books i want to read in my 20’s
Items in this hypelist
Classics
Letters to Friends, Family and Editors
Franz Kafka · 1990
More than two decades of letters from one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century—the author of The Metamorphosis and The Trial—to the people in his life, from his years as a student in Prague in the early 1900s to his final months in the sanatorium near Vienna where he died in 1924.<br/><br/>Sometimes surprisingly humorous, sometimes wrenchingly sad, these letters, collected after Kafka's death by his friend and literary executor Max Brod, include charming notes to school friends; fascinating accounts to Brod about his work in its various stages of publication; correspondence with his publisher, Kurt Wolff, about manuscripts in progress, suggested book titles, type design, and late royalty statements; revealing exchanges with other young writers of the day, including Martin Buber and Felix Weltsch, on life, literature, and girls; and heartbreaking reports to his parents, sisters, and friends on the declining state of his health in the last months of his life.
Um Sopro De Vida
Clarice Lispector • 1978
Agua Viva
Clarice Lispector · 1989
Discusses life, time, beauty, experience, meaning, music, and art.
Feliz ano velho
Marcelo Rubens Paiva · 1992
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald · 2003
The Metamorphosis
Franz Kafka · 1915
Young-adult
Letters to a Young Poet
Rainer Maria Rilke · 1993
<p>Rilke's timeless letters about poetry, sensitive observation, and the complicated workings of the human heart.</p> <p>Born in 1875, the great German lyric poet Rainer Maria Rilke published his first collection of poems in 1898 and went on to become renowned for his delicate depiction of the workings of the human heart. Drawn by some sympathetic note in his poems, young people often wrote to Rilke with their problems and hopes. From 1903 to 1908 Rilke wrote a series of remarkable responses to a young, would-be poet on poetry and on surviving as a sensitive observer in a harsh world. Those letters, still a fresh source of inspiration and insight, are accompanied here by a chronicle of Rilke's life that shows what he was experiencing in his own relationship to life and work when he wrote them. </p>
My Year of Rest and Relaxation
Ottessa Moshfegh • 2019
Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, Time, NPR, Vice, Bustle, The New York Times, The Guardian, Kirkus Reviews, Entertainment Weekly, The AV Club, & Audible A New York Times Bestseller • New York Times Readers Pick: 100 Best Books of the 21st Century “One of the most compelling protagonists modern fiction has offered in years: a loopy, quietly furious pillhead whose Ambien ramblings and Xanaxed b*tcheries somehow wend their way through sad and funny and strange toward something genuinely profound.” — Entertainment Weekly “Darkly hilarious . . . [Moshfegh’s] the kind of provocateur who makes you laugh out loud while drawing blood.” —Vogue From one of our boldest, most celebrated new literary voices, a novel about a young woman's efforts to duck the ills of the world by embarking on an extended hibernation with the help of one of the worst psychiatrists in the annals of literature and the battery of medicines she prescribes. Our narrator should be happy, shouldn't she? She's young, thin, pretty, a recent Columbia graduate, works an easy job at a hip art gallery, lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan paid for, like the rest of her needs, by her inheritance. But there is a dark and vacuous hole in her heart, and it isn't just the loss of her parents, or the way her Wall Street boyfriend treats her, or her sadomasochistic relationship with her best friend, Reva. It's the year 2000 in a city aglitter with wealth and possibility; what could be so terribly wrong? My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a powerful answer to that question. Through the story of a year spent under the influence of a truly mad combination of drugs designed to heal our heroine from her alienation from this world, Moshfegh shows us how reasonable, even necessary, alienation can be. Both tender and blackly funny, merciless and compassionate, it is a showcase for the gifts of one of our major writers working at the height of her powers.
My Brilliant Friend
Elena Ferrante · 2020
The international bestseller, now in B-format paperback with a brand new cover.
A redoma de vidro
Sylvia Plath · 2019
The Bell Jar (Modern Classics)
Sylvia Plath • 2005
<p><i>The Bell Jar</i> chronicles the crack-up of Esther Greenwood: brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under -- maybe for the last time. Sylvia Plath masterfully draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that Esther's insanity becomes completely real and even rational, as probable and accessible an experience as going to the movies. Such deep penetration into the dark and harrowing corners of the psyche is an extraordinary accomplishment and has made <i>The Bell Jar</i> a haunting American classic.</p> <p>This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.</p>
Violet Syrup
Sophia Molen · 2025
Fiction
Le Petit Prince (French Language Edition)
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry · 2001
OVER 140 MILLION COPIES SOLD<br/><br/>The beloved classic story about a young prince's travels through space—a profound tale about loneliness and loss, and love and friendship—in French.<br/><br/>A pilot crashes in the Sahara Desert and encounters a strange young boy who calls himself the Little Prince. The Little Prince has traveled there from his home on a lonely, distant asteroid with a single rose. The story that follows is a beautiful and at times heartbreaking meditation on human nature.<br/><br/>The Little Prince is one of the best-selling and most translated books of all time, universally cherished by children and adults alike. In this French edition, the artwork has been restored to match in detail and in color Saint-Exupéry's original artwork.
Beautiful World, Where Are You Chapter Sampler
Sally Rooney • 2021
Download The First Chapter Of A New Novel By Sally Rooney, The Bestselling Author Of Normal People And Conversations With Friends. Alice, A Novelist, Meets Felix, Who Works In A Warehouse, And Asks Him If He’d Like To Travel To Rome With Her. In Dublin, Her Best Friend, Eileen, Is Getting Over A Break-up, And Slips Back Into Flirting With Simon, A Man She Has Known Since Childhood. Alice, Felix, Eileen, And Simon Are Still Young—but Life Is Catching Up With Them. They Desire Each Other, They Delude Each Other, They Get Together, They Break Apart. They Have Sex, They Worry About Sex, They Worry About Their Friendships And The World They Live In. Are They Standing In The Last Lighted Room Before The Darkness, Bearing Witness To Something? Will They Find A Way To Believe In A Beautiful World?
Self help
The Age of Magical Overthinking
Amanda Montell · 2024
Romance
Cleopatra and Frankenstein
Mellors Coco • 2023
For readers of Modern Lovers and Conversations with Friends, an addictive, humorous, and poignant debut novel about the shock waves caused by one couple's impulsive marriage.‘A tender, devastating and funny exploration of love and friendship and the yearning for self-evisceration. Coco Mellors is an elegant and exciting new voice’ PANDORA SYKES, author of How Do We Know We’re Doing It RightNew York is slipping from Cleo’s grasp. Sure, she’s at a different party every other night, but she barely knows anyone. Her student visa is running out, and she doesn’t even have money for cigarettes. But then she meets Frank. Twenty years older, Frank's life is full of all the success and excess that Cleo's lacks. He offers her the chance to be happy, the freedom to paint, and the opportunity to apply for a green card. She offers him a life imbued with beauty and art—and, hopefully, a reason to cut back on his drinking. He is everything she needs right now. Cleo and Frank run head-first into a romance that neither of them can quite keep up with. It reshapes their lives and the lives of those around them, whether that’s Cleo's best friend struggling to embrace his gender identity in the wake of her marriage, or Frank's financially dependent sister arranging sugar daddy dates after being cut off. Ultimately, this chance meeting between two strangers outside of a New Year’s Eve party changes everything, for better or worse. Cleopatra and Frankenstein is an astounding and painfully relatable debut novel about the spontaneous decisions that shape our entire lives and those imperfect relationships born of unexpectedly perfect evenings.
Biography
Everything I Know About Love
Dolly Alderton · 2018
<p><b>A celebration of our female friendships, of our messy years, and of growing up together. Glittering with wit, heart, and humour, it’s a book to share with every woman you’ve ever been lucky enough to call a friend.</b><br><br><i>“Nearly everything I know about love, I've learnt from my long-term friendships with women.”</i><br><br>I know that love can be loud and jubilant. It can be dancing in the swampy mud and the pouring rain at a festival and shouting “YOU ARE AMAZING” over the band. It’s laughing until you wheeze. It’s walking along the street together on a Saturday night and feeling an entire city is yours.<br><br>I also know that love is a pretty quiet thing. It’s lying on the sofa together drinking coffee, talking about where you’re going to go that morning to drink more coffee. It’s folding down pages of books you think they’d find interesting.<br><br>I know that love happens under the splendour of fireworks and sunsets, but also happens when you’re lying on blow-up airbeds in a childhood bedroom, sitting in A&E or in the queue for a passport.<br><br>*****<br><br><b>WHAT READERS ARE SAYING:</b><br><br>‘A book every girl in her 20s needs to read’<br><br><b>‘I’ll never stop recommending this book’</b><br><br>‘This is my comfort book! I LOOOOVE THIS BOOK TO MY CORE’<br><br><b>‘I wish I could read it for the first time again’</b><br><br><i>A Sunday Times bestseller, September 2022<br>TikTok Book Awards Winner, August 2023</i></p>
