Hi friends,

Last night, at my company's holiday party, I found myself sitting with my sister, Sarah, and my boss's wife, who is seven months pregnant. We were yelling over the music (seriously, I have a sore throat this morning), and Sarah was commiserating with Boss's Wife about the weird collapse and expansion of time during pregnancy. The first few months seemed interminable, and the last few, as if someone had hit fast-forward. The baby days seemed endless, and now, like they were a snap of a finger.

"How old is your daughter?" Boss's Wife asked.

"Thirteen," Sarah replied. 

That got her a little look of surprise. She looks relatively young.

"I was a baby when I had her," Sarah explained.

It made me laugh. It's an ongoing joke in my family, how much we treated Sarah's pregnancy at twenty-three like a teen pregnancy. Some time passed, and that started to seem silly, but now, as my sisters and I are all closer to 40 than anything else, it's true again. Twenty-three is just a baby.

I say that recognizing that's also the collapse of time talking. My own twenty-three feels like it was just yesterday and also a lifetime ago. At any given moment, I still feel like her, and I also feel miles and ages away.

The "okay, so, decide" pressure of those years was a nightmare for me, an indecisive late bloomer. If I could go back, and yes this is cliche, I would simply tell that version of me that she's doing perfectly fine. Yes, she feels lost now, but she finds it eventually. 

And sometimes she loses it again. Life can be that way. (I don't know if I would tell her that. It might be too much to handle.) I would tell her that it's okay to feel so painfully young and so frighteningly old all at the same time. After all, every day, you are the oldest you've ever been, and still only doing the best you can with the information you have available. 

Which is all to say: Bindery has launched a new feature where you can request a book recommendation. I can't promise you all that I will be excellent at these; I'm the type of reader who forgets everything she's ever read the moment someone asks for a rec.

But I got my first request and I found myself thinking about being 20-something as I yelled over too-loud music at a party where I was maybe the third oldest in attendance.

My first forays into content creation were during my 20s. I felt so lost, I started a blog. (That's really not a joke. I just had to write everything down before I drowned in it.) I turned to stories, so I know there is comfort in finding yourself reflected in someone else's words, perhaps especially when we don't have a clear sense of ourselves or our place.

Requester Name: Anika

What are you looking for? Books for those in their mid-twenties who feel incredibly lost

What's your preferred genre? Literary fiction but also any! I also read/loved Such a Fun Age

Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino

Adina believes she is an alien who was sent to Earth as a child to report back on human behavior. And honestly, I think a brilliant metaphor for being in your mid-twenties is, in fact, feeling like you're from another planet entirely, watching everyone else seem to understand the rules. 

We're never quite sure throughout the book if Adina's reality is reality, but maybe it hardly matters. It only matters that she believes this, and she documents what she lives and feels with aching earnesty.

It's a beautiful book about belonging and not belonging.

Luster by Raven Leilani

Edie is twenty-three, working a job she hates, and she starts sleeping with a middle-aged white man in an open marriage. And then she sort of moves in with his family. It's just as messy as it sounds, and Leilani mires us in a seemingly endless string of bad decisions.

And I loved it. Leilani is a master at eliciting every cringe reaction I felt. She captures the kind of directionless hunger that can define your twenties, that feels rather mortifying as you live it, and pretty much the same as you read about it.

It might be relatable, and in any way it isn't, it may be comforting to know that you could always be doing worse. 

The Veins of the Ocean by Patricia Engel

Reina's brother is on death row, and she blames herself. Now, she's trying to rebuild her life in Miami while carrying that impossible weight. 

I'm recommending this because it's about trying to create a life for yourself even when it isn't immediately clear how, or especially when fate has knocked you sideways off what you once thought was your course. Engel's writing is descriptive without being flowery. She absolutely shines in placing you in her settings. I felt like I was adrift in that ocean alongside Reina—an ocean that was a perfect metaphor not only for grief, but for time, for the nature of healing and the ebb and flow of growing up. 

The Past is Red by Catherynne M. Valente

Tetley Abednego lives on a floating patch of garbage in a post-apocalyptic future where the whole Earth is covered in water. And to make matters worse, she lives like an exile because she's the most hated girl in all of Garbagetown.

This one is maybe the biggest stretch from the ask, but I'm including it because it feels like a book about maintaining your sense of self even in the worst circumstances. 

Tetley is optimistic, and it isn't because she's naive. She sees things better than anyone. She knows she lives in garbage, and somehow, Tetley is optimistic.

I don't know if any of these books will make you feel less lost, but I hope they remind you that being lost isn't the same as being nowhere. You're right here, the oldest you've ever been, doing the best you can with the information you have available. 

Happy reading, 

♥️

Mari