014. ADD ME TO YOUR LIST/ Books to read if everyone around you is getting married, having babies, in a stable job, buying their first home, and you're not
Oh yes, we were sold the dream. 'THAT' check list.
So you’re in your 30’s and the checklist has reared its ugly head yet again and you’re left reminiscing about your high school days where you were taught… absolutely none of the life skills in how to deal with the above.
How has sin-cos-tan got me a job interview?
Or health insurance?
Or adjusting to monthly pay and remembering to pay rent every week?
Or getting that health scare that makes you want to rethink everything?
Or wishing things were just easier?
Here’s a gentle reminder that whilst I don’t have my shit together, none of us should feel like we have to- others may have ‘checked off that list’ but we shouldn’t feel like we have to as well. It’s easier said than done to some, but I know how sometimes that question of ‘what if’ can literally eat away at your thoughts.
If anything, I hope these books fill you with hope and joy and a renewed sense of celebration in all the choices we make, large or small.
x
I Know What’s Best for You / Stories on Reproductive Freedom - edited by Shelly Oria
It’s the phrase all women love to hear really.. In collaboration with the Brigid Alliance, a nationwide service that arranges and funds confidential and personal travel support to those seeking abortion care, this collection of essays, poems, fiction and more from 28 contributors, explores the universality of human reproductive experiences.
Trick Mirror / Reflections on Self-Delusion - Jia Tolentino
This book is so witty and more. Offering reflections on reality TV, drugs, social media, being a millennial and living each day with optimism are just a few of the topics discussed in this novel. Let’s just say it will give you hope for humanity…
Everything I Know About Love - Dolly Alderton
She’s the book that every girl needs to have on the bookshelf - it contains everything from growing up to navigating love/ getting dumped and everything in between. It’s a book for the girl that’s messy, struggling with the trials and tribulations of adulthood in all its grubby and hopeful uncertainty.
Adults - Emma Jane Unsworth
Your friends have deserted you and you have a dead end job, your love life sucks and you spend all day online stalking women with picture perfect lives- this book is for you. It’s sharp and witty and dives deep into the complexities of adulthood and personal growth.
The Lonely City / Adventures in the Art of Being Alone - Olivia Laing
Being lonely in your thirties has always been seen as a big deal and whilst in some cases it can be seen as shameful , what does it mean to be lonely? Do we have to label it in the negative sense? This novel dives into this topic and illuminates the causes of loneliness and how it might be resisted and redeemed.
Things I Don’t Want to Know - Deborah Levy
What it means to be a woman and to be a writer is an identity that’s so hard to navigate. With this novel, Levy draws on her own reflections with insight and vitality, and steps taken to carve her identity in the world as one.
Convenience Store Woman - Sayaka Murata
You have society and family and friends wanting you to tick off the adulting checklist but you’ve never had a boyfriend and you’ve been working in the same supermarket for 18 years. However our protagonist knows she’s happy just doing what she loves doing so why can’t everyone be happy for her too?
Apple, Tree: Writers on Their Parents by Lise Funderburg
In this collection of essays, the focus directs towards what was inherited via the parent and reflecting on how it affects the lives we lead today. How does this shift our relationship to that parent and how far does ‘you’re just like your mother’ continue to exist?
Arrangements In Blue - Amy Key
I loved this so much - questions such as : ‘is it possible to have life without romantic love?’ and can you really build a life on your own terms? This novel is so important in shifting mainstream ideas we know so well about intimacy, romance and desire. I wish I had read this like 10 years ago, ha.
Green Dot - Madeleine Gray
Being in your mid-20’s and working in a soulless office would kind of make you question your destiny and how you were to spend the rest of your life. Our protagonist who has previously dated women soon falls headlong into a workplace romance that will consume her life: with a man.
Ghosts - Dolly Alderton
When the thirties haven’t been the liberating experience you quite expected, and then along comes a guy that changes it all.. It’s hard sometimes when everything around you is falling apart and you can’t turn to your family for help and friends have just moved on with their own lives. A really meditative read.
There’s No Such Thing As An Easy Job - Kikuko Tsumura
The Japanese just do it so well - even the most mundane elements of the daily grind is instantly transformed into the hilarious and the strange. In this story of one woman’s search for meaning in the workplace, we see her make her round various jobs from watching hidden cameras to writing bus adverts for shops; the search for meaningful jobs seems scarce.
What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding - Kristin Newman
While her friends were having weddings and baby showers, Kristin wasn’t ready to settle down and wanted to travel the world to find herself again even if it meant it was the sluttier version…
Slowing: Discover Wonder, Beauty, and Creativity through Slow Living - Rachel Schwartzmann
A collection of captivating essays that will have you re-evaluating your life and the magic that emerges when you shift your relationship towards creativity and rediscovering moments of wonder.
Think Again - Jacqueline Wilson
We’re revisiting the girls from our childhood and they’re now 40. Adulthood isn’t quite what they dreamed it would be - the love life is non-existent and they’re on auto-pilot and barely able to afford the rent on flats but they’re wanting to change all that with a birthday. It’s all about letting life in.
Motherhood - Sheila Heti
Its the number one question- to have children or not to? The philosophical questions of childbearing and womanhood get pushed to the forefront when we reach that age where it should be thought about; these are essential questions about womanhood and parenthood and how to make what we may feel is a moral and meaningful choice for ourselves and ourselves only.
I Don’t: The Case Against Marriage - Clementine Ford
Another one of those factors for the modern woman to consider. We’ve been told we need to marry in order to be happy, let our dreams wash over to support someone else - why do so many women still believe that our value is intrinsically tied to being married to a man?
I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman - Nora Ephron
It’s the advice we’d hear on the daily as woman, collated in this one book. If there’s any woman out there wanting a bit of sharp wit and vulnerability to hit them right in the face, this is it. Tried and tested. A relief for the soul.