”How to Be Old” by Lyn Slater

c.2024, Plume

$28.00

272 pages

“Tough Broad: From Boogie Boarding to Wing Walking – How Outdoor Adventure Improves Our Lives as We Age” by Caroline Paul

c.2024, Bloomsbury

$28.00

288 pages

There’s an alternative, but it’s not always a good one.

You can grow old or… well, you could die. Other choices: remain grumpy in your chair, or look out the window and see what’s outside. You can have joy or regrets. Gather your years or deny them, keep the gray or dye your hair, live or die. You can read these great books on aging, and ignore what’s inside or carpe diem.

The year before she entered her sixties, Lyn Slater says she “couldn’t find anything to wear.” Nothing “inspired” her, which seemed to be a metaphor: what she put on her body “always helped me tell stories about myself.”

She was excited to enter a fresh new decade of life, though, despite being inundated with reminders of her age, which only “served to provoke me.” She decided to return to school, to take classes for fashion design, to create a new wardrobe and a new story, and in “How to Be Old” (Plume, $28.00), she writes of a decade of radical change.

On her first day of classes, Slater noticed that she was “the oldest person in the room” but nobody cared; they were more interested in what she wore. As time progressed and she learned that her experiences mattered, someone mentioned that she should have a blog. Slater began to dream. Soon, she began to blog.

“How to Be Old” is a delight that mixes a passion for fashion with glee for a second career and love at a later age. Readers will be well-served by heeding Slater’s advice: “It’s one thing to think about doing something; it’s another to actually do it.”

Keep that in mind, too, when reading “Tough Broad” by Caroline Paul (Bloomsbury, $27.99), who was once a firefighter and has always taken the wild road. Why, she asks, do we associate skateboarding with youth? Who says you can’t surf into your so-called senior years? Adventure seemed to be in Paul’s DNA so why should life be any different as an older woman?

Here, she picks up her active life by following several women who’ve embraced their outdoor passions, never mind age. Paul goes BASE jumping a 52-year-old woman and deep diving with an 80-year-old. She tries to “keep up” with a 93-year-old fast-walker. She learns to wing-walk, to swim long distances, kayak, and paddleboard with women older than her mother.

And on that note, Paul thinks about her mother. Her mom was always willing to join in when something seemed like fun. These memories help Paul learn where her adventurous streak came from, and new adventures help bring this book full-circle in a wonderful way. Readers will be charmed and inspired to try something new, to move and dive and breathe, no matter what their age.

Libraries and bookstore shelves are full of books about skincare, heart health, arthritis and joint care, and other physical issues of aging. But if you want a book about your inner life, these tales of embracing your age are nice alternatives.