My one attempt at joining a book group started strong with Lolita, but collapsed after someone else suggested Don Miguel Ruiz’ inane The Four Agreements (A Toltec Wisdom Book), which resulted in an incurable allergy to anything New-Agey or self-helpy. But I love the comic essays of Henry Alford, often featured in The New Yorker, which got me past the cover of his latest, How to Live: A Search for Wisdom From Old People (While They Are Still on This Earth) (Twelve, $23.99). It doesn’t take long to find out the title’s pompous overreach is self-spoofing. Alford’s lightly twined a memoir of his mother’s divorce (at 79) among interviews with a random but interesting group of seniors—Phyllis Diller, Harold Bloom, and a Katrina survivor, among others—about aging and the wisdom, if any, acquired thereby. Alford—gay, wry, mid-40s—is probably sick of being compared to St. Sedaris, so let’s not. But addressing even such weighty topics, he’s virtuosically excised all self-importance from his book, and doesn’t strain to boil all this elder wisdom down to inert, thudding Ruiz-style maxims. The advice Alford has to share sinks in slowly, gently, and thus will probably stay with you longer and more deeply. GAVIN BORCHERT

Thu., Jan. 29, 7:30 p.m., 2009