{"id":165,"date":"2026-05-29T15:43:53","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T15:43:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=165"},"modified":"2026-05-29T15:43:53","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T15:43:53","slug":"a-book-i-wish-id-read-at-22","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=165","title":{"rendered":"A Book I Wish I\u2019d Read at 22"},"content":{"rendered":"<section>\n<div>\n<p><small><em>This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors\u2019 weekly guide to the best in books. <\/em><i>Sign up for it here.<\/i><\/small><\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=163\">Photos of the Week: Memorial Day, Spelling Bee, Cheese Rolling<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>The earliest years of adulthood\u2014ages 18 to 22, give or take\u2014are deeply formative. Some people spend that period in higher education, where they\u2019re 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. \u201c\u2018Figuring things out\u2019 is a lifelong endeavor with no guarantee of success,\u201d she writes. But \u201cthe 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.\u201d Her choices are surprising and wise, full of picks I\u2019d 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\u2019s suggestions brought to mind a different <em>Atlantic <\/em>list\u2014the books we found too late.<\/p>\n<p>First, here are four new stories from <em>The Atlantic<\/em>\u2019s Books section:<\/p>\n<div>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cThe Burden They Carry,\u201d a poem by William H. McRaven<\/li>\n<li>The Kardashians explain it all.<\/li>\n<li>Jill Biden worried her husband was drugged on debate night.<\/li>\n<li>The biggest tell that something was written by AI<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p>For that article, I recommended Vigdis Hjorth\u2019s <em>A House in Norway<\/em>, which I had been assigned in a Norwegian-literature class I was taking in Oslo. That book\u2014and that course\u2014made me feel that I\u2019d lost precious time I should have spent learning Norwegian, my mother\u2019s native language, and getting to know the country she\u2019s from. (My anxiety about wasted years is hilarious now, considering I was only 20 when I read it.) Judging by my colleagues\u2019 recommendations on that same list, I\u2019m not alone in feeling regret over not having read the right book at just the right time. And as I\u2019ve gotten older, I\u2019ve experienced these kinds of missed connections again and again.<\/p>\n<p>About a month ago, for example, I was standing with a friend in the packed aisles of the Strand, New York\u2019s famous, cavernous independent bookstore. We\u2019d examined some rare, leather-bound Anthony Trollope novels; I\u2019d 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\u2019s <em>Tipping the Velvet<\/em>on a table. The American cover of the British novel is more titillating than it needs to be\u2014two women wear nothing but stockings, sharing some kind of swing or trapeze\u2014but it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n<p>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\u2019s 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\u2019s queer underworld. She tries on a set of different identities\u2014stage performer, sex worker, kept woman, socialist agitator\u2014but all the while, she\u2019s 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\u2014in part because I was no longer Nan\u2019s age. I\u2019ve already done much of the self-discovery and self-definition she\u2019s undertaking in the story. But if I\u2019d 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.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Read These Books by the Time You Graduate<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><i>By Anna Holmes<\/i><\/p>\n<p>\u201cFiguring things out\u201d is a lifelong endeavor, but these titles offer inspiration for young adults finding their way. Read the full article.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=161\">Atlantic Trivia: TV Shows<\/a><\/p>\n<h4><b>What to Read<\/b><\/h4>\n<p><strong><em>A Visit From the Goon Squad<\/em><\/strong><strong>, by Jennifer Egan<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Egan\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019s life, like mine\u2014and like all of ours\u2014is full of low moments, but while those times shape us, they don\u2019t need to define us.\u00a0 \u2014 Xochitl Gonzalez<\/p>\n<p>From our list: Seven books for people figuring out their next move<\/p>\n<h4><b>Out Next Week<\/b><\/h4>\n<p><em>\ud83d\udcda <\/em><em>Whistler<\/em>, by Ann Patchett<\/p>\n<div>\n<p><em>\ud83d\udcda <\/em><em>The Typing Lady<\/em>, by Ruth Ozeki<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p><em>\ud83d\udcda <\/em><em>Something We Said: Richard Pryor, a Notorious Word, and Me<\/em>, by Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<h5><strong>Your Weekend Read<\/strong><\/h5>\n<p><strong>The Night My Marriage Fell Apart<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><i>By Chris Jones<\/i><\/p>\n<p>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\u2019t 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\u2019d arrived at mine.<\/p>\n<p>Read the full article.<\/p>\n<div>\n<p><small><em>When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting <\/em>The Atlantic<em>.<\/em><\/small><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p><small><i>Sign up for The Wonder Reader,<\/i><i> a Saturday newsletter in which our editors recommend stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight.<\/i><\/small><\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=159\">The Biggest Tell That Something Was Written By AI<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<p><small><i>Explore <\/i><i>all of our newsletters.<\/i><\/small><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019m not alone in feeling regret over not having found the right book at just the right time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":164,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books-briefing"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - 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