The Pleasure Lists Q&A: Sari Botton of Oldster Magazine & Memoir Land

Pleasures, Curated by Sari Botton of Memoir Land and Oldster Magazine

We’re back with another installment of

The Pleasure Lists

: Pleasures, Curated.

I hope you enjoy reading these as much as I enjoy getting to know members of the Pleasure Lists community and what makes their Pleasures tick.

Pleasures, Curated by

Sari Botton

of

Oldster Magazine

,

Memoir Land

and

Adventures In "Journalism" by 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. 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 on Substack.

Location: Kingston, NY

Socials: Notes, Instagram, BlueSky

Pleasures

1. Drawing with Crayons

This isn’t even my complete crayon collection.

For a person who’ll turn 60 in October, I own an awful lot of crayons. (When I say that a part of me remains 10 years old, I’m not kidding.) Since childhood I’ve loved drawing with crayons, not only for the result, but for how it feels to drag them across paper. It’s a soothing, almost hypnotic experience for me, that pleases me. (I wish I had more time to devote to drawing with crayons. I’m often too busy considering and editing other people’s work—editing two magazines is a demanding day job.)

I drew the cherry blossoms on the cover of my memoir, and a few of my other illustrations are included inside the book.

Order the book…

Every now and then, I’ll draw something like a comic for Oldster Magazine or Memoir Land. Here’s a comic I published last year about my “sophophobia” after taking a great class with Aubrey Hirsch:

2. Singing Alone, But Also in Public

I use these bluetooth mics for karaoke via YouTube.

I love to sing, I’m decent at it, but as a woman and the daughter of a singer, I’ve got issues around feeling permitted to do it. Big ones. As a little kid, I was so unselfconscious about singing, I’d just go outside and belt my favorite songs to the entire neighborhood.

Little Sari on the stoop, circa 1969 or 70.