Introduction to Poetry by Laurence Perrine

When and how did it find you (or how did you find it)?

Although assigned reading gets a bad rap, this book was assigned in my freshman year of high school, my English class. Until that point, I didn’t know poetry could be “taught,” instead thinking, I suppose, that poems dropped fully formed from Mount Olympus. I had never really read poetry before that–only poems for children, most trying to inspire good Catholic behavior. These poems were a revelation. They surprised me because they weren’t decorous or polite.

Why it mattered

Some of the poems I read there for the first time are still important to me. It’s a bit embarrassing to look through and see how ignorant I was about so many things, how young. My schoolgirl marginalia includes comments like “Ironic?” and “A pun!” Sooooo embarrassing.

For my senior yearbook quote, I excerpted Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “Ulysses”:

Though much is taken, much abides; and though

We are not now that strength which in old days

Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are:

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

And I still love that poem.

Would you read it again?

I still read it. My copy is in pieces.

A bit more about Beth Ann

Beth Ann Fennelly, a 2020 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow, was the poet laureate of Mississippi from 2016-2021 and teaches in the MFA Program at the University of Mississippi. She’s won grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the United States Artists, a Pushcart, and a Fulbright to Brazil. Fennelly has published three books of poetry and four of prose. Her newest, The Irish Goodbye: Micro-Memoirs, was just released by W. W. Norton. She lives with her husband, Tom Franklin, and their three children in Oxford, MS. Learn more at her website: https://www.bethannfennelly.com/

You can also read her (free) Substack * Watch her TedTalk * Listen to her story on The Moth.

You can pre-order The Irish Goodbye: Micro-Memoirs, forthcoming 2/24/26.

And here’s Beth Ann Fennelly’s Substack:

The BethAnnigan

writerly shenanigans, musings, and tips

By Beth Ann Fennelly

What about you?

What is your relationship with poetry? How has it surprised you? Share your thoughts with us!

Leave a comment

Look for a new voice and a new book to arrive in your inbox every other week between the regular editions of Spark. If you missed any, you can check them all out here: The Right Book at the Right Time.

Rona Maynard discovers Merilyn Simonds and Beth

is the author of Starter Dog and My Mother’s Daughter. She is also the publisher of Amazement Seeker where her essays often put the exact feelings or events I’m struggling with into beautiful, precise, often funny, always wise prose.

What book found you when you needed it most?

Walking with Beth: Conversations with My 100-Year-Old Friend by Merilyn Simonds.

When and how did it find you (or how did you find it)?

Another memoirist recommended this book at the ideal moment. Just turned 76, closer to 80 than seemed possible, I was grappling with a fresh wave of age-related aches and hungry for inspiration to see me through the years ahead.

Why it mattered

Aging and friendship, two topics close to my heart, meet in this radiantly frank account of two spirited women growing side by side in the years associated with death and diminution. Merilyn, who’s exactly my age, meets her vibrant centenarian friend while seeking rich terrain to explore in her writing (you and me both, sister). She sees Beth as her “last guide to the future.”

A writer and artist, Beth draws endless nourishment from creativity. She delights in process, not results — to the point that on finishing a collage, she snaps a photo, dismantles the piece and recycles the supplies. I learned plenty from Beth alongside Merilyn. Having lost two adult children, she understands the necessary art of honoring your dead while cultivating joy, moment by moment. Both women struggle with physical limitations–Beth with the aftereffects of shingles, Merilyn with a debilitating chronic illness and the cruel side effects of its treatment. What’s it like to lose your hair, your ability to read and the shape of your body with shocking speed? Merilyn tells me the truth. Yet here she is, with a story that proves a sense of purpose is forever.

Would you read it again? Absolutely. I read a library copy but this book is a talisman. My annotated copy will sit beside Diana Athill’s Somewhere Towards the End.

A bit more about Rona

Rona Maynard is the author of two memoirs, Starter Dog and My Mother’s Daughter. Raised by an ambitious literary mother and nationally published since her teens, Rona did her best to dodge the family business. Her long career in the magazine industry culminated in a decade at the helm of Canada’s premier women’s title, Chatelaine. At 70 she embraced writing as her destiny. Rona’s bestselling newsletter, Amazement Seeker, chronicles her quest for discovery in everyday beauty as it flies. You can find her on Facebook, website, and you can read her Substack by clicking below:

Amazement Seeker by Rona Maynard

Celebrating discovery in art, writing and the moment as it flies

What about you?

Is there a book that helped or is helping you find your way through a new chapter in your life? Have you read this book yourself? Share your thoughts with us!

Leave a comment

Amran Gowani is the author of a cult favorite comedy newsletter, whose first novel Leverage was published by Simon & Schuster in August 2025.

What book found you when you needed it most?

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

When and how did it find you (or how did you find it)?

Twenty years and four careers ago I was a depressed graduate student pursuing a pointless Ph.D. in organic chemistry. After long, monotonous days conducting futile experiments, reading dry scientific literature, and hand-washing overengineered glassware, I desperately needed an escape from the sterile worlds of science and math.

On the recommendation of a classmate, I began immersing myself in classic literature. I wasn’t a fiction reader growing up and, to be honest, I’d spent my teenage and young adult years avoiding novels like the plague. Eventually, after plowing through several all-time classics I stumbled upon Catch-22, a book that literally changed my life.

Why it mattered

Joseph Heller’s magnum opus delivered a concentrated dose of sanity just when I needed it most. At the time, I was struggling in my personal life, flailing on the professional front, and ultimately wondering: Why does everything suck so hard and what am I doing wrong?

Catch-22 helped me realize that, despite the odds, I, in fact, was one of the few lucid people on earth and everything around me was FUBAR. Inspired by the inimitable Captain Yossarian, I ditched my despair-filled Ph.D. program like a bad habit and never looked back. The novel continues to serve as a poignant reminder that we only get one of these precious little things called life, and it’s up to us to make the most of it.

Would you read it again?

I revisited Catch-22 last year and savored every page. The novel’s a comic masterpiece with a timeless message. When I inevitably re-read the story two decades from now I’m sure I’ll find the themes just as impactful.

Bio: Amran Gowani is a former organic chemist and financial analyst who lives in Chicago with his wife and two children. His first novel Leverage was published by Simon & Schuster in August 2025. He also writes a cult favorite email newsletter. Learn more at AmranGowani.com.

What book found you when you needed it most?

Mean Spirit by Linda Hogan.

When and how did it find you (or how did you find it)?

The movie Killers of the Flower Moon, which Wiki explains “focuses on a series of murders of Osage members and relations in the Osage Nation after oil was discovered on tribal land,” had just been released and was getting a lot of hype. I wanted to see it, but when I learned it had been based on a book, I thought I should read the book first. While looking for information about the book, I came across someone’s writing that pointed out Killers was written by a White man, but that a much earlier novel about the same injustice(s) had already been written from the Native American perspective, and by a woman who was half Chickasaw. So, I figured hers was the more valuable - and probably more interesting - story to read.

Why it mattered

It mattered enormously at that time for two reasons, both of which are probably selfish on some level. First, when I started Mean Spirit, I’d been having a hard time writing for years–the joy was gone, replaced with, “Will it sell?” It was devastating, because writing–not the business of it, but writing–has been part of me forever. The novel, in addition to illustrating the horrors innocent people were subjected to because money-hungry monsters wanted the oil they lived on, in capturing the beauty and simplicity (not a pejorative) of these characters’ way of life couldn’t help but drive home the height of the absurdity and futility of our greed, of our hunger for more, of our need to achieve and succeed (as both are defined in a capitalist system such as ours). In short, it mattered in the first way because it shifted my priorities in a way I hadn’t been able to do on my own, and then led me toward not caring, truly, about “success.”

The second “why” it mattered is shorter: I loved the writing. It’s not sentimental, it’s show-not-tell, it’s critical, carefully selected and rendered details that communicate in one sentence what many others would turn into a paragraph, the characters are genuine and complex and at times hilarious… It got me excited about the craft of writing, and it made me want to write again.

Would you read it again?

Oh, yes.

About Kristen Tsetsi

Kristen Tsetsi is the author of the post-Roe novel The Age of the Child, the male-midlife-crisis novel The Year of Dan Palace, and the experience-inspired homefront war novel Pretty Much True. Her Substack topics range from explorations of the choice to live childfree and unpopular perspectives on the adoption industry to whatever else seems interesting enough to spend time writing about. On Instagram: @kristentsetsi

What book found you when you needed it most?

Runaway by Alice Munro.

When and how did it find you (or how did you find it)?

I came across the title while browsing my small-town library book sale. They had dozens of boxes laid out on tables outside and I wove through them with my two young children in tow. I had just started a low-residency MFA program and heard Munro’s name come up several times there. I’d read one of her stories years before but came away feeling confused and unsatisfied. Still, finding this book in my rural town felt like a sign (and the price was right—used books are my happy place!).

Why it mattered

Reading Runaway came (to quote one of the stories in the collection) “like a great crippling whack to the chest.” I mean this as a compliment. It was the first collection I’d read of Munro’s and it opened up the portal of permission in my brain. I didn’t know stories could be like this. She has a way of dramatising the seemingly ordinary lives of girls and women. My favorite three stories of the collection are linked, taking huge time jumps as they follow a woman through her life. It led me down the Munro rabbithole. After each of her books I read, I would think: this is the best one! And then I’d read another and find I loved it even more. Her work certainly shaped my trajectory as a writer.

Would you read it again?

After her death in 2024, Alice Munro’s daughter wrote about the abuse she suffered from her stepfather as a child. (Essentially, after finding out about this years later, Munro elected to stay with him.) It took me a long time to be able to even look at the coverage of this. And when I did, it made me sick. Complex or controversial as this is, I still find her work to be that of an undeniable master and yes, I would (and have) returned to this book again and again.

Tell us where to find you

Find me on instagram @tourdebookshop or follow my Substack, where I gush about the books I’m reading, and hype myself up about the books I’m trying to write.

When I was still in the grip of loss after my dad died, I picked up Jennifer Egan’s Manhattan Beach. I have no idea why that book spoke to me then. I do know that for the next few days I was back in 1940s Brooklyn, following the steps and story of a merchant marine who was the same age as my dad when he joined the merchant marines at seventeen. The novel was wonderful all by itself but it also offered me a glimpse of my dad as he might have been as a young man. At a time when I needed to feel closer to my dad, there he was, in the pages of a novel.

Women of the Brooklyn Navy Yard on break (for a publicity photo) in 1942, the setting for Jennifer Egan’s Manhattan Beach

This is not the first time something like this happened for me. I’m a strong believer in finding the books that speak to us even when we are not looking for them. Many of us have experienced this bit of magic that can happen to readers.

These mini-interviews ask bookish folks to weigh in on a special book that found them at the right moment. They are published in Spark but are also provided here to make it easy for you to browse. You never know, this may be how you find what you or someone you know need to read right now. - Betsy