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The earliest years of adulthood—ages 18 to 22, give or take—are deeply formative. Some people spend that period in higher education, where they’re encouraged to read broadly and think deeply about their path forward. But I think anyone in that phase of life can take inspiration from the list of books Anna Holmes named this week as great for graduates. “‘Figuring things out’ is a lifelong endeavor with no guarantee of success,” she writes. But “the best way to locate inspiration is by looking to writers who illustrate what you might want to emulate, rather than those who lead by edict or exhortation.” Her choices are surprising and wise, full of picks I’d pass along to many of the younger people in my life. Around this time last year, I wrote about a book that was important to me in my transition from undergraduate to grown-up. But this year, Holmes’s suggestions brought to mind a different Atlantic list—the books we found too late.
First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic’s Books section:
- “The Burden They Carry,” a poem by William H. McRaven
- The Kardashians explain it all.
- Jill Biden worried her husband was drugged on debate night.
- The biggest tell that something was written by AI
For that article, I recommended Vigdis Hjorth’s A House in Norway, which I had been assigned in a Norwegian-literature class I was taking in Oslo. That book—and that course—made me feel that I’d lost precious time I should have spent learning Norwegian, my mother’s native language, and getting to know the country she’s from. (My anxiety about wasted years is hilarious now, considering I was only 20 when I read it.) Judging by my colleagues’ recommendations on that same list, I’m not alone in feeling regret over not having read the right book at just the right time. And as I’ve gotten older, I’ve experienced these kinds of missed connections again and again.
About a month ago, for example, I was standing with a friend in the packed aisles of the Strand, New York’s famous, cavernous independent bookstore. We’d examined some rare, leather-bound Anthony Trollope novels; I’d tried searching for Garry Wills, before the crowd jostled me away from the biography section. After regrouping in General Fiction, we decided to head for the exit and on to dinner. Then I saw Sarah Waters’s Tipping the Velvet on a table. The American cover of the British novel is more titillating than it needs to be—two women wear nothing but stockings, sharing some kind of swing or trapeze—but it’s a striking image, and I half-remembered the book from years of word-of-mouth recommendations and Wikipedia sessions. On the strength of that vague recollection, I bought it.
If only I had sought it out sooner! I tore through the novel on the subway, then on the Amtrak back to Washington, D.C., and I even stealthily turned pages during conversations. Set in the 1890s, it takes the form of a Victorian picaresque. The book’s hero is a young girl, Nan, who falls in love with a male impersonator named Kitty; their relationship (and messy breakup) propels Nan into London’s queer underworld. She tries on a set of different identities—stage performer, sex worker, kept woman, socialist agitator—but all the while, she’s searching for a place, and for people, who feel like home. I have not had more fun reading in ages. Yet as I finished it, I felt a moment of sadness—in part because I was no longer Nan’s age. I’ve already done much of the self-discovery and self-definition she’s undertaking in the story. But if I’d read it in my early 20s, when I was also figuring out whom I loved, how I wanted to look, and who I wanted to be, I might have treasured it even more.
Read These Books by the Time You Graduate
By Anna Holmes
“Figuring things out” is a lifelong endeavor, but these titles offer inspiration for young adults finding their way. Read the full article.
What to Read
A Visit From the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan
Egan’s rightly lauded collection of linked stories found its way into my hands just as I was crawling out of a midlife mess in which I was making a lot of questionable choices. The book drops in on a highly populated world revolving around the music business, and for obvious reasons, I found myself drawn to the endearingly disastrous producer’s assistant Sasha. Paradoxically, her story gave me a tremendous sense of hope that, regardless of my mistakes in the moment, everything would be okay in the end. We first meet her as a 20-something living in New York who steals a wallet while on a date. We see her teenage years as a runaway sex worker in Europe, watch her as a misanthropic college student, and ultimately glimpse her as a content and loving mother, living in California and channeling her love of music and curiosity into her children as well as artwork of her own. Sasha’s life, like mine—and like all of ours—is full of low moments, but while those times shape us, they don’t need to define us. — Xochitl Gonzalez
From our list: Seven books for people figuring out their next move
Out Next Week
Whistler, by Ann Patchett
The Typing Lady, by Ruth Ozeki
Something We Said: Richard Pryor, a Notorious Word, and Me, by Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor
Your Weekend Read
The Night My Marriage Fell Apart
By Chris Jones
I snapped like I never had before, swinging my rake as hard as I could against our fence, breaking both, everything in splinters. I stood in my yard, still surrounded by leaves, and now with a fence to repair and half a rake in my fist. I flung it away and got into my battered little pickup to drive to the hardware store. Two blocks from home, I made up my mind that I didn’t like Amy very much anymore. Another couple of blocks, and I realized that she must have come to the same conclusion about me, a little sooner than I’d arrived at mine.
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The post A Book I Wish I’d Read at 22 appeared first on The Atlantic.
