Seven Books for People Figuring Out Their Next Move

The Atlantic

18 hours ago

A well-lived life isn't always a perfectly navigated one. Many days will evoke the feeling of choppy waters and, just as common, being completely adrift. These rudderless moments can come after joyful milestones, such as graduations and weddings, or they might be driven by unwanted changes—a breakup, for instance, or the loss of a job. Whether such pivots are expected or not, they might send us off into the unknown, make us wonder what comes next, or have us turning to others for advice. Trusted friends or mentors can help—but so can books, which can offer huge amounts of wisdom from authors we'll never meet.
When the right book finds you at exactly the right time, it can change the course of your life. A perceptive memoir or a relatable novel can shift your perspective on the troubles you're facing, or even illuminate a new way out of the doldrums. The seven titles below helped guide me during times of transition, and they're great tools for anyone trying to navigate new opportunities, new places, or new phases of life.
How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, by Alexander Chee
This exquisitely written essay collection is, on its face, about living a writer's life, but its true concern is self-discovery, invention, and—perhaps most important—reinvention. In these chronologically organized essays, Chee loses and finds himself again and again. As a student in a foreign-exchange program, he locates an unusual sense of belonging; later, as a queer activist in the Bay Area during the height of the AIDS crisis, he discovers his voice at a time of tremendous loss. Taken together, the essays celebrate the cumulative experiences of being alive, and, from the wise distance of Chee's 50s, argue that detours and even missteps only make life richer. I didn't discover this book until I was past 40, but I can imagine what a beacon it might have been to me if it had been around when I was just starting my adult life.
The Seat of the Soul, by Gary Zukav
Few transitions are quite as jarring as going from full-time student to working adult. After years of having school define the rules of play—where to live, what to do with your days, what to dream of—the graduate is suddenly faced with a host of independent, anxiety-provoking decisions to make, quickly. No book could be a better companion at this time than Zukav's guide to taking control of your own life. The author takes an analytical approach to spiritual growth. First, he examines how humankind has evolved into a species aware of external power; then he moves to the possibility that we can each harness our own, unique internal power, specifically by understanding consequences and aligning our actions with our intentions. Along the way, Zukav explores ideas about human potential and karmic cycles of reincarnation. His beliefs aren't universally appealing (though both Jay-Z and Oprah are fans), but they are sincere. Even if the reader doesn't fully subscribe to his worldview, his end point is a place many of us wish to reach. Through developing a sincere process of considering our motivations and goals before we make decisions, we can, Zukav promises, find ourselves in more fulfilled, less anxious lives.
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.
The Autobiography of Malcolm X, by Alex Haley and Malcolm X
At moments when I've felt lost in the world, I've repeatedly turned to this account of a life as a political and religious awakening. The early facts are familiar: Malcolm Little was born to a poor Black family in Nebraska. His father was suspiciously murdered and his mother committed to a psychiatric institution while he was a child. Little ventured East, got involved in organized crime, and was eventually sent to prison, where he joined the Nation of Islam and rose to become a national, and then global, face of the civil-rights movement. But X's memoir is especially valuable for how it relates lesser-known, more personal milestones: He dwells, for instance, on the way a pilgrimage to Mecca caused a shift in his relationship with Islam; next to radical passages about embracing identity on your own terms and rejecting the conditions of an oppressor are self-interrogating studies of our boundless capacity to change both our life and our belief systems. X's account is a fantastic and inspiring primer on examining our past steps, recognizing when they are no longer working for us, and using that sense of discomfort to find something new—and ideally more fulfilling.
The Red Car, by Marcy Dermansky
This taut, speedy novel is a delightful reminder that messy living can make for interesting lives and that, sometimes, interventions of fate are actually what get us where we need to be. Dermansky tells the story of a woman named Leah who is bequeathed a red sports car by an old co-worker. Despite having the kind of husband who makes dinner every night at home, she unexpectedly sets off, alone, from Queens to retrieve it in California. Leah's inheritance becomes the inciting incident in a series of events that unravel her life: Her trip awakens a latent violence in her husband and an invigorating independent streak in her. Every moment with the red car seems to take her further away from what she perceived was her neatly charted course but closer, in the most exciting way, to a different kind of fulfillment.
The Red Car
By Marcy Dermansky
Kitchen Confidential, by Anthony Bourdain
Often, the first steps in illustrious careers are unglamorous, modest, or even incongruous. When you're at the beginning, you can easily feel that things aren't moving fast enough, or begin to suspect that you'll be stuck in that early stage forever. Bourdain got his start as a dishwasher in a watering hole in Provincetown, Massachusetts, for instance, because he was generally broke and needed beer money—but the job gave him the passion and the skills he would need to make a living as a chef in several celebrated restaurants. This clever, dishy memoir recounts that journey; it's also what launched his lauded second act as an author and a journalist. Reading Kitchen Confidential today, with Bourdain's legacy in mind, is a great reminder that it's possible to overcome your early circumstances, no matter how modest, if you know yourself, stay curious, and commit to learning along the way.
Sex and the City, by Candace Bushnell
Before they became the show of the same name, Bushnell's columns in the pink pages of The New York Observer documented, with light fictionalizations, the sex and social lives of New York's ambitious and powerful—and her own, though she frequently disguised her run-ins as the affairs of her 'friend,' the character Carrie Bradshaw. In this volume of collected Observer columns, most of them focused on Carrie, Bushnell reveals herself to be a sage of power and social capital, an expert on relationships and how they can be used to build careers, accumulate social clout, and stomp on feelings. For anyone with a sense of ambition, whether you're moving somewhere new or settling down where you already are, her work is both an entertaining read and an instruction manual for how even the most casual acquaintanceships can transform your life. Cultivating them intentionally, Bushnell implicitly argues, can turn even the biggest metropolis into a small town where your next opportunity (or at the very least a good party) is just a conversation or two away.