Books To Read in Your 30s

Generous-hearted and wickedly insightful, The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing maps the progress of Jane Rosenal as she sets out on a personal and spirited expedition through the perilous terrain of sex, love, relationships, and the treacherous waters of the workplace. Soon Jane is swept off her feet by an older man and into a Fitzgeraldesque whirl of cocktail parties, country houses, and rules that were made to be broken, but comes to realize that it’s a world where the stakes are much too high for comfort. With an unforgettable comic touch, Bank skillfully teases out universal issues, puts a clever new spin on the mating dance, and captures in perfect pitch what it’s like to come of age as a young woman.

From one of America’s iconic writers and the author of Notes to John, a stunning book of electric honesty and passion that explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: A portrait of a marriage — and a life, in good times and bad — that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child.

A triumph of realist fiction, George Eliot’s Middlemarch explores a fictional nineteenth-century Midlands town in the midst of sweeping change. The proposed Reform Bill, the new railroads, and scientific advances are threatening upheaval on every front. Against this backdrop, the quiet drama of ordinary lives is played out by the novel’s complexly portrayed characters — until the arrival of two outsiders further disrupts the town’s equilibrium. Every bit as powerful and perceptive in our time as it was in the Victorian era, Middlemarch displays Eliot’s clear-eyed yet humane understanding of characters caught up in the mysterious unfolding of self-knowledge.

Rob is a pop music junkie who runs his own semi-failing record store. His girlfriend, Laura, has just left him for the guy upstairs, and Rob is both miserable and relieved. After all, could he have spent his life with someone who has a bad record collection? Rob seeks refuge in the company of the offbeat clerks at the store. After a failed relationship with a singer, Rob sees Laura again. And he begins to think that life with kids, marriage, barbecues, and soft rock CDs might not be so bad. From the bestselling author of About a Boy, A Long Way Down, and Dickens and Prince, a wise and hilarious novel about love, heartbreak, and rock and roll.

In Come as You Are, Emily Nagoski, PhD, revolutionized the way we think about women’s sexuality. Now, in Come Together, Nagoski takes on a fundamentally misunderstood subject: Sex in long-term relationships. Written with scientific rigor, humor, and compassion, Nagoski shows us what great sex can look like, how to create it in our own lives, and what to do when struggles arise.

As a child, Kathy — now thirty-one-year-old — lived at Hailsham, a private school in the scenic English countryside where the children were sheltered from the outside world, brought up to believe that they were special and that their well-being was crucial not only for themselves but for the society they would eventually enter. But there are hints at a dark secret behind Hailsham’s nurturing facade. When two of Kathy’s Hailsham friends come back into her life, they are compelled to face the truth about their childhood — and their lives now.

With music pulsing on every page, this startling, exhilarating novel of self-destruction and redemption “features characters about whom you come to care deeply as you watch them doing things they shouldn’t, acting gloriously, infuriatingly human” (The Chicago Tribune).

From the author of Everything I Know About Love comes a smart, sexy, laugh-out-loud romantic comedy about ex-boyfriends, imperfect parents, friends with kids, and a man who disappears the moment he says, “I love you.” Funny, tender, and eminently, movingly relatable, Ghosts is a whip-smart tale of relationships and modern life.

From the acclaimed and bestselling author of The Idiot, the continuation of beloved protagonist Selin’s quest for self-knowledge, as she travels abroad and tests the limits of her newfound adulthood. Unfolding with the propulsive logic and intensity of youth, Either/Or is a landmark novel by one of our most brilliant writers. Hilarious, revelatory, and unforgettable, its gripping narrative will confront you with searching questions that persist long after the last page.

No matter your goals, Atomic Habits offers a proven framework for improving — every day. James Clear, one of the world’s leading experts on habit formation, reveals practical strategies that will teach you exactly how to form good habits, break bad ones, and master the tiny behaviors that lead to remarkable results.

The blockbuster debut novel from “a preternaturally gifted” writer (The New York Times) and author of On Beauty and Swing Time — set against London’s racial and cultural tapestry, reveling in the ecstatic hodgepodge of modern life, flirting with disaster, and embracing the comedy of daily existence.

A marvelous novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Lowland and Interpreter of Maladies about a woman questioning her place in the world, wavering between stasis and movement, between the need to belong and the refusal to form lasting ties.

From the indie rock sensation known as Japanese Breakfast, an unforgettable memoir about family, food, grief, love, and growing up Korean American — “in losing her mother and cooking to bring her back to life, Zauner became herself” (NPR). Vivacious and plainspoken, lyrical and honest, Zauner’s voice is as radiantly alive on the page as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes that will resonate widely, and complete with family photos, Crying in H Mart is a book to cherish, share, and reread.

Ifemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military-ruled Nigeria for the West. Beautiful, self-assured Ifemelu heads for America, where despite her academic success, she is forced to grapple with what it means to be Black for the first time. Quiet, thoughtful Obinze had hoped to join her, but with post-9/11 America closed to him, he instead plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London. A modern classic about star-crossed lovers that explores questions of race and being Black in America — and the search for what it means to call a place home.

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of When and Drive, a new book about the transforming power of our most misunderstood yet potentially most valuable emotion: regret. Everybody has regrets. They’re a universal and healthy part of being human. And understanding how regret works can help us make smarter decisions, perform better at work and school, and bring greater meaning to our lives. Packed with true stories of people’s regrets as well as practical takeaways for reimagining regret as a positive force, The Power of Regret shows how we can live richer, more engaged lives.

At twenty-seven, Anne Elliot is no longer young and has few romantic prospects. Eight years earlier, she had been persuaded by her friend Lady Russell to break off her engagement to Frederick Wentworth, a handsome naval captain with neither fortune nor rank. What happens when they encounter each other again is movingly told in Jane Austen’s last completed novel. Set in the fashionable societies of Lyme Regis and Bath, Persuasion is a brilliant satire of vanity and pretension, but, above all, it is a love story tinged with the heartache of missed opportunities.

What if the key to happiness, success, and love was as simple as two words? If you’ve ever felt stuck, overwhelmed, or frustrated with where you are, the problem isn’t you. The problem is the power you give to other people. Two simple words — Let Them — will set you free. Free from the opinions, drama, and judgments of others. Free from the exhausting cycle of trying to manage everything and everyone around you. The Let Them Theory puts the power to create a life you love back in your hands — and this book will show you exactly how to do it.

This sweeping novel from the author of A Long Petal of the Sea tells the epic story of Violeta Del Valle, a woman whose life spans one hundred years and bears witness to the greatest upheavals of the twentieth century. She tells her story in the form of a letter to someone she loves above all others, recounting times of devastating heartbreak and passionate affairs, poverty and wealth, terrible loss and immense joy. Her life is shaped by some of the most important events of history: The fight for women’s rights, the rise and fall of tyrants, and ultimately not one, but two pandemics.

Hailed as “an enduring work of survival literature” by the New York Times, Viktor Frankl’s account of his time in the Nazi concentration camps — and his insights into our ability to find meaning despite great adversity — has offered solace and guidance to generations of readers since it was first published in 1946. Today, as new generations face new challenges and an ever more complex and uncertain world, Frankl’s classic work continues to inspire us all to find significance in the very act of living, in spite of all obstacles.

Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice. While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? In The Midnight Library, Matt Haig’s enchanting blockbuster novel, Nora Seeds finds herself faced with the possibility of changing her life for a new one. As she travels through the Midnight Library, she must decide what is truly fulfilling in life, and what makes it worth living in the first place.