Books for Every Season of a 20-Something Year Old’s Life
Graphic by Emma Niggley
When we think of seasons and reading, we picture the best novels that pair with the brilliant auburn hues of changing leaves, or what poetry would go the best sitting by the glow of the fireside in the wintertime. This is lovely and aesthetically pleasing, but what about the books that help you through the inevitable heartache and lukewarm happiness of transition? You know, the time in our lives that aren’t distinctly marked by falling leaves or budding blossoms.
As a recent college graduate and a young professional, I want to do more than just quote my favorite lines from a book or obsess over the character to friends who don’t read as much as they used to. I don’t necessarily want a self-help book that is spoon-feeding me advice either.
In a quest to find the happy medium between a good story and a perspective-altering piece of media, I looked through my Goodreads. Yes, the Goodreads that has the profile picture of my diabetic dog. It’s mostly a tracker of what I read and less of a place where I dump reviews. However, in the sea of star ratings, I do remember how I feel about each and every book that has ever come under my hungry gaze.
Also, books are the best companions ever. They don’t ask much from you, they provide you something to pass the time, and they surprise us in a lot of good ways — especially when it comes to providing some sort of relief from life.
As a young adult or someone in their teens, it’s not always easy to want to turn to others or the outside world for answers. Mom and Dad may get what’s going on half the time, but you don’t want to tell them about that one thing that you know they’ll judge you for. Sometimes your best friend is going through the same thing, but you don’t want to burden them with your own thoughts and feelings. I think that’s why I turned so much to novels to take care of the growing pains, the aches, and anguish because it provided the perfect balance of introspection and escapism that I couldn’t find in my own life.
Based on my love for reading and helping others, here are some common woes of being young and the books that will help get you through it:
In Love (ish)?
Ah, love. Or like. Or friends with benefits. Or love that’s not using the L-word yet. Truly the list of relationship definitions between individuals who have positive, romantic affections towards one another is infinite and endless. Regardless if you’re dating this person, crushing on them, or just talking, you can’t deny the rush of wonderful weirdness that you feel towards someone. It’s there, and you want to embrace it, but you also don’t want a romance novel from the ‘80s. I used to hate this genre with a passion, but these books gave me some solid hope and a refreshing perspective about what love means.
In Paris With You by Clémentine Beauvais
In Paris With You: perfect for those who don’t know how to define their love or where it will lead. Basically, the story is told from a third-person, omnipotent narrator, and it all revolves around a relationship between two individuals, Eugene and Tatiana, over the course of a decade. The story bounces from their past as childhood friends, to distant acquaintances, to “it’s complicated,” and so on and so forth.
What really kept me turning the page was the fact that most of this book is told in a mixture of traditional, novel-esque prose and prose poetry. Also, the usage of the third-person narrative was really intriguing because it left you wondering about their role or their relationship to the characters, and I honestly haven’t seen a story in a LONG time that had used third-person narrative so well.
If you want a good love story that has its ups-and-downs and deals with the complexity of DTR— which is similar to a real-life romance— I would recommend this read. Also, if you loved Normal People by Sally Rooney. Similar vibe, just in a different part of Europe.
Every Day by David Levithan
One of my best friends moved to Ohio during our eighth-grade year, and as a Christmas gift, she sent me this book in the mail. I had heard of David Levithan’s other books, but never really read any of them until this one. When I asked my friend why she picked out this book for me, she replied: “It just seemed very you.”
What I love about this book is how it deals with relationships of all kinds, and the types of love we can feel for all sorts of people along the way. Sometimes, it’s platonic love or a love that lasts for a day. The protagonists, A and Rhiannon, both learn a lot about loyalty, love, and how to look at the future, and they learn this from each other and their determined togetherness. I really want to go into more detail about what that looks like, but I’m afraid this book is riddled with spoiler traps everywhere — isn’t that exciting?
What I took away the most from this novel is to stop overthinking your love for others. It’s so easy to worry about the ends and the beginnings of people, relationships, and how we spend our time that the heart of the moment stops beating. The same is for love; don’t overthink it. Just enjoy the course of whatever this love at this moment brings to you.
(Also, there are two other books in this series that I did not know about until now. So, consider those on my TBR list).
Breakup Blues & Other Losses
On the flip side of love and all things warm and fuzzy, there’s also the inherent falling apart. The deconstruction, the inevitable combustions, and the scaffolding that caves in when you least expect it. Whether it’s a breakup with a lifelong friend, losing a part of yourself to burnout, or the loss of a loved one, nothing stings quite like when something falls out of your grasp. It’s in these moments we need a story to pull us through the most, and while I personally enjoy reading books that are FAR from what I’m experiencing at times (like Fablehaven and Mysterious Benedict Society), I recommend these books for their catharsis potential.
Of Things Gone Astray by Janina Matthewson
Did you really expect me to not mention one of my favorite books, if not my favorite book, of all time? Well, too bad. I’m talking about it— even if it’s a book you probably haven’t heard of before. I found this in a small bookshop through serendipity. It was about two months after my dad unexpectedly passed, and I just was drawn to the cover and the title. “Of things gone astray,” sounds about accurate for my life.
This book follows several characters as they begin to lose the most important things to them. Whether it be the literal disappearance of an office building or a character’s sense of navigation through their hometown, there’s a quirky appeal, but for the most part, it deals with how one gets back to a new life after the loss of its key piece. For some, it gets better, and for others, they’re left to survive the worst.
Another reason why I admire this book is how it reads like intertwined short stories and seamlessly represents the magical realism genre. To say that this book has had an influence on my own writing would be a massive understatement. The language is casual, descriptive, but doesn't overpower the narrative.
Of Things Gone Astray almost always gets reread every couple of years just because it resonated with me at a time when I needed it most. I was a young teen who had just moved schools, lost a parent, and went through changes in a friend group. I related strongly to the individuals and their circumstances in this novel, and it wasn’t always rubbing the themes of loss in your face all the time. Every time I read this, I feel less alone.
I found death and life in this book all at once, and that’s why I can’t recommend it enough— especially for those who are grieving something in their life.
Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin
I was debating between recommending Max Porter’s Grief is the Thing With Feathers and this book. If you’re looking for something bleak, dark, poetic, and that relates to the loss of a parent through the perspective of an asshole crow, then go with Porter’s novel. If you want the perspective of a dead person on what it feels like to have died and find hope in the afterlife, then Elsewhere by Gabrielle Zevin is for you. Both are good choices, but I’m also only going into detail about one of them, for the sake of brevity.
Elsewhere is one of two books ever to make me cry (the other one is on this list, but you’ll have to guess). Let me just copy and paste the line that got me:
“There will be other lives for nervous boys with sweaty palms, for bittersweet fumblings in the backseats of cars, for caps and gowns in royal blue and crimson, for mothers clasping pretty pearl necklaces around daughters' unlined necks, for your full name read aloud in an auditorium, for brand-new suitcases transporting you to strange new people in strange new lands. And there will be other lives for unpaid debts, for one-night stands, for Prague and Paris, for painful shoes with pointy toes, for indecision and revisions…” I mean, what a line, am I right?
This novel follows Lizzie, a 15-year-old girl who died in a horrible hit-and-run. When she dies, she gets transported to the afterlife, where she is mentored by her deceased grandmother for the next 15 years until she is reincarnated. The afterlife is reimagined, our understanding of how we leave the ones behind is explored, and the grief our loved ones feel when they leave Earth is all discussed in a bittersweet way.
Just an all-around great book. Great perspective on what it means to move on from our grief, and there’s a good balance of dialogue that makes you chuckle.
Your World is Changing… You Need a Book that Does Too.
So, you’re moving to a new city, starting a new job with career potential, or you just graduated. Whatever it is, all you know is that this new change makes it feel as if your world is going 100 miles a minute. Sometimes you need a book that reflects this momentum— something that captures the craziness of this world and its fastness. Or maybe you just need a reminder to breathe. Cue my book recommendations.
Wild Seed by Octavia Butler
This was a graduation gift actually from one of my closest friends. Science fiction is usually not my favorite, but she also knows that I love Octavia Butler’s writing. This book did not disappoint, even if it did take me fifty pages or so to really get into it.
What I love about Wild Seed is that it explores this dichotomy of known versus unknown, and in a story that spans over several centuries, it moves remarkably fast. It’s lightning in a bottle, and the moral dilemmas of two, opposing deity-like figures play over its course. Twists and turns unearth themselves every chapter, and it’s a wonderful rollercoaster mixed with a unique plot. There were moments that genuinely surprised me, and I think there is so much poignancy embedded within Butler’s prose that it kept me invested.
I love the relationships between these characters and their understanding of the world. There is so much philosophical magic happening so subtly within the background, especially as the two deities, Anwanyu and Doro, challenge each other’s perspectives on the violence and peace of production. I can safely say this novel changed my perspective about what goes on in the world.
If you love grander metaphors and allusions to real-world issues in a subtle, science fiction way, then this is absolutely the book for you. Also, be prepared to fall out of your seat since this novel will floor you in a myriad of ways.
Silence in the Age of Noise by Erling Kagge
As a diametrical opposite to fast-paced fiction, there’s also a need for a book that helps you slow down. Observe. Listen. Silence: In the Age of Noise by world-renowned Norwegian explorer Erling Kagge falls into your lap, or in my case through Barnes & Noble.
Silence calls attention to the fact that as a society, we are scientifically proven to be terrible at being alone with our own thoughts. Kagge argues that we continue to lose the ability to be in a present moment without some sort of stimulant. When I say that Kagge “argues,” please take that lightly, as his voice and tonality is very easy-going and reassuring— it’s mainly the statistics and studies he mentions that do the loud talking.
To battle this, he provides tales of his adventures to the North and South Pole, and in places like NYC. He talks about a dining room conversation with his family. He gives insight into his life and how he has been able to appreciate the silence as a friend, and not an enemy. He immerses us in his world, with the hope that we can incorporate his lessons into our own.
While this book is neither spiritual nor self-help, the way that it is constructed does have elements of both. I love the message of paying attention to your interior by instilling silence in your noisy exterior; it helped me recognize when I’m trying to distract myself instead of heal.
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That officially ends my barrage of recommendations, individually catered to whatever you might be going through. If you have a book you’d like to recommend, feel free to DM me on Instagram or friend me on Goodreads. I need more reads.