A Bart’s Book Talk on I’m Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself: One Woman’s Pursuit of Pleasure in Paris with author Glynnis MacNicol in conversation with Emma Bailey on Saturday, October 19 from 6 - 7 pm
"Absorbing...the force of MacNicol’s elegant prose presides, alongside her uncompromising intellect...a delight, the literary equivalent of a long catch-up with a brilliant friend.” — New York Times
In the spirit of Nora Ephron and Deborah Levy (think Colette . . . if she’d had access to dating apps), I’m Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself is an intimate, insightful, powerful, and endlessly pleasurable memoir of an intensely lived experience whose meaning and insight expand far beyond the personal narrative.
Paris, August 2021, when the City of Lights was still empty of tourists and a thirst for long-overdue pleasure gripped those who wandered its streets. After sixteen months alone in her tiny Manhattan apartment, Glynnis MacNicol, aged forty-six, unmarried with no children, jumped on the opportunity to sublet a friend’s apartment in Paris. Leaving felt less like a risk than a necessity.
What follows is a decadent, joyful, unexpected journey into one woman’s pursuit of radical enjoyment.The weeks in Paris are filled with friendship and food and sex. There is dancing on the Seine; a plethora of gooey cheese; midnight bike rides through empty Paris; handsome men; afternoons wandering through the empty Louvre; nighttime swimming in the ocean off a French island. And yes, plenty of nudity.
MacNicol is determined to document the beauty, excess, and triumph of a life that does not require permission. The pursuit of enjoyment is a political act, both a right and a responsibility. Enjoying yourself—as you are—is not something the world tells you is possible, but it is.
"I’ve been selling MacNicol’s book by the dozen at Bart’s. Her narrative of knowing what you want and asking for it is a pleasure to place in readers’ hands. Abundance, decadence, reflection, and personal revelation. I knew had to ask to her to come join me in conversation here in Ojai. How thrilling that she agreed!” — Emma Bailey of Bart’s Books
“The memoir is perhaps more aptly described as a tale, given its compressed, month-ish timeline. You could also interpret it as allegory: In her first memoir, 2018’s No One Tells You This, MacNicol reckoned with turning 40 and caring for her dying mother in the absence of the expected husband or children. (It made me cry on a plane.) Yet in I’m Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself, a spiritual sequel, MacNicol’s life is framed not by lack, but abundance. She not only defies convention, but richly enjoys doing so, dedicating 260 pages to the pleasures of being single and childfree. . . . For mothers and wives in the throes of caretaking, MacNicol’s independence, her freedom to travel to Paris at all, may feel downright fantastical. But it also offers a profoundly hopeful counter-narrative: that age can come with an expanding, rather than a limiting, of possibilities...Delicious.”--Michelle Ruiz, Vogue
“One of the most talked-about books of the year.” — Gayle King
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Goodreads’ Readers’ Most Anticipated Summer Books
TIME’s 25 New Books You Need to Read This Summer
Glynnis MacNicol is a writer of books and essays. She has written for The New York Times, The Guardian, The Cut, New York Daily News, Town & Country, The Daily Beast, GEN, and ELLE, among others. Her previous book, No One Tells You This was named one of the Best Books of 2018 by Esquire, the Financial Times, and the CBC, and was a 2019 New York Times 'Paperback Row' pick. In 2012, she co-founded TheList with Rachel Sklar. TheList was acquired in 2020. MacNicol lives in New York City.
Emma Bailey directs Bart’s Books’ events programming and authors the bookselling newsletter 10,000 Books. You can find her in the courtyard in conversation with writers and readers. She has been a bookseller at Bart’s since 2015.
The conversation doesn’t need to end when our event does! Enjoy a free glass of wine at Sam's Place when you buy a book after our event. Stroll from our courtyard to theirs, located next to the tunnel between Ojai Avenue and the Arcade Plaza. At Sam's Place, their philosophy is simple: cook like it's for family (charcuterie, anyone?!) and pour like it's for friends.