I am always completely taken aback by the scale and breadth of Nashville’s Southern Festival of Books. Put on by Humanities Tennessee (with a huge helping hand from Parnassus Books), I can always expect to find local authors, fan favorites, and food trucks. No event is complete in Nashville without a line of food trucks at every corner, after all.

For the first time in years, the festival was not stifled by the heat and humidity of Middle Tennessee. Under the brilliant sunlight and refreshing breeze, literary fans browsed the book tent, made conversation with local vendors, and enjoyed the book shop Australian Shepherd chasing our shadows across the plaza.

As an author, this is the highlight of my year. Not because I have ever been featured in a panel, or well, published… but because I get to see the joy of reading in so many attendees. The literary community can sometimes feel digital-only.

Having so many readers in one spot, crossing all genres and levels of authordom, the social conventions are reverted. Here, we are free to share opinions openly and loudly. We debate book #2 and book #3 from that YA dystopian series we all read a decade ago. We share recommendations for memoirs on travel, citing one of the speakers hosting a session in only ten minutes from now. And most importantly, the electricity of anticipation jumps from reader to reader as our favorite authors duck into the signing tent. Here, we are not alone.

This year, I attended a session off my normal track. It was in the nonfiction agenda, a short novel in the midst of 14 others, told in essays across 30 years in Japan. And it wasn’t at all what I expected it to be.

The hour that followed in “A Beginner’s Guide to Japan,” was a moving statement on joy in impermanence. How death and endings give rise to happiness when you appreciate the now for what it is: a gift to be celebrated. Pico Iyer spoke in prose, sharing his stories of playing ping-pong with neighbors who had released their societal duty and now reverted to their youth. It was simple, but it was pure and wonderful.

This, my dear readers, is the power of books. We get to take a step back from our own lives and reexamine ourselves through a different lens. Before he closed his session, Pico Iyer shared his secret with us. He told us to be happy in the now, in this beautiful October afternoon, because tomorrow is never promised. And instead of being horribly depressed by this statement, I felt inspired and did what Pico suggested. I looked toward the future, not the past, and enjoyed a balmy October afternoon surrounded by books in the city I love.

If you feel like you need a new perspective, I highly recommend A Beginner’s Guide to Japan.