Before my freshman year of college, I read "This Side of Paradise" by F. Scott Fitzgerald, who you probably know from his high school English Lit classic "The Great Gatsby;" a perennially favorite book for everyone who doesn’t actually read but wants to pretend that they do. I’m not trying to dis "The Great Gatsby," but it's got nothing on the pretension, romance and twenty-something angst of "This Side of Paradise." Reading it right before the start of college was like looking in a mirror; it is disjointed, imperfect, passionate, charming — everything that nineteen-year-olds feel they are in the rush of orientation.
So I compiled a list of books like this, books that feel like the end of high school, like being nineteen, like being too smart for everyone else in your 100-level English class.
Best of luck to the new freshman.
1. "This Side of Paradise" - F. Scott Fitzgerald
Why shouldn’t you be bored? Isn’t that the conventional frame of mind for the young man of your age and generation?
Now you’ve a clean start…you’ve brushed three or four ornaments down and in a fit of pique knocked off the rest of them. The thing now is to collect some new ones, and the farther you look ahead in collecting the better, but remember, do the next thing.
"This Side of Paradise" isn’t polished in the same way that "The Great Gatsby" is. It’s rough, a consequence of Fitzgerald’s rushed efforts to finish a book so that Zelda Sayre would marry him. There is an unevenness to the plot, and the form varies, but as with all of Fitzgerald's work, the language is beautiful. But what makes this truly worth reading before going to college is the story itself – the protagonist is this intellectual narcissist who is trying to climb the social ladder at an elite New England university (okay, when put it that way, the plot does sound exactly like "The Great Gatsby," but I swear this is so much better). Included within are quotes that you'll write on the back of every picture of your ex ("Selfish people are in a way terribly capable of great loves"), amazingly dry rejections ("It's so hard to find a male to gratify one's artistic tastes") and lines that will make you wonder if Fitzgerald read your diary too ("I’m one of those people who go through the world giving other people thrills but getting few myself except those I read into men on nights such as these").
2. Prep - Curtis Sittenfeld
I wanted my life to start - but in those rare moments when it seemed like something might actually change, panic shot through me.
The interest I felt in certain guys then confused me, because it wasn't romantic, but I wasn't sure what else it might be. But now I know: I wanted to take up people's time making jokes, to tease the dean in front of the entire school, to call him by a nickname. What I wanted was to be a cocky high-school boy, so fucking sure of my place in the world.
Like "This Side of Paradise," "Prep" is not exactly a literary masterpiece. A lot of people on Goodreads (my favorite book-related social media) really hate the book – it’s featured on lists like "The Worst Books of All Time" and "Disappointing Books,” and random user Joe gives it the review “Recommended for: PEOPLE WHO LIKE DULL MEANDERING NOVELS THAT GO NOWHERE AND ACHIEVE NOTHING.” So if that doesn’t tell you that a nineteen-year-old will enjoy it, what will? Did your high school experience “go anywhere” or “achieve anything” besides getting you into college? If so, you’re just the bitch that makes the rest of us look bad, and we really wish you weren’t here to compare ourselves to. But in all seriousness, this is a great book if you want to relive all of your old high school anxieties again and remember why you aren’t going to miss any of those losers from home.
3. Letters to a Young Poet - Rainer Maria Rilke
Irony: Don’t let yourself be controlled by it, especially during uncreative moments. When you are fully creative, try to use it, as one more way to take hold of life. Used purely, it too is pure, and one needn’t be ashamed of it; but if you feel yourself becoming too familiar with it, if you are afraid of this growing familiarity, then turn to great and serious objects, in front of which it becomes small and helpless.
Don’t you wish during your high school emo phase someone besides your parents would have told you to stop being so ironic and to enjoy yourself a little? In case your high school Literature class was lacking (it probably was), Rilke is a poet from Prague and his "Letters to a Young Poet" is literally just that, a collection of letters he wrote in response to a nineteen-year-old boy who wrote to him asking for advice on poetry.
A friend who had a shoplifting habit gave me this book my senior year of high school, when I was Very Jaded and Too Cool. Although at the time, I didn't think too much of it besides being a source of beautiful quotes about Life and Serious Things (if something is truly serious, it must be Capitalized) that I scribbled in my math notebook. The summer before my freshman year though, this book became my instruction manual. Rilke's letters are the type of letter you dream of receiving in the mail; the perfectly personal and wise pen-pal. At the time, they somehow held all the answers to my anxieties, gave me the words to explain a (very melodramatic) break-up and inspired a summer of prolific writing. Although addressed to a writer, these letters should be read by everyone, especially those looking to develop their own creativity.
4. A Field Guide to Getting Lost - Rebecca Solnit
Getting lost was not a matter of geography so much as identity, a passionate desire, even an urgent need, to become no one and anyone, to shake off the shackles that remind you who you are, who others think you are.
Worry is a way to pretend that you have knowledge or control over what you don't – and it surprises me, even in myself, how much we prefer ugly scenarios to the pure unknown.
Where "getting lost" might have once struck fear in a nineteen year old's heart, between the hip-romantic use of the phrase and the fact that everyone's smart phone comes equipped with a map app, "getting lost" in any meaning of the phrase is no longer terrifying, and might even be desirable. Rebecca Solnit is certainly an advocate for the cause. This book brings out all the big guns – philosophy, history, memoir, environmental writing – to convince you to get lost, whether mentally or physically. This set of essays reinvigorated my curiosity and reminded me why I was excited about my school's distribution requirements.
Also, once I named my Neopet after Solnit.
5. Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi
Source
If you think graphic novels are just for your little brother's friends who hate to read, you should probably just go back to high school. "Persepolis" is the coming of age story of Satrapi's childhood in Iran during the Islamic Revolution. It is the story of love and terror and home. Satrapi's family does everything for her, and (like most teenagers) she often has a hard time accepting this unlimited love. Put the bratty teenager behind you while you read this book. There is a movie version of it as well, which is just as good, and includes this brilliant scene, but I'm biased and think that everyone should read a comic book or two, so check this out of your library if you're too cheap. This is one you're gonna want on your shelves.
The Short List – or what to read if you've already read all of these – "Breathing the Water" by Denise Levertov, "A Bad and Stupid Girl" by Jean McGarry, "Black Water" by Joyce Carol Oates, "Jakob von Gunten" by Robert Walser, "White Teeth" by Zadie Smith, "How to Build a Girl" by Caitlyn Moran.
