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Author Alexa Yasemin Brahme’s Best Books to Read When You Don’t Know What the Hell You’re Doing

The author of the newly released novel, Good News, shares the fiction and nonfiction titles that carried her through her own uncertainty—and just might do the same for you.

I didn't know what the hell I was doing when I set out to write my just-released debut novel Good News, and I barely know what I'm doing now, eight years later. I'm less bewildered, sure, and the topics which I find completely all-consuming have (thankfully) evolved. But I'm still searching high and low in hopes that there's a book out there that's going to help me find my way. The books that have carried me through my moments of not-knowing all feature artists on their path toward self-actualization. They're both fiction and non-fiction and explore themes of belonging and estrangement, striking out on your own and looking for a glimpse of light when you're completely in the dark.

'The Idiot' by Elif Batuman

'How Should a Person Be?' by Sheila Heti

'Tonight I'm Someone Else' by Chelsea Hodson 

'In Other Words' by Jhumpa Lahiri 

'Will This Make You Happy' by Tanya Bush 

'Luster' by Raven Leilani

'Discipline' by Larissa Pham 

'The Pisces' by Melissa Broder 

'The Idiot' by Elif Batuman

Batuman could not have more aptly named her debut novel. For all the layered philosophical, brilliant, Dostoyevskian reasons, yes. But also? To be a person is to be an idiot, especially so when you're a freshman in college. Something I love about this novel, and Batuman's follow-up Either/Or, is the protagonist Selin's constant questioning. Selin is always looking at the world around her and wondering, "what the hell is going on?" And how do all her peers seem to know what to do in any given scenario, when Selin feels like she's encountering everything like it's her first day on earth? It's a beautifully earnest and painful description of being young,........

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