65 books you need to read in your 20s – part 2

1. 65 books you need to read in your 20s – part 2

2. Housekeeping Marilynne Robinson An important book to read to learn about being lonely. A modern classic, Housekeeping is the story of Ruth and her younger sister, Lucille, who grow up haphazardly, first under the care of their competent grandmother, then of two comically bumbling great-aunts, and finally of Sylvie, their eccentric and remote aunt. The family house is in the small Far West town of Fingerbone set on a glacial lake, the same lake where their grandfather died in a spectacular train wreck, and their mother drove off a cliff to her death. It is a town "chastened by an outsized landscape and extravagant weather, and chastened again by an awareness that the whole of human history had occurred elsewhere." Ruth and Lucille's struggle toward adulthood beautifully illuminates the price of loss and survival, and the dangerous and deep undertow of transience.

3. I Love Dick Chris Kraus Readers will be rewarded with most psychologically astute sex scene ever written, plus a thorough, impassioned and wholly unique analysis of the power dynamics of heterosexual sex and love, how heterosexuality works to keep women unrepresented and unable to fully represent themselves, and how that affects the world. The story is gripping enough: in 1994 a married, failed independent filmmaker, turning forty, falls in love with a well-known theorist and endeavors to seduce him with the help of her husband. But when the theorist refuses to answer her letters, the husband and wife continue the correspondence for each other instead, imagining the fling the wife wishes to have with Dick. What follows is a breathless pursuit that takes the woman across America and away from her husband ;and far beyond her original infatuation into a discovery of the transformative power of first person narrative. I Love Dick is a manifesto for a new kind of feminist who isn't afraid to burn through her own narcissism in order to assume responsibility for herself and for all the injustice in world ;and it's a book you won't put down until the author's final, heroic acts of self-revelation and transformation.

4. On the Road Jack Kerouac So that you’ll realize the way you felt about this book in high school has totally changed. IN THREE WEEKS in April of 1951, Jack Kerouac wrote his first full draft of On the Road—typed as a single-spaced paragraph on eight long sheets of tracing paper, which he later taped together to form a 120-foot scroll. A major literary event when it was published in Viking hardcover in 2007, this is the uncut version of an American classic—rougher, wilder, and more provocative than the official work that appeared, heavily edited, in 1957. This version, capturing a moment in creative history, represents the first full expression of Kerouac’s revolutionary aesthetic.

5. Even Cowgirls Get the Blues Tom Robbins It is kind of a primer on absurdist literature and speaks volumes to self-doubt and discovery and body image and feminine identity reclamation. Plus, it has that sense of humor that you have in your twenties when you think you are SO FUCKING CLEVER, and sometimes you actually are. The whooping crane rustlers are girls. Young girls. Cowgirls, as a matter of fact, all “bursting with dimples and hormones”—and the FBI has never seen anything quite like them. Yet their rebellion at the Rubber Rose Ranch is almost overshadowed by the arrival of the legendary Sissy Hankshaw, a white-trash goddess literally born to hitchhike, and the freest female of them all.Freedom, its prizes and its prices, is a major theme of Tom Robbins’s classic tale of eccentric adventure. As his robust characters attempt to turn the tables on fate, the reader is drawn along on a tragicomic joyride across the badlands of sexuality, wild rivers of language, and the frontiers of the mind.

6. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World Haruki Murakami Two complicated, brilliant, and intertwined yet distinct narratives (Hard-Boiled Wonderland and The End of the World) about a surreal dystopia. Japan's most widely-read and controversial writer, author of A Wild Sheep Chase, hurtles into the consciousness of the West with this narrative about a split-brained data processor, a deranged scientist, his shockingly undemure granddaughter, and various thugs, librarians, and subterranean monsters--not to mention Bob Dylan and Lauren Bacall.

7. Bossypants Tina Fey This whole book is filled with brilliance — about work, about being a woman, about being a mom, about being a boss. Before Liz Lemon, before "Weekend Update," before "Sarah Palin," Tina Fey was just a young girl with a dream: a recurring stress dream that she was being chased through a local airport by her middle-school gym teacher. She also had a dream that one day she would be a comedian on TV.She has seen both these dreams come true.At last, Tina Fey's story can be told. From her youthful days as a vicious nerd to her tour of duty on Saturday Night Live; from her passionately halfhearted pursuit of physical beauty to her life as a mother eating things off the floor; from her one-sided college romance to her nearly fatal honeymoon -- from the beginning of this paragraph to this final sentence.Tina Fey reveals all, and proves what we've all suspected: you're no one until someone calls you bossy.

8. Kitchen Confidential Anthony Bourdain Will immediately quash your fantasies of opening your own restaurant unless you are a masochist, in which case this book will be your how-to. A New York City chef who is also a novelist recounts his experiences in the restaurant business, and exposes abuses of power, sexual promiscuity, drug use, and other secrets of life behind kitchen doors.

9. How to Lose Friends and Alienate People Toby Young Young’s memoir about his (mis)adventures in the New York media scene can seem a bit petulant, but he does manage to capture pretty perfectly that world’s bizarre rituals and petty status obsessions.

10. The Dirt MötleyCrüe and Neil Strauss You think your twenties were wild? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

11. Lunar Park Bret Easton Ellis Technically a novel, but more of a fictionalized memoir: “It’s about what happens when you reach your career goals yet you still find yourself haunted by ghosts,” says my colleague Michael. Also, it’s important to read Bret Easton Ellis before you get too old. In this chilling tale reality, memoir, and fantasy combine to create not only a fascinating version of this most controversial writer but also a deeply moving novel about love and loss, parents and children, and ultimately forgiveness.

12. Just Kids Patti Smith One of my favorite books of the last few years, maybe ever. Smith’s memoir is about falling in love — with a man, with New York, with her adult self — and will make you long for a New York that you never knew. In Just Kids, Patti Smith’s first book of prose, the legendary American artist offers a never-before-seen glimpse of her remarkable relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in the epochal days of New York City and the Chelsea Hotel in the late sixties and seventies.  An honest and moving story of youth and friendship, Smith brings the same unique, lyrical quality to Just Kids as she has to the rest of her formidable body of work—from her influential 1975 album Horses to her visual art and poetry.

13. Another Bullshit Night in Suck City Nick Flynn For learning that trauma is traumatic. Nick Flynn met his father when he was working as a caseworker in a homeless shelter in Boston. As a teenager he'd received letters from this stranger father, a self-proclaimed poet and con man doing time in federal prison for bank robbery. Another Bullshit Night in Suck City tells the story of the trajectory that led Nick and his father onto the streets, into that shelter, and finally to each other.

14. Oh the Glory of it All Sean Wilsey It’s just a fab memoir about growing up in San Francisco, but mostly the dude had a TERRIBLE childhood. And I think terrible childhood books are best for people in their twenties. When Sean turns nine years old, his father divorces his mother and marries her best friend. Sean's life blows apart. His mother first invites him to commit suicide with her, then has a "vision" of salvation that requires packing her Louis Vuitton luggage and traveling the globe, a retinue of multiracial children in tow. Her goal: peace on earth (and a Nobel Prize). Sean meets Indira Gandhi, Helmut Kohl, Menachem Begin, and the pope, hoping each one might come back to San Francisco and persuade his father to rejoin the family. Instead, Sean is pushed out of San Francisco and sent spiraling through five high schools, till he finally lands at an unorthodox reform school cum "therapeutic community," in Italy. With its multiplicity of settings and kaleidoscopic mix of preoccupations-sex, Russia, jet helicopters, seismic upheaval, boarding schools, Middle Earth, skinheads, home improvement, suicide, skateboarding, Sovietology, public transportation, massage, Christian fundamentalism, dogs, Texas, global thermonuclear war, truth, evil, masturbation, hope, Bethlehem, CT, eventual salvation (abridged list)—Oh the Glory of It All is memoir as bildungsroman as explosion.

15. I Don’t Care About Your Band Julie Klausner These hilarious interconnected essays about finding and losing (mostly losing) love as a twentysomething in New York City take place in the recent past, but something tells me they are timeless. I Don't Care About Your Band charts a distinctly human journey of a strong-willed but vulnerable protagonist who loves men like it's her job, but who's done with guys who know more about love songs than love. Klausner's is a new outlook on dating in a time of pop culture obsession, and she spent her 20's doing personal field research to back up her philosophies. This is the girl's version of High Fidelity. By turns explicit, funny and moving, Klausner's debut shows the evolution of a young woman who endured myriad encounters with the wrong guys, to emerge with real- world wisdom on matters of the heart. I Don't Care About Your Band is Julie Klausner's manifesto, and every one of us can relate.

16. Wild Cheryl Strayed For how, and why, to be brave. And also how to hike for over 1,000 miles alone after your mother’s death, your divorce, and your recovery from a bit of a heroin addiction. At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother’s death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life. With no experience or training, driven only by blind will, she would hike more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State—and she would do it alone. Told with suspense and style, sparkling with warmth and humor, Wild powerfully captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened, and ultimately healed her.

17. Lit Mary Karr Karr’s memoir about her alcoholism is like a punch in the gut, in the best possible way. And as my friend Jess says, this book “will teach you to be honest with yourself.” Lit follows the self-professed blackbelt sinner's descent into the inferno of alcoholism and madness--and to her astonishing resurrection. Karr's longing for a solid family seems secure when her marriage to a handsome, Shakespeare-quoting blueblood poet produces a son they adore. But she can't outrun her apocalyptic past. She drinks herself into the same numbness that nearly devoured her charismatic but troubled mother, reaching the brink of suicide. A hair-raising stint in 'The Mental Marriott,' with an oddball tribe of gurus and saviors, awakens her to the possibility of joy and leads her to an unlikely faith. Not since Saint Augustine cried, 'Give me chastity, Lord-but not yet!' has a conversion story rung with such dark hilarity. Lit is about getting drunk and getting sober, becoming a mother by letting go of a mother, learning to write by learning to live. Written with Karr's relentless honesty, unflinching self-scrutiny, and irreverent, lacerating humor, it is a truly electrifying story of how to grow up--as only Mary Karr can tell it.

18. I’m with the Band Pamela Des Barres Des Barres spent much of the ’60s as a rock ‘n’ roll groupie, and this classic memoir is a good reminder that a narcissist by any other name (aka rock star) is still a narcissist. As soon as she graduated from high school, Pamela Des Barres headed for the Sunset Strip, where she knocked on rock stars' backstage doors and immersed herself in the drugs, danger, and ecstasy of the freewheeling 1960s. Over the next 10 years she had affairs with Mick Jagger, Jimmy Page, Keith Moon, Waylon Jennings, Chris Hillman, Noel Redding, and Jim Morrison, among others. She traveled with Led Zeppelin; lived in sin with Don Johnson; turned down a date with Elvis Presley; and was close friends with Robert Plant, Gram Parsons, Ray Davies, and Frank Zappa. As a member of the GTO's, a girl group masterminded by Frank Zappa, she was in the thick of the most revolutionary renaissance in the history of modern popular music. Warm, witty, and sexy, this kiss-and-tell–all stands out as the perfect chronicle of one of rock 'n' roll's most thrilling eras.

19. Dear Diary Lesley Arfin Arfin revisits her funny, dark diary entries from the ages of 12 through 25. There’s lots to relate to here, and also some deeply cautionary tales. A collection of a girl's funniest diary entries from 12 to 25 years old. She updates each entry by tracking down the people involved and asking awkward questions like, "Do you remember when I tried to beat you up?" Sometimes old friends apologize. Sometimes they become new enemies. No matter who she talks to about the days we all discovered sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll, one thing becomes abundantly clear: Boys are totally immature."Here's your chance to have all the benefits of a tortured adolescence without the shitty childhood. Congradulations!"—Sarah Silverman

20. The Complete Poems of Anne Sexton Anne Sexton Sexton was a revolutionary: She wrote frankly and breathtakingly about incredibly personal and controversial topics — including her mental illness, drug addiction, and abortion — until her suicide in 1973 at age 45. From the joy and anguish of her own experience, Sexton fashioned poems that told truths about the inner lives of men and women. This book comprises Sexton's ten volumes of verse, including the Pulitzer Prize-winner Live or Die, as well as seven poems form her last years.

21. Actual Air David Berman You may know Berman best as the lead singer of the Silver Jews, but in 1999 he published a slyly sweet book of poetry that takes on everything from Abraham Lincoln to his ex-girlfriend. David Berman reinvents the overlooked and seemingly ordinary details of everyday life--from the suitcase of a departing girlfriend to a baseboard electrical outlet. His poems chart a course through his own highly original American dreamscape in language that is fresh, accessible, and remarkably precise. This debut collection has received extraordinary acclaim from readers and reviewers alike and is quickly becoming a cult classic. As Pulitzer Prize-winning poet James Tate said, "These poems are beautiful, strange, intelligent, and funny. . . . It's a book for everyone."

22. A Collection of Poems of Kenneth Koch Kenneth Koch For fans of Frank O’Hara who are ready for something a little more exuberant. Celebrating the pleasures of friendship, art, and love, the poetry of Kenneth Koch has been dazzling readers for fifty years. Charter member–along with Frank O’Hara, John Ashbery, and James Schuyler–of the New York School of poets, avant-garde playwright and fiction writer, pioneer teacher of writing to children, Koch gave us some of the most exciting and aesthetically daring poems of his generation.These poems take sensuous delight in the life of the mind and the heart, often at the same time: “O what a physical effect it has on me / To dive forever into the light blue sea / Of your acquaintance!” (“In Love with You”).

23. Alien vs. Predator Michael Robbins A great contemporary poet, below is a verse from a poem he published on the Awl last year: Maybe it’s Maybelline. Why can’t you be true? You re-gifted the VD I wrapped up just for you. My penis and my brain team up to penis-brain you. It is now my duty to completely drain you. Since his poems first began to appear in the pages of The New Yorker and Poetry, there has been a lot of excited talk about the fresh and inventive work of Michael Robbins. Equal parts hip- hop, John Berryman, and capitalism seeking death and not finding it, Robbins's poems are strange, wonderful, wild, and completely unlike anything else being written today. As allusive as the Cantos, as aggressive as a circular saw, this debut collection will offend none but the virtuous.

24. The Collected Poems of Audre Lord Audre Lord AudreLorde called herself a “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, and poet,” and her poems — about race, sexuality, love, loss, parenthood, politics, and death — are emotional and angry and warm all at once. "These are poems which blaze and pulse on the page."—Adrienne Rich "The first declaration of a black, lesbian feminist identity took place in these poems, and set the terms—beautifully, forcefully—for contemporary multicultural and pluralist debate."—Publishers Weekly "This is an amazing collection of poetry by . . . one of our best contemporary poets. . . . Her poems are powerful, often political, always lyrical and profoundly moving."—Chuckanut Reader Magazine "What a deep pleasure to encounter AudreLorde's most potent genius . . . you will welcome the sheer accessibility and the force and beauty of this volume."—Out Magazine

25. Me Talk Pretty One Day David Sedaris Because it’s sometimes instructive to realize that your awkward, quirky upbringing can become the stuff of best-selling essays. A recent transplant to Paris, humorist David Sedaris, bestselling author of "Naked", presents a collection of his strongest work yet, including the title story about his hilarious attempt to learn French. A number one national bestseller now in paperback.

26. How to Be a Woman Caitlin Moran Moran’s book is a sharp, wise, and, most of all, hilarious exploration of modern-day womanhood, feminism, and being generally kick-ass. Caitlin Moran puts a new face on feminism, cutting to the heart of women’s issues today with her irreverent, transcendent, and hilarious How to Be a Woman. “Half memoir, half polemic, and entirely necessary,” (Elle UK), Moran’s debut was an instant runaway bestseller in England as well as an Amazon UK Top Ten book of the year; still riding high on bestseller lists months after publication, it is a bona fide cultural phenomenon. Now poised to take American womanhood by storm, here is a book that Vanity Fair calls “the U.K. version of Tina Fey’sBossypants….You will laugh out loud, wince, and—in my case—feel proud to be the same gender as the author.”

27. My Misspent Youth Meghan Daum The titular essay in this collection was published in 1999 in The New Yorker, when the 29-year-old Daum realized that she was totally, utterly broke and needed to leave New York, and her lament is the timeless one of the upper-middle-class liberal arts college graduate who cannot live in the New York of their fantasies: “I spend money on Martinis and expensive dinners because, as is typical among my species of debtor, I tell myself that Martinis and expensive dinners are the entire point — the point of being young, the point of living in New York City, the point of living.” She speaks to questions at the root of the contemporary experience, from the search for authenticity and interpersonal connection in a society defined by consumerism and media; to the disenchantment of working in a "glamour profession"; to the catastrophic effects of living among New York City's terminal hipsters. With precision and well-balanced irony, Daum implicates herself as readily as she does the targets that fascinate and horrify her.

28. Slouching Towards Bethlehem Joan Didion The Bible for anyone who’s fancied themselves a writer, ever. Didion has probably said what you wanted to say, and earlier and better. The first nonfiction work by one of the most distinctive prose stylists of our era, Slouching Towards Bethlehem remains, forty years after its first publication, the essential portrait of America— particularly California—in the sixties. It focuses on such subjects as John Wayne and Howard Hughes, growing up a girl in California, ruminating on the nature of good and evil in a Death Valley motel room, and, especially, the essence of San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury, the heart of the counterculture.

29. Up in the Old Hotel Joseph Mitchell Mitchell was a New Yorker writer whose essays about the city in the 1930s to the 1960s are each gems of keenly observed daily life. Wherever you live, these will make you look at your everyday surroundings a little differently. Saloon-keepers and street preachers, gypsies and steel-walking Mohawks, a bearded lady and a 93-year-old “seafoodetarian” who believes his specialized diet will keep him alive for another two decades. These are among the people that Joseph Mitchell immortalized in his reportage for The New Yorker and in four books—McSorley's Wonderful Saloon, Old Mr. Flood, The Bottom of the Harbor, and Joe Gould's Secret—that are still renowned for their precise, respectful observation, their graveyard humor, and their offhand perfection of style.These masterpieces (along with several previously uncollected stories) are available in one volume, which presents an indelible collective portrait of an unsuspected New York and its odder citizens—as depicted by one of the great writers of this or any other time.

30. How to Cook Everything Mark Bittman No task — whether making pasta or scrambling an egg — is too basic for this book of basics, and sometimes you really need to start with the basics. Mark Bittman's award-winning How to Cook Everything has helped countless home cooks discover the rewards of simple cooking. Now the ultimate cookbook has been revised and expanded (almost half the material is new), making it absolutely indispensable for anyone who cooks—or wants to. With Bittman's straightforward instructions and advice, you'll make crowd-pleasing food using fresh, natural ingredients; simple techniques; and basic equipment. Even better, you'll discover how to relax and enjoy yourself in the kitchen as you prepare delicious meals for every occasion.

31. How’s Your Drink Eric Felten As my colleague Ray says, “You gotta learn how to drink like a person sooner or later.” Based on the popular feature in the Saturday Wall Street Journal,How's Your Drink illuminates the culture of the cocktail. John F. Kennedy played nuclear brinksmanship with a gin and tonic in his hand. Teddy Roosevelt took the witness stand to testify that six mint juleps over the course of his presidency did not make him a drunk. Ernest Hemingway and Raymond Chandler both did their part to promote the gimlet. Eric Felten tells all of these stories and many more, and also offers exhaustively researched cocktail recipes.

32. The Elements of Style Strunk & White To know how to write. You know the authors' names. You recognize the title. You've probably used this book yourself. This is The Elements of Style, the classic style manual, now in a fourth edition. A new Foreword by Roger Angell reminds readers that the advice of Strunk & White is as valuable today as when it was first offered.This book's unique tone, wit and charm have conveyed the principles of English style to millions of readers. Use the fourth edition of "the little book" to make a big impact with writing.

33. Letters to a Young Contrarian Christopher Hitchens However you feel about Hitchens’ work, this little volume is incredibly instructive in teaching you how to write things without giving a shit about what other people think. Or to learn how to just not give a shit about what other people think, generally. Christopher Hitchens inspires future generations of radicals, gadflies, mavericks, rebels, angry young (wo)men, and dissidents. Who better to speak to that person who finds him or herself in a contrarian position than Hitchens, who has made a career of disagreeing in profound and entertaining ways.This book explores the entire range of "contrary positions"-from noble dissident to gratuitous pain in the butt. In an age of overly polite debate bending over backward to reach a happy consensus within an increasingly centrist political dialogue, Hitchens pointedly pitches himself in contrast. He bemoans the loss of the skills of dialectical thinking evident in contemporary society. He understands the importance of disagreement-to personal integrity, to informed discussion, to true progress-heck, to democracy itself. Epigrammatic, spunky, witty, in your face, timeless and timely, this book is everything you would expect from a mentoring contrarian.

34. Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain Betty Edwards So great for creativity in general and encouraging everyone to draw like they did as children. (And not just for lefties!) Whether you are drawing as a professional artist, as an artist in training, or as a hobby, this book will give you greater confidence in your ability and deepen your artistic perception, as well as foster a new appreciation of the world around you.

35. He’s Just Not That Into You Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo Because sometimes clichés are true, and it’s important to figure out when. For ages women have come together over coffee, cocktails, or late-night phone chats to analyze and obsess over the puzzling behavior of men. Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo are here to say that—despite good intentions—it’s an utter waste of time. Men are not complicated, although they’d like women to think they are. And there are no mixed messages. The truth may be: He’s just not that into you. Straightforward and sensible, He’s Just Not That Into You educates otherwise smart women on how to tell when a guy just doesn’t like them enough, so they can stop wasting time making excuses for a dead-end relationship.