I’m a few weeks slow on the upswing, but what a few weeks it has been! Yeah, I mean what you think I mean, but I also mean that everyone is sick with norovirus and RSV and pneumonia this January (including us with a stomach bug and flu) and I have a couple deadlines looming and I got a new parttime job. Which I already mentioned on the blog. I’m sure it’ll come up many more times. I am a part-time writer and part-time bookseller and this month has been bonkers.

I have never felt the whole “January is 572 days long” thing like I did this year.

Somewhere in there, Jimmy Carter died. Okay, technically he died on December 29th, but see? Doesn’t that seem like a world ago?

I met Jimmy Carter, way back in 2003. He had just become the first (and still only) president to have published a novel and was going to sign copies of The Hornet’s Nest at a local bookshop. From what I can tell, it was to be his only novel, though he wrote many nonfiction books, religious meditations, a nonfiction YA book (With Talking Peace), a book of poetry (Always a Reckoning), and even a children’s picture book, The Little Baby Snoogle-Fleejur. There might have been more that I’m missing.

I’m a book nerd. I was fascinated with the idea of Carter being the first president to write a novel. I was a regular at the Regulator events at the time, and I bought my ticket and picked up my copy of the book. (Yes, the Regulator is where I work now, but this is less of a coincidence than that I still live in the same city.) On the day of, I remember standing in line up the block from the shop, the line stretching out far behind me. It was slow moving, and secret service dotted the path, some statuesque—refusing to engage even if you tried—and others repeating directions on how to behave in front of a former U.S. president. They told us to have our book ready, to step up to the table and say a quick greeting, to step to the side, to take back our book and get out quickly and calmly. No dawdling, No long conversations. No pictures. It was clear that anything construed as funny business would be cut short by one of those statues in a suit.

The table where Carter was signing books was through the upstairs of the shop, down the stairs and through the downstairs of the shop. The line snaked through the aisles and into what was probably still the cafe, though I don’t remember it being a cafe that day, so perhaps that was already gone. Unfortunately, as I stepped up and handed my book to an assistant, shivering with trepidation (because I’m worried I’ll do something wrong even when I have no history or intent of doing it), the guy in front of me insisted on not stepping to the side but engaging Carter longer, gaining him intervention from the secret service. Which means my encounter was cut short and edged in tension. Thanks, dude. But I did get my book signed, did technically meet Jimmy Carter.

As for The Hornet’s Nest, I read it. (Did I finish it?) Yes, I read the copy that was signed because while I value things like that, I am also practical to a fault and don’t hold many things as precious. It’s, ahem, not a literary marvel. About the Revolutionary War, it covers some aspects of the South that aren’t dealt with as much, like Native American involvement and families (here Northern transplants and Quakers) who do not want to fight the British. The history is well-researched. The writing is, well. He was used to writing history and memoir (which is essentially history). The book is fact-heavy and “dry.” But it still sits on my shelf and I imagine always will.

I don’t have many intelligent things to say about Carter. He was President when I was born, but I was unaware of it. I have heard commentary about him, and I admire the man that he was, at least as a post-president. However, this is a book blog, and I should probably stay in my own lane which is not political correspondent.

Here’s a nod of my head to Carter as he goes. Here are my condolences to his family and also a hurrah for a life well-lived. And here’s a brief mention of the only novel written by a U.S. president and the day I basically met another novelist who was also a world leader.