How a Book Can Change a Graduate's Life

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For many people in their early 20s, graduating from college is both a significant milestone—perhaps the most important of their young life—and a rupture that leaves them utterly unmoored. (It has been this way for a long time; just ask Dustin Hoffman on that pool float.) A week ago, as the class of 2025 began heading into the world, my colleague Xochitl Gonzalez wrote about times we find ourselves without direction, and the books that can help guide us out of the wilderness. She names seven that helped her through upheavals in her own life, and specifically calls out transitional moments such as weddings (or breakups), job changes, and, of course, graduations.
First, here are five new stories from The Atlantic 's books section:
A provocative argument about what creates serial killers
Yes I will read Ulysses yes
' A Father's Prayer,' a poem by Gioncarlo Valentine
Fathers don't just protect—they prepare
' Weepers,' a short story by Peter Mendelsund
My own college commencement ceremony took place some years ago this week. On paper, it was the perfect celebration: I donned my cap and gown, posed for my mother's Facebook pictures, and took an exciting phone call about a full-time job. But in reality, I wasn't even graduating that day: I'd been mailed my diploma the previous December and had spent the intervening six months underemployed and sick, subsisting on meals I was still learning how to cook and bottles of Two-Buck Chuck.
Perhaps because my final college years coincided with the height of the #MeToo movement, I'd been reading a lot of work by female essayists and memoirists. I was looking for someone to distill and clarify what I was experiencing as a young woman, to help me move firmly into the category of 'adult' while taking stock of all the baggage I was still carrying from my teens. I bought Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts from a feminist bookstore in Atlanta. I got Mary Karr's Lit from a books-by-the-pound store in my college town, and devoured it. I read Eula Biss, Roxane Gay, Rebecca Solnit, Margo Jefferson, and Joan Didion. But the book that most defined those months and years was Leslie Jamison's The Empathy Exams.
Jamison's essay collection alternates between measured analysis and naked emotion. Across chapters, the author takes on different roles: a medical actor, a journalist investigating a dubious diagnosis, a tourist in Nicaragua, a theorist of female suffering. In self-aware prose, she deftly avoids the labels that too often entrap women who write about their life and their feelings—self-obsessed, hysterical, histrionic. But Jamison also understands how good it feels to be melodramatic, and how warranted it can be. There's a big, bloody heart inside her sentences, and its insistent beat won my allegiance immediately and forever. At the time, I felt fragile, like my shell might crack at any moment, and between Jamison's covers I found a writer who understood that sensation.
The margins of my copy, I see now, are crammed with annotations marking moments of reflection and identification. They're also full of craft notes, breaking down how Jamison deploys a phrase or a pronoun, charting allusions and noting connections between her ideas and the ones I'd encountered while earning my degree. Her book was a guiding star, not just emotionally but also professionally: It reminded me why I wanted to write and edit, and why I cared about great prose in the first place. It encouraged me to make room for my many overwhelming feelings—and then to keep moving toward the life I have today.
By Xochitl Gonzalez
These titles are great tools for anyone trying to navigate new opportunities, new places, or new phases of life.
What to Read
Drinking: A Love Story, by Caroline Knapp
Knapp's memoir of sobriety is just one entry in a robust genre, standing among books such as Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, by Thomas De Quincey; The Night of the Gun, by David Carr; The Recovering, by Leslie Jamison; Lit, by Mary Karr; and The Basketball Diaries, by Jim Carroll. But Drinking: A Love Story was pivotal for me; I borrowed it from a sober person when I first started trying to stop. Knapp's depiction of addiction as a doomed love affair struck home. 'For a long time,' she writes, 'when it's working, the drink feels like a path to a kind of self-enlightenment, something that turns us into the person we wish to be, or the person we think we really are.' Every book about abstinence is also, inevitably, a book about indulgence—and what lies at its bottom, eventually demanding that we go without. As Knapp puts it, 'In some ways the dynamic is this simple: alcohol makes everything better until it makes everything worse.' Her book details the glory and devastation that precede the liberation of quitting, including the way that our excesses can subtly (or violently) affect our intimate relationships. Knapp's lushly written story illustrates the insidious way that romanticizing a dependency of any kind distorts its true impact on our lives. — Melissa Febos
Out Next Week
📚 Room on the Sea: Three Novellas, by André Aciman
📚 The Girls Who Grew Big, by Leila Mottley
📚 , by Rebecca Grant
Your Weekend Read
The Entire Internet Is Reverting to Beta
By Matteo Wong
Reorienting the internet and society around imperfect and relatively untested products is not the inevitable result of scientific and technological progress—it is an active choice Silicon Valley is making, every day. That future web is one in which most people and organizations depend on AI for most tasks. This would mean an internet in which every search, set of directions, dinner recommendation, event synopsis, voicemail summary, and email is a tiny bit suspect; in which digital services that essentially worked in the 2010s are just a little bit unreliable. And while minor inconveniences for individual users may be fine, even amusing, an AI bot taking incorrect notes during a doctor visit, or generating an incorrect treatment plan, is not.

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• USA Today

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Ready to become a pizza chef?: Shop 'The Bear' actor Matty Matheson's signature pizza oven 🍕 Capron already had some local support. His first pizza shop was in a shack in Sandwich in 2021. "It was a pigeon coop." But the pigeon coop was a hit. He moved to second place in the Plymouth area in 2022, but outgrew that one pretty fast. Capron knew he needed even more space to cook and attract more customers, so he moved to his current downtown Plymouth pizza shop in 2023. That's when he became locally Insta-famous, with currently 6,310 followers. He also has more than 4,700 followers on Facebook. Going viral on YouTube Capron would post videos and pictures on Instagram of his creations. He got views from people all over the area, including up-and-coming food content YouTuber Shane Uriot, who, according to his YouTube bio, explores "the journeys of amazing chefs, farmers, and anyone making an impact in the culinary world." Uriot has 22,800 subscribers. 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Laura Marshall took a trip to check out Capron's pizza. "This is our second time coming here from Gloucester, all because my son saw it on TikTok," she said. "Just as good as the first." How did Capron learn to make pizza Like many great cooks, Capron learned from his family, most notably his grandmother Rosie, whose likeness is seen on the wall of the restaurant. Though rooted in Sicilian heritage, his culinary identity is equally shaped by his Detroit background. "My great-grandfather ended up in Detroit during the automation movement, then my family moved to Brooklyn," said Capron. In case you missed it: Five years since COVID, what have small businesses learned? He would make pizzas in college for friends and get five-star reviews, but again, it was just a hobby. Capron was going to school to become a physical and occupational therapist assistant, a career he still maintains today along with running his restaurant and working as head chef. What's the secret? While Capron can't share everything, he's willing to demonstrate the basics. The Enterprise got a chance to get in the kitchen and make some pizzas. This is what we learned. Spread the ingredients wisely "You're going to spread the cheese out, but you don't want too much on; leave a little bit of the dough peaking through the middle of the pizza. That way you can still taste the sauce," said Capron. It's all about timing "You have to know exactly when to take the pizza out or else you'll burn it," said Capron. Don't be afraid to get creative "Pineapple does belong on pizza," he added. On the menu There are more than 20 different types of pizza on the menu. Capron even has some fun pizzas that are not traditional to his Sicilian roots, including "Loaded Tater" which includes a cheese blend with a garlic cream base, tater tots, sour cream, green onions and crispy potato sticks. 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The Edge Pizza address, hours The Edge Pizza, located at 65 Main St., Plymouth, Massachusetts, is open Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday from 11:30 a.m. to 8 p.m., Friday from 12:30 to 9 p.m. and Saturday from 11:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. The shop is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays.

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New York Post

13 hours ago

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Bride slams ‘disrespectful' family for poor wedding guest etiquette: ‘Very hurtful'

This blushing bride was beyond bothered after a guest snubbed her luxurious brunch spread for a bucket of fried chicken — and then rudely boasted about it on social media. Six weeks after the wedding, the newlywed took to Reddit to vent her frustration in the Subreddit r/weddingplanning, and gauge whether or not she was overreacting to the incident. 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As with just about any wedding, there were a few unpopular family members in attendance. 'My uncle and his wife are in the midst of a rocky separation, and his wife has a history of being rude to and taking advantage of the rest of the family. We were surprised to hear that he was bringing her with him to the wedding about 3 days prior, given the situation, but said nothing about it,' she explained. Apparently, while making the 15-minute drive from the church to the reception venue, the uncle and his wife were feeling peckish, so naturally, they stopped for a few buckets of fried chicken at a fast-food joint. The bride clarified that this wasn't the issue, and in fact, was completely fine with it — it was the wife's actions once she arrived at the venue that truly aggravated her. 4 The bride said she was shocked it was the wife who brought in the chicken, rather than the uncle's young children. fudio – After entering the reception and evaluating the luxe brunch spread — which the bride clarified had plenty of options to choose from, and was even abundant enough to be sent home as leftovers with the newlyweds — her uncle's wife went back out to the parking lot, 'retrieved the leftover fast food, and then she re-entered the reception hall with it and ate it openly at one of our decorated round tables.' Still, this brazen move wasn't the boiling point for the bride. Apparently, the uncle and his wife took 'pictures of themselves eating the fast food at the table (with the brand packaging all out in the open)' and 'they have now posted those pictures on Facebook on two separate occasions,' leaving the bride and her mother, who played a large role in planning, hurt and offended. To add insult to injury, other family members commented on the chicken contrabandist's posts, writing, 'nothing classier than bringing fast food to a catered wedding!' 4 Bringing unsanctioned food into a catered reception could also potentially trigger allergies among food-sensitive guests. TravelMedia – 'I'm struggling with feeling like I was disrespected on a day that we put so much time, money, energy, and thought into planning, and every time they post about it just digs the knife in deeper,' the bride's Reddit post concluded. 'I don't want to comment on the post or anything because I'm afraid to be seen as overreacting or like a bridezilla, but it's very hurtful.' Though angry brides often take plenty of flak online — take it from this woman who demanded that her toddler flower girls all straighten their hair to match better in photos, or this ultra-specific dress code designated by a judgmental bride-to-be — the comments under this Reddit thread were staunchly on the side of the original poster. 4 The offending guests couldn't even pull the picky eater excuse, as comments pointed out, thanks to the fried chicken the venue offered. micromonkey – 'It's frying me that they ate fried chicken when you literally served fried chicken,' pointed out one punning commenter. 'This makes it obvious to me that she just wanted to make a scene.' 'I personally wouldn't let this one keep me up at night,' advised another. 'She embarrassed herself, not you, and the Facebook post where someone called her out is a perfect example of that. She may have laughed off their comment, but trust me when I say she is the only person who looks bad here.' A majority of the comments commiserated with the bride, and offered their own stories, ranging from a groom who wouldn't eat his own reception food and ordered McDonald's to the venue instead, to a huge group of family members who complained about the wedding menu in advance. 'It sounds like your other guests were judging them harshly too. I'd let other people stand up for you, like that family member, and you get to be the classy bride who rose above it all. Obviously, no one likes this woman, and there's no point in letting her ruin your day!' replied one wise Redditor.