collection of good essays

The 25 Greatest Essay Collections of All Time

Today marks the release of Aleksandar Hemon’s excellent book of personal essays, The Book of My Lives , which we loved, and which we’re convinced deserves a place in the literary canon. To that end, we were inspired to put together our list of the greatest essay collections of all time, from the classic to the contemporary, from the personal to the critical. In making our choices, we’ve steered away from posthumous omnibuses (Michel de Montaigne’s Complete Essays , the collected Orwell, etc.) and multi-author compilations, and given what might be undue weight to our favorite writers (as one does). After the jump, our picks for the 25 greatest essay collections of all time. Feel free to disagree with us, praise our intellect, or create an entirely new list in the comments.

The Book of My Lives , Aleksandar Hemon

Hemon’s memoir in essays is in turns wryly hilarious, intellectually searching, and deeply troubling. It’s the life story of a fascinating, quietly brilliant man, and it reads as such. For fans of chess and ill-advised theme parties and growing up more than once.

Slouching Towards Bethlehem , Joan Didion

Well, obviously. Didion’s extraordinary book of essays, expertly surveying both her native California in the 1960s and her own internal landscape with clear eyes and one eyebrow raised ever so slightly. This collection, her first, helped establish the idea of journalism as art, and continues to put wind in the sails of many writers after her, hoping to move in that Didion direction.

Pulphead , John Jeremiah Sullivan

This was one of those books that this writer deemed required reading for all immediate family and friends. Sullivan’s sharply observed essays take us from Christian rock festivals to underground caves to his own home, and introduce us to 19-century geniuses, imagined professors and Axl Rose. Smart, curious, and humane, this is everything an essay collection should be.

The Boys of My Youth , Jo Ann Beard

Another memoir-in-essays, or perhaps just a collection of personal narratives, Jo Ann Beard’s award-winning volume is a masterpiece. Not only does it include the luminous, emotionally destructive “The Fourth State of the Matter,” which we’ve already implored you to read , but also the incredible “Bulldozing the Baby,” which takes on a smaller tragedy: a three-year-old Beard’s separation from her doll Hal. “The gorgeous thing about Hal,” she tells us, “was that not only was he my friend, he was also my slave. I made the majority of our decisions, including the bathtub one, which in retrospect was the beginning of the end.”

Consider the Lobster , David Foster Wallace

This one’s another “duh” moment, at least if you’re a fan of the literary essay. One of the most brilliant essayists of all time, Wallace pushes the boundaries (of the form, of our patience, of his own brain) and comes back with a classic collection of writing on everything from John Updike to, well, lobsters. You’ll laugh out loud right before you rethink your whole life. And then repeat.

Notes of a Native Son , James Baldwin

Baldwin’s most influential work is a witty, passionate portrait of black life and social change in America in the 1940s and early 1950s. His essays, like so many of the greats’, are both incisive social critiques and rigorous investigations into the self, told with a perfect tension between humor and righteous fury.

Naked , David Sedaris

His essays often read more like short stories than they do social criticism (though there’s a healthy, if perhaps implied, dose of that slippery subject), but no one makes us laugh harder or longer. A genius of the form.

Against Interpretation , Susan Sontag

This collection, Sontag’s first, is a dazzling feat of intellectualism. Her essays dissect not only art but the way we think about art, imploring us to “reveal the sensuous surface of art without mucking about in it.” It also contains the brilliant “Notes on ‘Camp,'” one of our all-time favorites.

The Common Reader , Virginia Woolf

Woolf is a literary giant for a reason — she was as incisive and brilliant a critic as she was a novelist. These witty essays, written for the common reader (“He is worse educated, and nature has not gifted him so generously. He reads for his own pleasure rather than to impart knowledge or correct the opinions of others. Above all, he is guided by an instinct to create for himself, out of whatever odds and ends he can come by, some kind of whole- a portrait of a man, a sketch of an age, a theory of the art of writing”), are as illuminating and engrossing as they were when they were written.

Teaching a Stone to Talk , Annie Dillard

This is Dillard’s only book of essays, but boy is it a blazingly good one. The slender volume, filled with examinations of nature both human and not, is deft of thought and tongue, and well worth anyone’s time. As the Chicago Sun-Times ‘s Edward Abbey gushed, “This little book is haloed and informed throughout by Dillard’s distinctive passion and intensity, a sort of intellectual radiance that reminds me both Thoreau and Emily Dickinson.”

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man , Henry Louis Gates Jr.

In this eloquent volume of essays, all but one of which were originally published in the New Yorker , Gates argues against the notion of the singularly representable “black man,” preferring to represent him in a myriad of diverse profiles, from James Baldwin to Colin Powell. Humane, incisive, and satisfyingly journalistic, Gates cobbles together the ultimate portrait of the 20th-century African-American male by refusing to cobble it together, and raises important questions about race and identity even as he entertains.

Otherwise Known As the Human Condition , Geoff Dyer

This book of essays, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in the year of its publication, covers 25 years of the uncategorizable, inimitable Geoff Dyer’s work — casually erudite and yet liable to fascinate anyone wandering in the door, witty and breathing and full of truth. As Sam Lipsyte said, “You read Dyer for his caustic wit, of course, his exquisite and perceptive crankiness, and his deep and exciting intellectual connections, but from these enthralling rants and cultural investigations there finally emerges another Dyer, a generous seeker of human feeling and experience, a man perhaps closer than he thinks to what he believes his hero Camus achieved: ‘a heart free of bitterness.'”

Art and Ardor , Cynthia Ozick

Look, Cynthia Ozick is a genius. One of David Foster Wallace’s favorite writers, and one of ours, Ozick has no less than seven essay collections to her name, and we could have chosen any one of them, each sharper and more perfectly self-conscious than the last. This one, however, includes her stunner “A Drugstore in Winter,” which was chosen by Joyce Carol Oates for The Best American Essays of the Century , so we’ll go with it.

No More Nice Girls , Ellen Willis

The venerable Ellen Willis was the first pop music critic for The New Yorker , and a rollicking anti-authoritarian, feminist, all-around bad-ass woman who had a hell of a way with words. This collection examines the women’s movement, the plight of the aging radical, race relations, cultural politics, drugs, and Picasso. Among other things.

The War Against Cliché , Martin Amis

As you know if you’ve ever heard him talk , Martin Amis is not only a notorious grouch but a sharp critical mind, particularly when it comes to literature. That quality is on full display in this collection, which spans nearly 30 years and twice as many subjects, from Vladimir Nabokov (his hero) to chess to writing about sex. Love him or hate him, there’s no denying that he’s a brilliant old grump.

Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories From History and the Arts , Clive James

James’s collection is a strange beast, not like any other essay collection on this list but its own breed. An encyclopedia of modern culture, the book collects 110 new biographical essays, which provide more than enough room for James to flex his formidable intellect and curiosity, as he wanders off on tangents, anecdotes, and cultural criticism. It’s not the only who’s who you need, but it’s a who’s who you need.

I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman , Nora Ephron

Oh Nora, we miss you. Again, we could have picked any of her collections here — candid, hilarious, and willing to give it to you straight, she’s like a best friend and mentor in one, only much more interesting than any of either you’ve ever had.

Arguably , Christopher Hitchens

No matter what you think of his politics (or his rhetorical strategies), there’s no denying that Christopher Hitchens was one of the most brilliant minds — and one of the most brilliant debaters — of the century. In this collection, packed with cultural commentary, literary journalism, and political writing, he is at his liveliest, his funniest, his exactingly wittiest. He’s also just as caustic as ever.

The Solace of Open Spaces , Gretel Ehrlich

Gretel Ehrlich is a poet, and in this collection, you’ll know it. In 1976, she moved to Wyoming and became a cowherd, and nearly a decade later, she published this lovely, funny set of essays about rural life in the American West.”Keenly observed the world is transformed,” she writes. “The landscape is engorged with detail, every movement on it chillingly sharp. The air between people is charged. Days unfold, bathed in their own music. Nights become hallucinatory; dreams, prescient.”

The Braindead Megaphone , George Saunders

Saunders may be the man of the moment, but he’s been at work for a long while, and not only on his celebrated short stories. His single collection of essays applies the same humor and deliciously slant view to the real world — which manages to display nearly as much absurdity as one of his trademark stories.

Against Joie de Vivre , Phillip Lopate

“Over the years,” the title essay begins, “I have developed a distaste for the spectacle of joie de vivre , the knack of knowing how to live.” Lopate goes on to dissect, in pleasantly sardonic terms, the modern dinner party. Smart and thought-provoking throughout (and not as crotchety as all that), this collection is conversational but weighty, something to be discussed at length with friends at your next — oh well, you know.

Sex and the River Styx , Edward Hoagland

Edward Hoagland, who John Updike deemed “the best essayist of my generation,” has a long and storied career and a fat bibliography, so we hesitate to choose such a recent installment in the writer’s canon. Then again, Garrison Keillor thinks it’s his best yet , so perhaps we’re not far off. Hoagland is a great nature writer (name checked by many as the modern Thoreau) but in truth, he’s just as fascinated by humanity, musing that “human nature is interstitial with nature, and not to be shunned by a naturalist.” Elegant and thoughtful, Hoagland may warn us that he’s heading towards the River Styx, but we’ll hang on to him a while longer.

Changing My Mind , Zadie Smith

Smith may be best known for her novels (and she should be), but to our eyes she is also emerging as an excellent essayist in her own right, passionate and thoughtful. Plus, any essay collection that talks about Barack Obama via Pygmalion is a winner in our book.

My Misspent Youth , Meghan Daum

Like so many other writers on this list, Daum dives head first into the culture and comes up with meat in her mouth. Her voice is fresh and her narratives daring, honest and endlessly entertaining.

The White Album , Joan Didion

Yes, Joan Didion is on this list twice, because Joan Didion is the master of the modern essay, tearing at our assumptions and building our world in brisk, clever strokes. Deal.

• Search Results

The best essay collections to read now

From advice on friendship and understanding modern life to getting a grasp on coronavirus, these books offer insight on life. 

What better way to get into the work of a writer than through a collection of their essays? 

These seven collections, from novelists and critics alike, address a myriad of subjects from friendship to how colleges are dealing with sexual assaults on campus to race and racism. 

Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino (2019)

As a staff writer at The New Yorker , Jia Tolentino has explored everything from a rise in youth vaping to the ongoing cultural reckoning about sexual assault. Her first book Trick Mirror takes some of those pieces for The New Yorker as well as new work to form what is one of the sharpest collections of cultural criticism today.

Using herself and her own coming of age as a lens for many of the essays, Tolentino turns her pen and her eye to everything from her generation’s obsession with extravagant weddings to how college campuses deal with sexual assault.

If you’re looking for an insight into millennial life, then Trick Mirror should be on your to-read list.

In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens by Alice Walker (1983)

Sometimes essays collected from a sprawling period of a successful writer’s life can feel like a hasty addition to a bibliography; a smash-and-grab of notebook flotsam. Not so In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens , from which one can truly understand the sheer range of the Pulitzer Prize winner’s range of study and activism. From Walker’s first published piece of non-fiction (for which she won a prize, and spent her winnings on cut peonies) to more elegiac pieces about her heritage, Walker’s thoughts on feminism (which she terms “womanism”) and the Civil Rights Movement remain grippingly pertinent 50 years on.

Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris (2000)

That David Sedaris’s ascent to literary stardom happened later in his life – his breakthrough collection of humour essays was released when he was 44 – suited the author’s writing style perfectly. Me Talk Pretty One Day is both a painfully funny account of his childhood and an enduring snapshot of mid-forties malaise. First story ‘Go Carolina’, about his attempt to transcend a childhood lisp, is told from a perfect distance and with all the worldliness necessary to milk every drop of tragic, cringeworthy humour from his childhood. It never falters from there: by the book’s second half, in which Sedaris is living in France, he’s firmly established his niche, writing about the ways that even snobs experience utter humiliation ­– and Me Talk Pretty One Day is all the more human for it. 

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The decade’s best essay collections, from Zadie Smith to Jia Tolentino

Incisive and exacting, these collections make light work of untangling the last 10 years, writes annabel nugent.

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Between the climate crisis, Brexit and the launch of winter Love Island , it is easy to feel caught in an existential spiderweb, waiting for anxiety (or the onset of World War Three, whichever comes first) to consume you.

But some writers are making light work of untangling the last 10 years. Incisive and exacting, their essays tackle the big and the small – meme culture, Dostoyevsky, Bieber pandemonium, race politics, and the climate crisis are made comprehensible in their hands. These are the essay collections that make any resolution to “read more nonfiction” infinitely more enjoyable.

Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino (2019)

Jia Tolentino rebuffs critics’ claims that she’s the voice of a generation, but after reading Trick Mirror , any other title seems to fall short. The New Yorker staff writer is most astute when deciphering her home ground – the internet. Her best essays talk double-tapping automaton, monetisation and surveillance, and hardcore fans begging their favourite celebrities to kill them. For anyone simultaneously disillusioned and addicted to the perils of modern life, Tolentino’s words will strike a chord.

White Girls by Hilton Als (2013)

Hilton Als cut his teeth on theatre reviews (earning him a Pulitzer Prize in 2017), but the writer’s talents are anything but narrow. Race, class and sexuality coalesce in a collection of essays that opens up American culture for prying eyes. Als writes equally well on Eminem and porn as he does queerness and love. Flannery O’Connor, Michael Jackson and Truman Capote all feature in this politically astute, moving collection.

Books of the decade

See What Can be Done by Lorrie Moore (2018)

The title borrows from a phrase that Moore’s editor at The New York Review would use when editing her fiction. See What Can be Done does not simply despair at the state of today, but mines that despair to find some way forward. The master of short stories writes expectedly well on fellow literary greats such as Margaret Atwood , Miranda July and Philip Roth . More surprising is her poetic wrestling with subjects like Barack Obama , HBO’s True Detective and the Republican primary debate. Each chapter offers up enormous wisdom far beyond its bite-sized proportions.

Pulphead by John Jeremiah Sullivan (2011)

John Jeremiah Sullivan takes a scalpel to pop culture and history in Pulphead . Incisive prose on everything from Christian Rock festivals in the Ozarks to Bunny Wailer with vigour and humanity. The son of a reporter and an English teacher, Sullivan writes prose with the qualities of storytelling and the grounding of in-depth research.

Absolutely on Music by Haruki Murakami (2011)

The Japanese author is known for surrealist fiction and running ultra-marathons, but here, he sits down instead with friend and former conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Seiji Ozawa. What ensues is an enthusiastic and unpretentious discussion on their shared love for classical music. Their metiers are in perfect sync – boring industry topics like mundane bureaucracies and performer personalities are transformed by Murakami’s deft hand. While the subject may be esoteric, its appeal is definitely not.‘

When I Was a Child I Read Books: Essays by Marilynne Robinson (2012)

The list of books by Marilynne Robinson is upsettingly short, but every brilliant word she writes makes up for the scarcity. Robinson’s prose takes on a more exacting frankness in her nonfiction than in her Gilead trilogy. Essays on society and theology sound like a drag, but in this collection they are anything but. The Christian core of her Pulitzer prize-winning fiction comes through more visibly in these essays, but similarly does not have the alienating effect you would expect.

Feel Free by Zadie Smith (2018)

Razor-sharp essays take a long, hard look at topics both large – think intelligent takes on Bieber fever – and very, very small, as in the author’s childhood bathroom. As the title suggests, each essay explores the concept of freedom in all its meanings, but most are concerned with the artistic kind and the act of taking it, whether it’s given to you or not. Smith’s writing is casual and discursive but never rambling. Feel Free champions art as a place where freedom allows for complex issues to be safely explored.

The Possessed: Adventures with Russian Books and the People Who Read Them by Elif Batuman (2010)

Elif Batuman makes Russian literature fun. An unapologetic nerd for Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, Batuman’s book is likely to be the best thing that’s happened to the genre in modern times. The Possessed is a biblio-memoir of sorts, tracking the author’s time spent studying Russian lit at Stanford. The New Yorker staff writer fires on all cylinders in a collection of essays more about reading as a way of life than the idiosyncrasies of The Idiot .

All About Love: New Visions by bell hooks (2010)

In this collection, bell hooks moves deftly between affection, respect, commitment, gender stereotypes, domination, ego and aggression. With the help of psychological and philosophical ideas, the author pins down the airiness of love in a ruthless dissection, moments of ecstasy offset by brooding on patriarchal thinking. This collection paves the way for a more universal understanding of love.

This Young Monster by Charlie Fox (2017)

The last decade has birthed monsters of the good, bad and ugly varieties. In his debut novel, art critic Charlie Fox writes on modern monstrosity. In nine essays, Fox pays tribute to the art world’s outsiders. His subjects are diverse, taking on the 19th century poet Rimbaud as impressively as he grapples with The Duffer Brothers’ Stranger Things . This Young Monster is a love letter to those who “rebel against a reality that’s too cruel or boring for them to inhabit”. Fox’s voice is equal parts critical and personal, and always playful.

This Changes Everything: Capitalism v the Climate by Naomi Klein (2014)

Naomi Klein takes no prisoners in this polemic book on climate change. Klein makes a damning argument against powerful right-wing think tanks, lobby groups and corporate elites that have dictated catastrophic environmental policies and contributed to widespread climate change denial. Klein’s writing is forthright in its condemnation of capitalism. This Changes Everything is an urgent read and one that couldn’t be more pertinent than it is today – or tomorrow, and all the days after that.

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100 Best Essays Books of All Time

We've researched and ranked the best essays books in the world, based on recommendations from world experts, sales data, and millions of reader ratings. Learn more

Men Explain Things to Me

Rebecca Solnit | 5.00

Chelsea Handler Goes deep with statistics, personal stories, and others’ accounts of how brutal this world can be for women, the history of how we've been treated, and what it will take to change the conversation: MEN. We need them to be as outraged as we are and join our fight. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

Me Talk Pretty One Day

David Sedaris | 4.96

Between the World and Me

Ta-Nehisi Coates | 4.94

Barack Obama The president also released a list of his summer favorites back in 2015: All That Is, James Salter The Sixth Extinction, Elizabeth Kolbert The Lowland, Jhumpa Lahiri Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates Washington: A Life, Ron Chernow All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr (Source)

Jack Dorsey Q: What are the books that had a major influence on you? Or simply the ones you like the most. : Tao te Ching, score takes care of itself, between the world and me, the four agreements, the old man and the sea...I love reading! (Source)

Doug McMillon Here are some of my favorite reads from 2017. Lots of friends and colleagues send me book suggestions and it's impossible to squeeze them all in. I continue to be super curious about how digital and tech are enabling people to transform our lives but I try to read a good mix of books that apply to a variety of areas and stretch my thinking more broadly. (Source)

Slouching Towards Bethlehem

Joan Didion | 4.94

Peter Hessler I like Didion for her writing style and her control over her material, but also for the way in which she captures a historical moment. (Source)

Liz Lambert I love [this book] so much. (Source)

We Should All Be Feminists

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie | 4.92

Bad Feminist

Roxane Gay | 4.88

Irina Nica It’s hard to pick an all-time favorite because, as time goes by and I grow older, my reading list becomes more “mature” and I find myself interested in new things. I probably have a personal favorite book for each stage of my life. Right now I’m absolutely blown away by everything Roxane Gay wrote, especially Bad Feminist. (Source)

Trick Mirror

Reflections on Self-Delusion

Jia Tolentino | 4.86

Lydia Polgreen This book is amazing and you should read it. https://t.co/pcbmYUR4QP (Source)

Maryanne Hobbs ⁦@jiatolentino⁩ hello Jia :) finding your perspectives in the new book fascinating and so resonant.. thank you 🌹 m/a..x https://t.co/BoNzB1BuDf (Source)

Yashar Ali . @jiatolentino’s fabulous book is one of President Obama’s favorite books of 2019 https://t.co/QHzZsHl2rF (Source)

Consider the Lobster

And Other Essays

David Foster Wallace | 4.85

A Room of One's Own

Virginia Woolf | 4.75

Dress Your Family in Corduroy & Denim

David Sedaris | 4.73

Adam Kay @penceyprepmemes How about David Sedaris, for starters - "Dress your family in corduroy and denim" is an amazing book. (Source)

Don't have time to read the top Essays books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.

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The Fire Next Time

James Baldwin | 4.69

Barack Obama Fact or fiction, the president knows that reading keeps the mind sharp. He also delved into these non-fiction reads: Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Evan Osnos Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman Moral Man And Immoral Society, Reinhold Niebuhr A Kind And Just Parent, William Ayers The Post-American World, Fareed Zakaria Lessons in Disaster, Gordon Goldstein Sapiens: A Brief History of... (Source)

When You Are Engulfed in Flames

David Sedaris | 4.67

David Sedaris | 4.63

David Blaine It’s hilarious. (Source)

The White Album

Joan Didion | 4.62

Dan Richards I feel Joan Didion is the patron saint of a maelstrom of culture and environment of a particular time. She is the great American road-trip writer, to my mind. She has that great widescreen filmic quality to her work. (Source)

Steven Amsterdam With her gaze on California of the late 60s and early 70s, Didion gives us the Black Panthers, Janis Joplin, Nancy Reagan, and the Manson follower Linda Kasabian. (Source)

A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again

Essays and Arguments

David Foster Wallace | 4.61

Tressie McMillan Cottom | 4.60

Melissa Moore The best book I read this year was Thick by Tressie McMillan Cottom. I read it twice and both times found it challenging and revelatory. (Source)

David Sedaris and Hachette Audi | 4.60

Sister Outsider

Essays and Speeches

Audre Lorde, Cheryl Clarke | 4.60

Bianca Belair For #BHM  I will be sharing some of my favorite books by Black Authors 26th Book: Sister Outsider By: Audre Lorde My first time reading anything by Audre Lorde. I am now really looking forward to reading more of her poems/writings. What she writes is important & timeless. https://t.co/dUDMcaAAbx (Source)

Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls

David Sedaris | 4.58

Austin Kleon I read this one, then I read his collected diaries, Theft By Finding, and then I read the visual compendium, which might have even been the most interesting of the three books, but I’m listing this one because it’s hilarious, although with the interstitial fiction bits, it’s sort of like one of those classic 90s hip-hop albums where you skip the “skit” tracks. (Source)

Notes from a Loud Woman

Lindy West | 4.56

Matt Mcgorry "Shrill: Notes From a Loud Woman" by Lindy West @TheLindyWest # Lovvvvveeedddd, loved, loved, loved this book!!!  West is a truly remarkable writer and her stories are beautifully poignant while dosed with her… https://t.co/nzJtXtOGTn (Source)

Shannon Coulter @JennLHaglund @tomi_adeyemi I love that feeling! Just finished the audiobook version of Shrill by Lindy West after _years_ of meaning to read it and that's the exact feeling it gave me. Give me your book recommendations! (Source)

The Collected Schizophrenias

Esmé Weijun Wang | 4.52

Tiny Beautiful Things

Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

Cheryl Strayed | 4.49

Ryan Holiday It was wonderful to read these two provocative books of essays by two incredibly wise and compassionate women. Cheryl Strayed, also the author of Wild, was the anonymous columnist behind the online column, Dear Sugar and boy, are we better off for it. This is not a random smattering of advice. This book contains some of the most cogent insights on life, pain, loss, love, success, youth that I... (Source)

James Altucher Cheryl had an advice column called “Dear Sugar”. I was reading the column long before Oprah recommended “Wild” by Cheryl and then Wild became a movie and “Tiny Beautiful Things” (the collection of her advice column) became a book. She is so wise and compassionate. A modern saint. I used to do Q&A sessions on Twitter. I’d read her book beforehand to get inspiration about what true advice is. (Source)

We Were Eight Years in Power

An American Tragedy

Ta-Nehisi Coates | 4.47

The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

Albert Camu | 4.47

David Heinemeier Hansson Camus’ philosophical exposition of absurdity, suicide in the face of meaninglessness, and other cherry topics that continue on from his fictional work in novels like The Stranger. It’s surprisingly readable, unlike many other mid 20th century philosophers, yet no less deep or pointy. It’s a great follow-up, as an original text, to that book The Age of Absurdity, I recommended last year. Still... (Source)

Kenan Malik The Myth of Sisyphus is a small work, but Camus’s meditation on faith and fate has personally been hugely important in developing my ideas. Writing in the embers of World War II, Camus confronts in The Myth of Sisyphus both the tragedy of recent history and what he sees as the absurdity of the human condition. There is, he observes, a chasm between the human need for meaning and what he calls... (Source)

The Penguin Essays Of George Orwell

George Orwell, Bernard Crick | 4.46

Peter Kellner George Orwell was not only an extraordinary writer but he also hated any form of cant. Some of his most widely read works such as 1984 and Animal Farm are an assault on the nastier, narrow-minded, dictatorial tendencies of the left, although Orwell was himself on the left. (Source)

The Opposite of Loneliness

Essays and Stories

Marina Keegan, Anne Fadiman | 4.46

Dear Ijeawele, or a Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie | 4.45

The Tipping Point

How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

Malcolm Gladwell | 4.45

Kevin Rose Bunch of really good information in here on how to make ideas go viral. This could be good to apply to any kind of products or ideas you may have. Definitely, check out The Tipping Point, which is one of my favorites. (Source)

Seth Godin Malcolm Gladwell's breakthrough insight was to focus on the micro-relationships between individuals, which helped organizations realize that it's not about the big ads and the huge charity balls... it's about setting the stage for the buzz to start. (Source)

Andy Stern I think that when we talk about making change, it is much more about macro change, like in policy. This book reminds you that at times when you're building big movements, or trying to elect significant decision-makers in politics, sometimes it's the little things that make a difference. Ever since the book was written, we've become very used to the idea of things going viral unexpectedly and then... (Source)

Selected Essays

Mary Oliver | 4.44

We Are Never Meeting in Real Life.

Samantha Irby | 4.44

Complete Essays

Michel de Montaigne, Charles Cotton | 4.42

Ryan Holiday There is plenty to study and see simply by looking inwards — maybe even an alarming amount. (Source)

Alain de Botton I’ve given quite a lot of copies of [this book] to people down the years. (Source)

Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns)

Mindy Kaling | 4.42

Angela Kinsey .@mindykaling I am rereading your book and cracking up. I appreciate your chapter on The Office so much more now. But all of it is fantastic. Thanks for starting my day with laughter. You know I loves ya. ❤️ https://t.co/EB99xnyt0p (Source)

Yashar Ali Reminds me of one of my favorite lines from @mindykaling's book (even though I'm an early riser): “There is no sunrise so beautiful that it is worth waking me up to see it.” https://t.co/pS56bmyYjS (Source)

Not That Bad

Dispatches from Rape Culture

Roxane Gay, Brandon Taylor, et al | 4.40

Henry David Thoreau | 4.40

Laura Dassow Walls The book that we love as Walden began in the journal entries that he wrote starting with his first day at the pond. (Source)

Roman Krznaric In 1845 the American naturalist went out to live in the woods of Western Massachusetts. Thoreau was one of the great masters of the art of simple living. (Source)

John Kaag There’s this idea that philosophy can blend into memoir and that, ideally, philosophy, at its best, is to help us through the business of living with people, within communities. This is a point that Thoreau’s Walden gave to me, as a writer, and why I consider it so valuable for today. (Source)

Confessions of a Common Reader

Anne Fadiman | 4.40

I Feel Bad About My Neck

And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman

Nora Ephron | 4.39

Holidays on Ice

David Sedaris | 4.37

An American Lyric

Claudia Rankine | 4.36

Cheryl Strayed A really important book for us to be reading right now. (Source)

Jeremy Noel-Tod Obviously, it’s been admired and acclaimed, but I do feel the general reception of it has underplayed its artfulness. Its technical subtlety and overall arrangement has been neglected, because it has been classified as a kind of documentary work. (Source)

Christopher Hitchens | 4.36

Le Grove @billysubway Hitchens book under your arm. I’m reading Arguably. When he’s at his best, he is a savage. Unbelievable prose. (Source)

Notes of a Native Son

James Baldwin | 4.35

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales

Oliver Sacks | 4.34

Suzanne O'Sullivan I didn’t choose neurology because of it but the way Oliver Sacks writes about neurology is very compelling. (Source)

Tanya Byron This is a seminal book that anyone who wants to work in mental health should read. It is a charming and gentle and also an honest exposé of what can happen to us when our mental health is compromised for whatever reason. (Source)

Bradley Voytek I can’t imagine one day waking up and not knowing who my wife is, or seeing my wife and thinking that she was replaced by some sort of clone or robot. But that could happen to any of us. (Source)

The Empathy Exams

Leslie Jamison | 4.33

This is the Story of a Happy Marriage

Ann Patchett | 4.31

Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs

A Low Culture Manifesto

Chuck Klosterman | 4.30

Karen Pfaff Manganillo Never have I read a book that I said “this is so perfect, amazing, hilarious, he’s thinking what I’m thinking (in a much more thought out and cool way)”. (Source)

Bird By Bird

Some Instructions on Writing and Life

Anne Lamott | 4.29

Susan Cain I love [this book]. Such a good book. (Source)

Timothy Ferriss Bird by Bird is one of my absolute favorite books, and I gift it to everybody, which I should probably also give to startup founders, quite frankly. A lot of the lessons are the same. But you can get to your destination, even though you can only see 20 feet in front of you. (Source)

Ryan Holiday It was wonderful to read these two provocative books of essays by two incredibly wise and compassionate women. [...] Anne Lamott’s book is ostensibly about the art of writing, but really it too is about life and how to tackle the problems, temptations and opportunities life throws at us. Both will make you think and both made me a better person this year. (Source)

Zadie Smith | 4.29

Barack Obama As 2018 draws to a close, I’m continuing a favorite tradition of mine and sharing my year-end lists. It gives me a moment to pause and reflect on the year through the books I found most thought-provoking, inspiring, or just plain loved. It also gives me a chance to highlight talented authors – some who are household names and others who you may not have heard of before. Here’s my best of 2018... (Source)

What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures

Malcolm Gladwell | 4.28

Sam Freedman @mrianleslie (Also I agree What the Dog Saw is his best book). (Source)

The Witches Are Coming

Lindy West | 4.27

Against Interpretation and Other Essays

Susan Sontag | 4.25

How to Write an Autobiographical Novel

Alexander Chee | 4.25

Eula Biss Alex Chee explores the realm of the real with extraordinarily beautiful essays. Being real here is an ambition, a haunting, an impossibility, and an illusion. What passes for real, his essays suggest, becomes real, just as life becomes art and art, pursued this fully, becomes a life. (Source)

Changing My Mind

Occasional Essays

Zadie Smith | 4.25

Barrel Fever

David Sedaris | 4.24

Chelsea Handler [The author] is fucking hilarious and there's nothing I prefer to do more than laugh. If this book doesn't make you laugh, I'll refund you the money. (Source)

The Fire This Time

A New Generation Speaks About Race

Jesmyn Ward | 4.24

Why Not Me?

Mindy Kaling | 4.24

The View from the Cheap Seats

Selected Nonfiction

Neil Gaiman | 4.24

I Was Told There'd Be Cake

Sloane Crosley | 4.24

The Intelligent Investor

The Classic Text on Value Investing

Benjamin Graham | 4.23

Warren Buffett To invest successfully over a lifetime does not require a stratospheric IQ, unusual business insights, or inside information. What's needed is a sound intellectual framework for making decisions and the ability to keep emotions from corroding that framework. This book precisely and clearly prescribes the proper framework. You must provide the emotional discipline. (Source)

Kevin Rose The foundation for investing. A lot of people have used this as their guide to getting into investment, basic strategies. Actually Warren Buffett cites this as the book that got him into investing and he says that principles he learned here helped him to become a great investor. Highly recommend this book. It’s a great way understand what’s going on and how to evaluate different companies out... (Source)

John Kay The idea is that you look at the underlying value of the company’s activities instead of relying on market gossip. (Source)

Tell Me How It Ends

An Essay in Forty Questions

Valeria Luiselli | 4.23

Tina Fey | 4.22

Sheryl Sandberg I absolutely loved Tina Fey's "Bossypants" and didn't want it to end. It's hilarious as well as important. Not only was I laughing on every page, but I was nodding along, highlighting and dog-earing like crazy. [...] It is so, so good. As a young girl, I was labeled bossy, too, so as a former - O.K., current - bossypants, I am grateful to Tina for being outspoken, unapologetic and hysterically... (Source)

They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us

Hanif Abdurraqib, Dr. Eve L. Ewing | 4.22

Saadia Muzaffar Man, this is such an amazing book of essays. Meditations on music and musicians and their moments and meaning-making. @NifMuhammad's mindworks are a gift. Go find it. (thank you @asad_ch!) https://t.co/htSueYYBUT (Source)

This Is Water

Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life

David Foster Wallace | 4.21

John Jeremiah Sullivan | 4.21

Greil Marcus This is a new book by a writer in his mid-thirties, about all kinds of things. A lot of it is about the South, some of it is autobiographical, there is a long and quite wonderful piece about going to a Christian music camp. (Source)

The Mother of All Questions

Rebecca Solnit | 4.20

The Partly Cloudy Patriot

Sarah Vowell, Katherine Streeter | 4.20

Essays of E.B. White

E. B. White | 4.19

Adam Gopnik White, for me, is the great maker of the New Yorker style. Though it seems self-serving for me to say it, I think that style was the next step in the creation of the essay tone. One of the things White does is use a lot of the habits of the American newspaper in his essays. He is a genuinely simple, spare, understated writer. In the presence of White, even writers as inspired as Woolf and... (Source)

A Field Guide to Getting Lost

Rebecca Solnit | 4.19

A Man Without a Country

Kurt Vonnegut | 4.18

No Time to Spare

Thinking About What Matters

Ursula K. Le Guin, Karen Joy Fowler | 4.17

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Annie Dillard | 4.16

Laura Dassow Walls She’s enacting Thoreau, but in a 20th-century context: she takes on quantum physics, the latest research on DNA and the nature of life. (Source)

Sara Maitland This book, which won the Pulitzer literature prize when it was released, is the most beautiful book about the wild. (Source)

Maggie Nelson | 4.14

Furiously Happy

A Funny Book About Horrible Things

Jenny Lawson | 4.13

Women & Power

A Manifesto

Mary Beard | 4.13

Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

Timothy Snyder | 4.12

George Saunders Please read this book. So smart, so timely. (Source)

Tom Holland "There isn’t a page of this magnificent book that does not contain some fascinating detail and the narrative is held together with a novelist’s eye for character and theme." #Dominion https://t.co/FESSNxVDLC (Source)

Maya Wiley Prof. Tim Snyder, author of “In Tyranny” reminded us in that important little book that we must protect our institutions. #DOJ is one of our most important in gov’t for the rule of law. This is our collective house & #Barr should be evicted. https://t.co/PPxM9IMQUm (Source)

Small Wonder

Barbara Kingsolver | 4.11

The Source of Self-Regard

Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations

Toni Morrison | 4.11

Hyperbole and a Half

Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened

Allie Brosh | 4.11

Bill Gates While she self-deprecatingly depicts herself in words and art as an odd outsider, we can all relate to her struggles. Rather than laughing at her, you laugh with her. It is no hyperbole to say I love her approach -- looking, listening, and describing with the observational skills of a scientist, the creativity of an artist, and the wit of a comedian. (Source)

Samantha Irby | 4.10

Both Flesh and Not

David Foster Wallace | 4.10

David Papineau People can learn to do amazing things with their bodies, and people start honing and developing these skills as an end in itself, a very natural thing for humans to do. (Source)

So Sad Today

Personal Essays

Melissa Broder | 4.10

Hope in the Dark

Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities

Rebecca Solnit | 4.09

Prem Panicker @sanjayen This is from an essay Solnit wrote to introduce the updated version of her book Hope In The Dark. Anything Solnit is brilliant; at times like these, she is the North Star. (Source)

The Faraway Nearby

How to Be Alone

Jonathan Franzen | 4.08

Regarding the Pain of Others

Susan Sontag | 4.08

The Essays of Warren Buffett

Lessons for Corporate America, Fifth Edition

Lawrence A. Cunningham and Warren E. Buffett | 4.08

One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter

Scaachi Koul | 4.07

Amy Poehler | 4.06

The Souls of Black Folk

W.E.B. Du Bois | 4.05

Barack Obama According to the president’s Facebook page and a 2008 interview with the New York Times, these titles are among his most influential forever favorites: Moby Dick, Herman Melville Self-Reliance, Ralph Waldo Emerson Song Of Solomon, Toni Morrison Parting The Waters, Taylor Branch Gilead, Marylinne Robinson Best and the Brightest, David Halberstam The Federalist, Alexander Hamilton Souls of Black... (Source)

In Praise of Shadows

Jun'ichiro Tanizaki | 4.05

Kyle Chayka Tanizaki is mourning what has been paved over, which is the old Japanese aesthetic of darkness, of softness, of appreciating the imperfect—rather than the cold, glossy surfaces of industrialized modernity that the West had brought to Japan at that moment. For me, that’s really valuable, because it does preserve a different way of looking at the world. (Source)

Ways of Seeing

John Berger | 4.04

Robert Jones He’s a Marxist and says that the role of publicity or branding is to make people marginally dissatisfied with their current way of life. (Source)

David McCammon Ways of Seeing goes beyond photography and will continue to develop your language around images. (Source)

John Harrison (Eton College) You have to understand the Marxist interpretation of art; it is absolutely fundamental to the way that art history departments now study the material. Then you have to critique it, because we’ve moved on from the 1970s and the collapse of Marxism in most of the world shows—amongst other things—that the model was flawed. But it’s still a very good book to read, for a teenager especially. (Source)

Tackling the Texas Essays

Efficient Preparation for the Texas Bar Exam

Catherine Martin Christopher | 4.04

The Book of Delights

Ross Gay | 4.04

Mere Christianity

C. S. Lewis | 4.04

Anoop Anthony "Mere Christianity" is first and foremost a rational book — it is in many ways the opposite of a traditional religious tome. Lewis, who was once an atheist, has been on both sides of the table, and he approaches the notion of God with accessible, clear thinking. The book reveals that experiencing God doesn't have to be a mystical exercise; God can be a concrete and logical conclusion. Lewis was... (Source)

I Remember Nothing

and Other Reflections

Nora Ephron | 4.04

On Photography

Susan Sontag | 4.03

Susan Bordo Sontag was the first to make the claim, which at the time was very controversial, that photography is misleading and seductive because it looks like reality but is in fact highly selective. (Source)

Notes from No Man's Land

American Essays

Eula Biss | 4.03

The Doors of Perception

Heaven and Hell (Thinking Classics)

Aldous Huxley, Robbie McCallum | 4.03

Michelle Rodriguez Aldous Huxley on Technodictators https://t.co/RDyX70lnZz via @YouTube ‘Doors of Perception’ is a great book entry level to hallucinogenics (Source)

Auston Bunsen I also really loved “The doors of perception” by Aldous Huxley. (Source)

Dr. Andrew Weil Came first [in terms of my interests]. (Source)

The Geek Feminist Revolution

Kameron Hurley | 4.02

Wow, No Thank You.

Samantha Irby | 4.01

A Modest Proposal

Jonathan Swift | 4.01

At Large and at Small

Familiar Essays

Anne Fadiman | 4.00

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11 Places to Find Great College Essay Examples

College Essays

 Sure, you might know the theory behind what a college essay is supposed to sound and look like . But just like reading a description of the Golden Gate Bridge pales in comparison to seeing it in person, there’s no replacement for seeing actual college essays written by students just like you. Well, almost like you – they’ve since gotten into college.

But where do you find good sources for reading sample college essays? How can you make sure that these resources will actually strengthen and improve your writing? And what is the best way to use the college essay examples that you do find? In this article, I’ll go over the best books and websites for finding essays, I’ll point out a few to avoid, and I’ll explain how to make the most out of other people’s essays while avoiding common pitfalls.

Why Look At College Essay Examples?

There are some very good reasons for wanting to check out how other people have handled the college admissions essay.

First, because you'll be able to get a better sense of what colleges are looking for, you will necessarily broaden your own topic brainstorming past your first, easiest, and most c lichéd i deas . It's one thing to hear that a completely mundane topic is way better than one focusing on your greatest sports moment. But once you see other students writing about a family meal, or an obsession with a particular board game, or a love of cultivating cacti, you'll be convinced to find your essay in the small moments of your life.

Second, you'll see how your life and writing compares to that of your peers . The great diversity of voices, topics, tones, points of view will show you just how many things you could possibly write about, and how to keep the essay connected to your personality and your voice.

Finally, if you really do have a good story to tell about something that gets written about a lot, like divorce, pet death, a community service trip, or winning the big game, you can get ideas for how to approach a potentially lackluster essay topic in a novel and striking way .

What Makes A Good Sample College Essay Resource?

First, the basics. A source is only as good as its content, so make sure you're reading  college essays that worked, from people who actually got into the schools they applied to . Also, it's best to focus on new essays (not older than 10-15 years), so you are reading what has worked in the most recent past, rather than seeing outdated ideas and historical perspectives.

Next, what you really want is diversity in voice and perspective . Make sure the essays featured come from many different kinds of students: either from applicants to both top and lower-tier schools; or from students with different ethnic, economic, and racial backgrounds; or from writers using both formal and more experimental essay techniques.

Finally, the best sources of admission essays will feature explanatory material . This will give each essay some kind of context: commentary on what makes the essay good, explanations of the drafting process, or, at least, biographical information about students. Without commentary or context, it’s hard to know what you’re supposed to learn from the essays you read.

Where to Find Great College Essay Examples

Here are my recommendations for excellent resources, as well as some warnings about resources that I think you should avoid. 

College Essays Collected in Books

I've taken a look at many of the books that collect college essays, so here are my recommendations. I've divided them into three categories:

• Excellent  – meaning  having really diverse essays or very helpful commentary on each essay, or both
• Worthwhile  – meaning either a helpful collection of essays without a lot of context or commentary, or some great advice but a narrow selection of essays geared toward one particular type of school
• Don't Bother   – not useful either as a source of college essays or as a source of essay-writing advice and explanations

Also, please note that although I’ve listed the Amazon prices for all the books, you should definitely check your school and public library for copies before buying them. And even if your library doesn't have a copy, ask them to request one either from another library in the same system or even from the Library of Congress through interlibrary loan .

Excellent Books

Heavenly Essays: 50 Narrative College Application Essays That Worked

Written by Janine W. Robinson, who blogs about college essays at EssayHell , this book features great sample essays. But it's Robinson's precise and clear explanations of how to use a narrative style in your essay to tell a story about your life that make the book really outstanding. Through long and detailed commentary on each essay, Robinson shows why narrative is exactly the kind of structure that works best for personal essays. You can check out sample sections from the book on her blog. The book retails for $10 new on Amazon.

On Writing the College Application Essay, 25th Anniversary Edition: The Key to Acceptance at the College of Your Choice

Harry Bauld used to be an admissions officer at Brown, so he certainly knows what he is talking about when he writes about  how and why to avoid clichés and explains how to find and keep your specific voice . Bauld demonstrates his points with sample essays, showing how they go from first to final draft. The book is easy to read, uses humor to make points, and his advice will carry over into your college writing as well. It is $12.50 new on Amazon, but there are much cheaper used copies available there as well.

The Berkeley Book of College Essays: Personal Statements for California Universities and Other Select Schools

This compilation features college admissions essays written by seniors from Berkeley High School (which is not affiliated with UC Berkeley). Because the city of Berkeley is economically, racially, and ethnically very diverse, these essays are about many different interests, perspectives, and experiences, and are written in many different styles and tones . Although there is no commentary for the essays, this collection is a great way to get a sense of the broad array of essay possibilities.

Also, because many of the students from Berkeley High apply to UC schools, this collection separates out UC application essay packages. (If you are interested in UC, also check out our own guide to writing excellent UC essays !) This book is currently $15 on Amazon. 

50 Successful Harvard Application Essays: What Worked for Them Can Help You Get into the College of Your Choice

Edited by the staff of the Harvard Crimson, this is a great collection of essays from a not particularly diverse group of students. It is very useful to see how the very top students approach the college essay, as long as their best effort neither intimidates nor stymies you. The contextual material is excellent, with helpful explanations of what makes each essay work well. This book retails for $12 new on Amazon, with much cheaper used copies also available.

Worthwhile Books

College Essays That Made a Difference, 6th Edition

This Princeton Review guide is mostly distinguished by its introductory material, which has detailed interviews with many different colleges at many different tiers about what role essays play in college applications, what kind of mistakes are okay, and what to write and not to write about. The sample essays themselves come without commentary, but each features a very short bio of the student, including test scores, GPA, a list of colleges where the person applied, and a list of colleges where the person got in. Right now, it's $11.50 new on Amazon, but there are cheaper used copies as well.

50 Successful Ivy League Application Essays

This collection of of college essays that worked, edited by Gen and Kelly Tanabe, has somewhat spare, but insightful, commentary explaining what each essay does well and what it could have done better . It also includes an interview with an admissions officer explaining how essays are used in admissions decisions and some comments from students about the writing process. The link above is to a downloadable PDF file.

50 Successful Stanford Application Essays: Get into Stanford and Other Top Colleges  

If you like the Tanabes' approach (they are the authors of the previous book), then you will find this one useful as well. The narrow diversity of essay content and the style of commentary (thoughtful, but not particularly detailed or expansive) is very similar. It's priced at $13.25 new on Amazon with some used options as well.

Fiske Real College Essays That Work  

The "Fiske" of the title is Edward Fiske, who used to be the Education editor of the NY Times, and who therefore has some experience with what colleges want from their applicants. The book itself features an introduction with some helpful essay-writing tips, a diverse selection of essays built around narrative, but unfortunately has very little commentary to go with each essay . It retails for $12.50 new on Amazon, with cheaper used options available.

2015 Elite College Application Essays

Although there's almost no commentary or discussion of what makes these essays work, this book is a reasonably good collection of essays from students who are now enrolled at Ivy and other top-tier schools. What's particularly appealing about this college essay compilation is how very new these essays are: all are from students who became freshmen in 2015 . The book is $14 new on Amazon.

Don't Bother

100 Successful College Application Essays

I'd recommend not spending your time on any of the editions of this collection. The essays are decades old in some cases, the topics are clichéd and boring, and there is little to no commentary to make any of them useful. 

College Essays Published Online

I'll split my recommendations here into "worthwhile" and "don't bother" categories. There aren't any truly great collections of sample college essays online.

Individual College Websites . There are many essays published online by the various colleges where these students now go. This means these essays are guaranteed to be real, authentic, and to have worked on someone's application . Some of the essays even come with brief commentary by admissions officers about what makes them great. (The link will take you to our list of over 130 essays from more than 15 different colleges.)

Teen Ink Magazine . Teen Ink publishes all sorts of writing by teens, including college admission essays, which are split off into their own section on the site. The essays necessary feature a wide range of experiences and perspectives, so this is a great place to get a broad sense of what other students are writing about. The essays don't have any context except comment sections that run the gamut from generic “this is good” comments to some insight. Readers also get a chance to vote on which essays are featured as #1, #2, etc., which may be misleading because readers of Teen Ink aren't admissions officers.

Don't Bother 

Watch out for paid websites like AdmitSee, CollegeMapper, and Acceptional, which claim to give you access to college essays for a monthly or fixed fee. Because of the paywall, there's no way to verify the quality of the essays these sites have. Also, there are enough books that you could borrow from your library that you don’t need to pay monthly fees to these places. Finally, I would particularly stay away from AdmidSee, which uses Amazon reviews for other essay resources as a marketing platform.

The Best Ways To Use College Admission Essay Samples

So now that you've rounded up a bunch of sample college essays, what should you do with them? Here are some tips for your next steps.

When Should You Read Essay Examples?

I'd advise waiting until after you've done some brainstorming of your own before you start immersing yourself in other people's work and ideas. (If you're not sure how to brainstorm, check out our guide to coming up with great college essay topics .)

This way, you can use other people’s essays to think about different possibilities for writing about your own topic. For example, looking at how other people tackled their life experience can show you:

• how to focus on a different detail in your own story
• how to change the insight you want to draw from your story
• how to think about different ways to start and end your narrative

What Can Good College Essays Teach You?

There are both broad and specific learning opportunities to be found in reading other people's work.

Broadly speaking, seeing how other people are approaching the problem of writing a college essay can jog your own creative process. Likewise, reading a diversity of thoughts and voices will show you that even the most normal and boring seeming experiences be made into riveting essays.

More specifically, if you find essays from applicants to your target school, you can get some sense of the level of sophistication they expect to see from your writing. 

Finally, good context and commentary on the essays can show you how they are put together and what makes them work. You can then put this advice to use when rewriting your essay later.

Pitfalls To Avoid

Of course, being surrounded by other people's work, especially when some of that work is much better than what you think you can manage, has its share of temptations. So what do you need to guard against when looking at sample essays?

Plagiarism. This one is basic and obvious. Do not copy these sample essays! Admissions officers have seen them all, read them all, memorized them all – you will not get away with it.

Copying and mimicry. Think of this as a softer kind of plagiarism. Even if you really like someone else’s style, don’t borrow it. Even if someone’s life sounds more exciting than yours, don’t steal a piece of it for your own essay. Why? Because if you don’t sound like yourself, it will be visible to an experienced reader (and guess what, admissions officers are very experienced readers). Also, if you’re writing about experiences that aren't yours, your unfamiliarity will show through the lack of believable details.

Resources for Essay Writing Advice

In researching this article, I came across books and websites that don't necessarily feature a lot of sample essays, but that give really excellent advice on writing your own college essay. I strongly recommend you spend some time checking them out.

Essay Hell blog . This great resource is written by Janine Anderson Robinson, an English teacher and a journalist, whose book Heavenly Essays I recommended above. The blog posts feature lots and lots of well-explained, detailed, easy to understand advice about how to write your essay, and are broken down into easy to understand, bite-sized nuggets of usefulness.

Slate 's Getting In podcast . The entire series is an interesting look at the college application process, with useful tips and explanations about all aspects what seniors are going through. Check out Episode 2: The Essay , in which a student gets feedback in real time on their essay from a former Princeton director of admissions and a panel of experts talk about essay dos and don’ts. The episode is 26 minutes long.

The College Essay Trap: Rescue Your College Application Essay From the "Maybe" Pile

This is incredibly concise and excellent explanation of what not to do and what to avoid when writing your personal statement. It's short, sweet, to the point, and is praised to the skies by legendary Princeton admissions dean Fred Hargadon. Currently $12 new on Amazon.

The Bottom Line

• Look at college essay examples to broaden your own topic brainstorming and get ideas for fixing lackluster topics.
• Look for resources with diverse and recent essays, from many different kinds of students and with explanatory material that explains what makes each essay good.
• Look at essay samples after you’ve generated some of your own ideas to think about different possibilities for writing about your own topic.
• Seeing how other people are approaching the problem of writing a college essay can jog your creative process.
• Avoid both actual plagiarism and “borrowing”: don’t use someone else’s style, voice, or life experiences as your own.

What’s Next?

If you’re starting to work on college essays, check out our article laying out every single kind of essay prompt out there and a step by step guide to writing a great college essay .

Are you working on the Common App essay? Read our breakdown of the Common App prompts and our guide to picking the best prompt for you.

Or maybe you're interested in the University of California? Check out our complete guide to the UC personal statements .

Working on other pieces of your college applications? We’ve got guides to choosing the right college for you ,  writing about extracurriculars , and requesting teacher recommendations .

Thinking about taking the SAT one last time, or prepping for your first run at it? Read our ultimate guide to studying for the SAT and make sure you're as prepared as possible.

These recommendations are based solely on our knowledge and experience. If you purchase an item through one of our links, PrepScholar may receive a commission.

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Anna scored in the 99th percentile on her SATs in high school, and went on to major in English at Princeton and to get her doctorate in English Literature at Columbia. She is passionate about improving student access to higher education.

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Nonfiction Books » Essays

Adam gopnik on his favourite essay collections.

In Mid-Air: Points of View from over a Decade by Adam Gopnik

What makes a great essayist? Who had it, who didn’t? And whose work left the biggest mark on the New Yorker ? Longtime writer for the magazine, Adam Gopnik , picks out five masters of the craft

And Even Now by Max Beerbohm

The Common Reader by Virginia Woolf

Essays of E.B. White by E.B. White

A Sad Heart At The Supermarket by Randall Jarrell

Visions Before Midnight by Clive James

1 And Even Now by Max Beerbohm

2 the common reader by virginia woolf, 3 essays of e.b. white by e.b. white, 4 a sad heart at the supermarket by randall jarrell, 5 visions before midnight by clive james.

B efore we get into the books, I wanted to ask you about essays generally. In your introduction to The Best American Essays of 2008 you have a rather nice phrase: “The essay is a classical form for short-winded Romantics.” What do you mean by that?

There are certain kinds of criticism that I think of as essentially essays – Clive James or Randall Jarrell’s criticism, for instance – whereas there are other critics whom I admire just as much – say [William] Empson and [WH] Auden – but whom I don’t think of as essayists. They’re superior literary critics.

Is the distinction to do with the presence of the “I” in their work?

The “I” need not appear in the piece, but it’s always implicit in the essay. Empson and Auden want to win you round to their point of view, Jarrell and James want to make their experience persuasive. Of course, one of the best ways of winning you round to a point of view is to make your experience persuasive, and one of the best ways to make your experience persuasive is to win you round to a point of view!

There are no absolute lines in this. But there does seem to me a real difference between the things Empson – who is an absolutely wonderful writer and an amazing companion – is trying to do in his critical articles and the things Jarrell is trying to do in his. Jarrell conceives of criticism poetically. That is, that it should have some of the surprise and delight of personal revelation: “ I felt this then, and I passed through the prism of a work of writing” rather than “this is a general truth of literature”.

With essayists, we feel we’re reading their first names rather than their honorifics. We’re reading Clive and Virginia and Randall rather than James and Woolf and Jarrell, in a way we never feel we’re reading William and Wystan rather than Empson and Auden.

You have written that the essay has an implicit politics to it, and that the job of the essay is “to drain the melodrama from overwrought debate and replace it with common sense and comedy”.

Did I say that? When you think [of essays] historically, beginning with Montaigne, one of the things Montaigne does – at a time of violent and feverish religious debate – is he makes the case for both and at once, for either and or, for the division within oneself. That there is no pure or certain state which we can be in in our mental lives.

Even someone as seemingly non-political as Max Beerbohm is placed at the intersection of all kinds of political passions – Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw’s socialism, Rudyard Kipling’s imperialism and so on – and he makes fun of them all. That’s one of the things that makes Beerbohm attractive. In a very decorous and mischievous way, he mocks that kind of ideological passion.

You mentioned Beerbohm. Let’s begin with his book And Even Now . You said his approach was to parody and make light of things. He was also a caricaturist. Do you see a link between his illustrations and his essays?

Yes, absolutely. He was a caricaturist with remarkable insight and relatively little malice in his parodies and cartoons. He found the pomposities of over-zealous ideology absurd. He also had a lovely vein of affection. One of my favourite of his picture-books is called Rossetti and H is Circle . It’s basically imaginary pictures of Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelites in their very complicated domestic life. The implicit theme of the whole book is that behind the Pre-Raphaelite dream of the perfect Botticelli nymph and the medieval romantic life is this very funny, furtive domestic life in Chelsea [London]. Constantly referring dream-life back to reality is another way Beerbohm works.

He’s an essayist who isn’t so widely read these days. Why do you think that is?

For me, Beerbohm has an almost dangerously perfect tone – a mixture of benign serenity and quiet intellectual authority that I think is the tone every essayist searches for. It’s not accidental that Beerbohm was influential on the first generation of The New Yorker writers, people like Wolcott Gibbs.

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One of the dangers of that tone, though, is that it can seem unduly complacent or self-satisfied. I suspect that the note of complacency in Beerbohm’s writing is kind of out of kilter with the times. It’s a note that was so hugely popular for 50 or 60 years that I guess it came to seem old-fashioned. If you ever read old collections of light editorials from The  London Times , they all strive for the Beerbohm sound. Inevitably, when a sound gets imitated for too long it becomes a little empty.

Beerbohm is also not a writer of fanatic passion or political certainty. You can’t consult him directly for the quote you might need about the topic of the day. For those reasons, he’s gone a bit out of fashion. But he remains a wonderful writer, and for me the best witness of that period – the end of the Victorian age and the beginning of the modern age.

What do you think he writes best about?

Literature. My favourite of his essays are ones like “A Clergyman”, which is a very close, loving analysis of an obscure passage of [James] Boswell’s The Life of Samuel Johnson . A clergyman, identified in no other way, squeaks out a little objection to something Dr Johnson has said, and Johnson crushes him with his rejoinder. Beerbohm reflects on the lost and hidden life of this clergyman, who made one brief bid for literary immortality and whose name even Boswell couldn’t recall.

Let’s go on to another English essayist, Virginia Woolf . She wrote a great deal of non-fiction. Why does her writing in The Common Reader qualify as essays rather than what they strictly appear to be – reviews or criticism?

Exactly because we read Woolf for her tone – her equanimity, her ability to weave together a detached and usually very severe critical judgement with a tone of ruminative engagement. That’s a tone, as much as Beerbohm’s is in another way, which seems to me particularly enviable.

Is it, along with Beerbohm, a particularly English tone? The next three essayists we’re going to talk about are American or Australian.

I think that’s true. There’s a sense in which both Woolf and Beerbohm come after the age of Victorian literary industry. They both take for granted this common pool of Dickens , [George] Eliot and Trollope – writers of huge industry, enormous achievement and vast social observation – and they both make a quiet case for the miniature, for the perfectly wrought. So there’s a kind of running commentary on Victorian fiction in both of their work.

I also think, without having illusions about the nature of the societies in which they worked, that there is a strong lure of a stable and secure literary society in their work. They both feel themselves to be at home with literature, not out of place in any way. Their tone – unlike certain American essayists – does not give a sense of having an uncertain or anxious relationship to literature.

That sense is certainly something you get from the title essay of Jarrell’s collection.

Next, you have gone with a collection of EB White ’s essays. He is one of the most iconic New Yorker writers.

White, for me, is the great maker of the New Yorker style. Though it seems self-serving for me to say it, I think that style was the next step in the creation of the essay tone. One of the things White does is use a lot of the habits of the American newspaper in his essays. He is a genuinely simple, spare, understated writer. In the presence of White, even writers as inspired as Woolf and Beerbohm suddenly look stuffy and literary. White has an amazing ability, which I still marvel at, to come very close to a faux-naïve simplicity that’s excessive and then pull it back.

I’m just picking up one of his collections. I’m going to open it up at random and look for a sentence that captures White. Here’s one from a piece called “The Trailer Park”:

“Before sitting down to draft a preamble to the constitution of a world federations of democracies uniting free people under one banner, I decided I would mosey over to the trailer park at the edge of town and ask some of the campers whether they favoured any such idea of this union.”

The virtue of White’s kind of writing is to start with something that sounds pompous and editorial and then use a verb like “mosey over” to make it work. He cleans up the prose of the essay. Both Beerbohm and Woolf are belle-lettrist sort of writers and they connect to that leisurely tradition. White is a much more urbane and American writer.

What is the key “if you haven’t read any White, read this essay” essay for you?

Next up is A Sad Heart At The Supermarket . Randall Jarrell is best known as a poet, rather than an essayist. Why are his essays worth reading?

Jarrell, for me, is the absolute master of what I like to think of as “cabaret criticism”. The man has endless wit. I think his novel Pictures From an Institution is the single wittiest book of the last century, even though I’ve read it 10 times and can never recall the story! He’s a very poor storyteller but an amazingly witty writer.

Jarrell is a comedian of a kind. He always finds something not just witty in a literary way but outright funny to say about extremely serious subjects – about Auden, [Robert] Graves, Laura Riding or Wallace Stevens. I admire that ability to turn straight, old-fashioned literary criticism into a constant performance in the best sense – into a form of entertainment in itself. He supplied a new tone of enormous, wonderful excitability. That’s one of the things I love about Jarrell, and one of the things I struggle to infuse my own work with – a sense of excitement and pleasure even in the driest texts. Most of all he’s just a wonderful joker.

Do you have any favourite lines of his?

Again, let me open the book and take a sentence at random. Here’s one. He’s writing about [Walt] Whitman:

“The interesting thing about Whitman’s worst language (for, just as few poets have ever written better, few poets have written worse) is how unusually absurd, how really ingeniously bad, such language is.”

It’s that tone of hyperbolic excitability in the presence of literature, which is a constant antidote to the solemnity and false seriousness of most literary study.

You mention that Jarrell is a model you seek to emulate. But in terms of taste, at least, you’re a very different kind of writer. In the title essay of A Sad Heart at the Supermarket Jarrell is very wary of popular culture, whereas in last week’s New Yorker you compare the Book of Revelations to Transformers. Love of popular culture runs through your work.

That’s very true. I think all the interesting writers of my generation drew the high brow-low brow line in a very different way to Jarrell’s generation. We all came of age – I’m thinking of Louis Menand or Martin Amis or Clive James – when there seemed to be more genuine artistic energy in popular culture, movies and rock music in particular, than there was in high culture. The experience of The Beatles or Fellini or the Godfather films illuminated our understanding of high culture, rather than the other way around. I think that is a true fault line in the history of modern writing – you’re either on one side of it or the other.

Do you think for Jarrell and his contemporaries it was a lack of genuinely great pop culture in their time that put them off? Or was it a generational thing where they couldn’t get on board with the idea that pop culture, even if very good, is something you can consider seriously alongside high culture?

A little of both. Jarrell writes wonderfully about race cars and American football . He was no snob. But as far as I remember he never references jazz – which is a kind of in-between form of pop culture, more culture than pop in lots of ways. You have to remember too that for Jarrell’s generation, the GI generation, they were in the process of recognising and discovering what we now think of as high culture.

My own father was one of that generation. For him, each piece of high culture he achieved, understood, enjoyed – whether it was Bach or Milton – was part of a mountain climbed. We all, in a sense, started too easily – somewhere up on the mountain – because of their work, and therefore had a different view of it.

Do you have a favourite Jarrell essay?

Your last choice is Visions Before Midnight by Clive James. How did you come across his work? He’s well known in Britain, especially for his TV career, but not so much in America.

In 1980, Knopf did an anthology of his essays called First Reactions . In a curious way it was an advantage to read him flat-out as a writer. All of my friends in England read him as an entanglement of personal presence and prose style. I read him simply as prose style, without any knowledge of what his personal presence was like.

What was it you liked about his writing?

He has some of Jarrell’s excitability in the presence of creative energy. He has the ability to bring you into his writing, even when he’s writing about things that are in some ways utterly trivial and often completely forgotten, like British TV of the 1970s. He has a way of turning each of those subjects into a wonderful essay – an exercise in cabaret criticism – about values.

Values, I think, are his real subject. The overriding lesson of his work is that categories – high art, low art, television, theatre – are misleading guides to value. That even runs at a deeper, moral level in James’s work about the larger categories – provincial and metropolitan, for instance. He’s a provincial guy who comes to the city, but his provincial experience is in lots of ways richer than his metropolitan experience. It’s the rejection of categories in place of values that is the Montaigne-like takeaway in all his work.

Did he have an influence on your writing, or were you far enough in your writing career to find him as a friend and ally rather than a mentor figure?

Whereas Jarrell, Beerbohm and White were in different ways direct elements in the long-simmering braise that produced my prose style, for whatever it’s worth, Clive came along when I was already, in some sense, a formed writer.

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But I did learn one very specific thing from his writing. He’s a very linear writer. His essays are always organised around sharp, direct and forward-pushing sentences. Whereas with Virginia Woolf your first response to one of her paragraphs, in the best way, is to read it again. Your first response to a Clive James piece is to keep on reading. I learned a great deal about how to make a piece propulsive from reading him.

And can you pick a favourite Clive James essay?

As with Woolf, the joy is cumulative – it’s the pleasure of reading all of his work. But here’s a good one. It’s a television column from December 3rd 1972 which goes from an argument between the philosophers Isaiah Berlin and Stuart Hampshire, to a documentary on “Bomber” Harris and the morality of area bombing, to a production of Oedipus Rex , to a new David Mercer play. In the midst of it, this comes up:

“Why, then, with all this talent [in the production of Oedipus], including a sumptuous lighting design that covers the décor with spiced gloom, does the production have so little sting? The answer, I think, is that there’s not much point in trying to supply a binding image to a play whose author was so intent on leaving imagery out. It’s difficult to think of Sophocles looking with favour on any attempt to pin his universalised theme to mere political instability.”

That’s a deep and original thought, perfectly expressed, which rises out of the normal eddies of TV journalism. That combination of range, ease and aphoristic subtlety is what I love in Clive’s work.

March 7, 2012

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Adam Gopnik

Adam Gopnik has been a staff writer at the New Yorker since 1986. His many books include A Thousand Small Sanities: The Moral Adventure of Liberalism . He is a three time winner of the National Magazine Award for Essays & Criticism, and in 2021 was made a chevalier of the Legion d'Honneur by the French Republic.

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Nine New Women-Authored Essay Collections

"Essay" could perhaps use a rebranding as the word may conjure up something you've been assigned to write in school, rather than something pleasurable to consume. Essay collections usually have an overarching question or theme, but each individual essay works as a self-contained narrative or argument inviting you to read at your own pace, skip around, and take in the central topic from multiple angles. From essay-style memoirs to more heady topics touching on culture, politics, and art, enjoy these collections below, all by women, released this past spring and summer.

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by CJ Hauser

Ten days after calling off her wedding, CJ Hauser went on an expedition to Texas to study the whooping crane. After a week wading through the gulf, she realized she'd almost signed up to live someone else's life. Expanding on her viral sensation essay “The Crane Wife,” the author presents this deeply personal, candid and humorous memoir-in-essays that ponders what more expansive definitions of love might offer us all. 

She's Nice Though: Essays on Being Bad at Being Good

by Mia Mercado

Pondering her identity as an Asian woman living in the Midwest, including what “nice” means—and why anyone would want to be it, the author, in this thought-provoking and funny collection of essays, offers a mind-bending glimpse into our misperceptions and misconceptions as humans.

Some of My Best Friends: Essays in Lip Service

by Tajja Isen

Catapult  editor-in-chief and award-winning voice actor Tajja Isen explores the absurdity of living in a world that has grown fluent in the language of social justice but doesn’t always follow through. These nine daring essays explore the sometimes troubling and often awkward nature of that discord. Isen takes on the cartoon industry’s pivot away from colorblind casting, the pursuit of diverse representation in the literary world, the law’s refusal to see inequality, and the cozy fictions of nationalism. Isen deftly examines the quick, cosmetic fixes society makes to address systemic problems and reveals the unexpected ways they can misfire.

Brown Neon: Essays

by Raquel Gutiérrez

Part butch memoir, part ekphrastic travel diary, part queer family tree, Raquel Gutiérrez’s debut essay collection,  Brown Neon,  gleans insight from the sediment of land and relationships. Whether contemplating the value of adobe as both vernacular architecture and commodified art object, highlighting the feminist wounding and transphobic apparitions haunting the multigenerational lesbian social fabric, or recalling a failed romance, Gutiérrez traverses complex questions of gender, class, identity, and citizenship with curiosity and nuance.

Awake With Asashoryu and Other Essays

by Elisabeth Sharp McKetta

Whether she is spending sleepless nights watching the sumo wrestler Asashoryu with her father, settling into a new life in a fishing hamlet in Cornwall, struggling with a beloved and ultimately untrainable corgi named Goblin, or emerging from a night in the woods rethinking who she might be, McKetta’s essays sparkle and twist round and about—funny and insightful and compelling.

I'll Show Myself Out: Essays on Midlife & Motherhood

by Jessi Klein

The New York Times best-selling author and Emmy Award-winning writer and producer hilariously destroys the cultural myths and impossible expectations of modern-day motherhood and explores the humiliations, poignancies, and possibilities of midlife.

How to Read Now: Essays

by Elaine Castillo

A deeply personal and searching history of one woman’s reading life, and a wide-ranging and urgent intervention into our globalized conversations about why reading matters today. Castillo attacks the stale questions and less-than-critical proclamations that masquerade as vital discussion: reimagining the cartography of the classics, building a moral case against the settler colonialism of lauded writers like Joan Didion, taking aim at Nobel Prize winners and toppling indie filmmakers, and celebrating glorious moments in everything from popular TV like  The Watchmen  to the films of Wong Kar-wai and the work of contemporary poets like Tommy Pico.

Ripe: Essays

by Negesti Kaudo

Essays at the intersection of race, sexuality, and pop culture that confront Kaudo's experience as a Black woman and ask what it means to own one's Blackness and body when contemporary white America simultaneously denigrates and appropriates Black culture. 

Crying in the Bathroom

by Erika L. Sánchez

In these essays, Sánchez writes about everything from sex to white feminism to debilitating depression, revealing an interior life rich with ideas, self-awareness, and perception. Raunchy, insightful, unapologetic, and brutally honest,  Crying in the Bathroom  is Sánchez at her best—a book that will make you feel that post-confessional high that comes from talking for hours with your best friend.

Summaries provided via NYPL’s catalog, which draws from multiple sources. Click through to each book’s title for more.

20 Must-Read Best Essay Collections of 2019

Rebecca Hussey

Rebecca holds a PhD in English and is a professor at Norwalk Community College in Connecticut. She teaches courses in composition, literature, and the arts. When she’s not reading or grading papers, she’s hanging out with her husband and son and/or riding her bike and/or buying books. She can't get enough of reading and writing about books, so she writes the bookish newsletter "Reading Indie," focusing on small press books and translations. Newsletter: Reading Indie Twitter: @ofbooksandbikes

View All posts by Rebecca Hussey

Calling all essay fans! For your reading pleasure, I’ve rounded up the best essay collections of 2019. It was a fabulous year for essays (although I say that about most years, to be honest). We’ve had some stellar anthologies of writing about disability, feminism, and the immigrant experience. We’ve had important collections about race, mental health, the environment, and media. And we’ve had collections of personal essays to entertain us and make us feel less alone. There should be something in this list for just about any reading mood or interest.

These books span the entire year, and in cases where the book isn’t published yet, I’ve given you the publication date so you can preorder it or add it to your library list.

I hope this list of the best essay collections of 2019 helps you find new books you love!

About Us: Essays from the Disability Series of the New York Times , edited by Peter Catapano and Rosemarie Garland-Thomson

This book emerged from a  New York Times series of personal essays on living with a disability. Each piece was written by a person in the disabled community, and the volume contains an introduction by Andrew Solomon. The topics cover romance, shame, ambition, childbearing, parenting, aging, and much more. The authors offer a wide range of perspectives on living in a world not built for them.

Black is the Body: Stories from my Grandmother’s Time, My Mother’s Time, and Mine by Emily Bernard

Emily Bernard’s essays are about her experiences of race. She writes about life as a black woman in Vermont, her family’s history in Alabama and Nashville, her job as a professor who teaches African American literature, and her adoption of twin girls from Ethiopia. It begins with the story of a stabbing in New Haven and uses that as a springboard to write about what it means to live in a black body.

Burn It Down: Women Writing about Anger , edited by Lilly Dancyger (Seal Press, October 8)

Women’s anger has been the source of some important and powerful writing lately (see Rebecca Traister’s  Good and Mad and Soraya Chemaly’s  Rage Becomes Her ). This collection brings together a diverse group of writers to further explore the subject. The book’s 22 writers include Leslie Jamison, Melissa Febos, Evette Dionne, and more.

The Collected Schizophrenias by Esmé Weijun Wang

The Collected Schizophrenias is a collection of essays on mental and chronic illness. Wang combines research with her personal knowledge of illness to explore misconceptions about schizophrenia and disagreements in the medical community about definitions and treatments. She tells moving, honest personal stories about living with mental illness.

The Collector of Leftover Souls: Field Notes on Brazil’s Everyday Insurrections by Eliane Brum, Translated by Diane Grosklaus Whitty (Graywolf, October 15)

This volume collects work from two of Brum’s books, and includes investigative pieces and profiles about Brazil and its people. She focuses on underrepresented communities such as indigenous midwives from the Amazon and people in the favelas of São Paulo. Her book captures the lives and voices of people not often written about.

Erosion: Essays of Undoing by Terry Tempest Williams (Sarah Crichton Books, October 8)

This volume collects essays written between 2016 and 2018 covering the topic she has always written so beautifully about: the natural world. The essays focus on the concept of erosion, including the erosion of land and of the self. They are her response to the often-overwhelming challenges we face in the political and the natural world.

The Good Immigrant: 26 Writers Reflect on America ,  edited by Nikesh Shukla and Chimene Suleyman

This volume brings together an amazing group of writers including Chigozie Obioma, Jenny Zhang, Fatimah Asghar, Alexander Chee, and many more. The essayists are first and second generation immigrants who describe their personal experiences and struggles with finding their place in the U.S. The pieces connect first-person stories with broader cultural and political issues to paint an important picture of the U.S. today.

Good Things Happen to People You Hate: Essays by Rebecca Fishbein (William Morrow, October 15)

In the tradition of Samantha Irby and Sloane Crosley, this collection is a humorous look at life’s unfairness. Fishbein writes about trouble with jobs, bedbugs, fires, and cyber bullying. She covers struggles with alcohol, depression, anxiety, and failed relationships. She is honest and hilarious both, wittily capturing experiences shared by many.

I Like to Watch: Arguing My Way Through the TV Revolution by Emily Nussbaum

This book contains new and previously published essays by  New Yorker  critic Emily Nussbaum. The pieces include reviews and profiles. They also argue for a new type of criticism that can accommodate the ambition and complexity of contemporary television. She makes a case for opening art criticism up to new forms and voices.

I’m Telling the Truth, But I’m Lying by Bassey Ikpi

Bassey Ikpi’s essay collection is about her personal experiences dealing with Bipolar II and anxiety. She writes about struggling with mental health even while her career as a spoken word artist was flourishing. She looks at the ways our mental health is intertwined with every aspect of our lives. It’s an honest look at identity, health, and illness.

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These pieces are humorous, whimsical essays about things that are on Jenny Slate’s mind. As she—an actress and stand-up comedian as well as writer—describes it, “I looked into my brain and found a book. Here it is.” With a light touch, she tells us honestly what it’s like to be her and how she sees the world, one little, weird piece of it at a time.

Make It Scream, Make It Burn: Essays   by Leslie Jamison

Here is Jamison’s follow-up essay collection to the bestselling   Empathy Exams . This one is divided into three sections, “Longing,” “Looking,” and “Dwelling,” each with pieces that combine memoir and journalism. Her subjects include the Sri Lankan civil war, the online world Second Life, the whale 52 Blue, eloping in Las Vegas, giving birth, and many more.

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Crucet grew up in Miami, the daughter of Cuban refugees. Here she explores her family’s attempts to fit into American culture and her feeling of being a stranger in her own country. She considers her relationship to the so-called “American Dream” and what it means to live in a place that doesn’t always recognize your right to be there.

Notes to Self: Essays by Emilie Pine

Emilie Pine is an Irish writer, and this book is a bestseller in Ireland. These six personal essays touch on addiction, sexual assault, infertility, and more. She captures women’s experiences that often remain hidden. She writes about bodies and emotions from rage to grief to joy with honesty, clarity, and nuance.

Our Women on the Ground: Essays by Arab Women Reporting from the Arab World by Zahra Hankir (Editor) and Christiane Amanpour (Foreword)

This collection gathers together 19 writers discussing their experiences as journalists working in their home countries. These women risk their lives reporting on war and face sexual harassment and difficulties traveling alone, but they also are able to talk to women and get stories their male counterpoints can’t. Their first person accounts offer new perspectives on women’s lives and current events in the Middle East.

The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations by Toni Morrison

Picking this up is a fitting way to pay tribute to the great Toni Morrison, who just passed away last summer. This book is a collection of essays, speeches, and meditations from the past four decades. Topics include the role of the artist, African Americans in American literature, the power of language, and discussions of her own work and that of other writers and artists.

Surfacing by Kathleen Jamie

Kathleen Jamie is a poet and nature writer. These essays combine travel, memoir, and history to look at a world rapidly changing because of our warming climate. She ranges from thawing tundra in Alaska to the preserved homes of neolithic farmers in Scotland and also examines her own experiences with change as her children grow and her father dies.

Thick: And Other Essays by Tressie McMillan Cottom

As of this writing,  Thick  was just longlisted for a National Book Award in nonfiction. McMillan Cottom’s essays look at culture and personal experience from a sociological perspective. It’s an indispensable collection for those who want to think about race and society, who like a mix of personal and academic writing, and who want some complex, challenging ideas to chew on.

White Flights: Race, Fiction, and the American Imagination   by Jess Row

White Flights is an examination of how race gets written about in American fiction, particularly by white writers creating mostly white spaces in their books. Row looks at writers such as Don DeLillo, Annie Dillard, David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Franzen, and more to consider the role that whiteness has played in the American literary imagination.

The Witches Are Coming   by Lindy West (Hachette Books, November 5)

The Witches Are Coming  is Lindy West’s follow-up to her wonderful, best-selling book  Shrill .  She’s back with more of her incisive cultural critiques, writing essays on feminism and the misogyny that is (still) embedded in every part of our culture. She brings humor, wit, and much-needed clarity to the gender dynamics at play in media and culture.

There you have it—the best collections of 2019! This was a great year for essays, but so were the two years before. Check out my round-ups of the best essay collections from 2018 and 2017 .

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85 Heartfelt "Thank You" Messages and Words of Appreciation

A handwritten note is so much more meaningful than a generic store-bought card.

Thank you messages for gifts

Thank you messages for wedding presents, birthday thank you messages, graduation thank you messages, thank you messages for help given.

Saying "thank you" in person is a great way to show your appreciation, but taking the time to sit down and write a thoughtful handwritten "thank you" note can express your gratitude in a more meaningful way.

While the etiquette is clear on the necessity of thank you cards, what goes inside can be a bit trickier. Sure, you can always buy a pre-written card at any store, with the sentiment still being very sweet, but a personalized "thank you" message really goes the extra mile to show someone you cherish their effort, time and ultimately, their sweet gesture.

What is the best thank you message?

While the best message to write in any kind of card is always a personalized one, we all need a little inspiration sometimes. Start with some of these sentiments, and then add an element that makes it your own.

Maybe that's a memory you share from the party where you received a gift, an inside joke from a vacation you went on together, or how you plan to use a monetary gift. Whatever it is, don't forget to seal it with love. And while it's best to send thank-you cards as soon as you can after a birthday, wedding, special event or meaningful favor, there's no expiration date on gratitude. Whenever you get to it, they'll appreciate the thought.

• I couldn't have picked out a better gift for myself if I tried.
• I am touched you remembered me.
• Your gift really made me smile.
• I'll think of you every time I use your gift.
• Every time I look at your gift, I'll think of our friendship.
• You didn't have to, but I'm sure glad you did!
• Your presence is my present, but I love this one too. Thank you!
• Thank you for the meaningful present.
• How did you know your gift was just what I needed?
• Receiving your thoughtful present really made my day.
• You know me so well! Thanks for the gift.
• You're the best gift I could ask for, but this one is pretty great too.
• I'll cherish your present always, just like I will our relationship.
• You hit it out of the park again, slugger!
• Finding your present in my mailbox meant so much. Thanks!
• Grateful AF.
• You're so sweet, and so is this gift.

• Thank you for celebrating this milestone with us.
• We're so appreciative to have friends/family like you!
• We can't wait to use [insert gift] in our lives together.
• We appreciate the miles traveled to attend our celebration, and can't thank you enough for being here. It means the world to us.
• We appreciate you coming to celebrate with us.
• Thank you for being a part of our special day.
• Our wedding was so special, and your presence made it even better.
• Thank you for helping us start our life together.
• Your generosity is only outdone by your kindness. Thank you.
• We are so touched by your generous gift.
• We're blessed to have friends like you who are really family.
• We knew you were a great friend, but we didn't realize you were a dancing queen!
• Thank you for making the trip to celebrate our wedding. We appreciate it.
• It means so much that you welcomed me into the family with open arms. Thank you.
• Your marriage is truly #goals for us! Thanks for being such a great example.
• We appreciate all of the time and effort you put in to make our wedding such a success.
• Thank you for being a bridesmaid — hope I wasn't too much of a bridezilla!
• I'd have been lost up there without you. Thanks for being my groomsman.
• Thanks for being you so we could be us.

• Thank you for thinking of me on my special day.
• Another year older, another year wiser, another year I'm so grateful for you.
• Thank you for making my birthday so special!
• Thank you for making me feel so loved on my birthday!
• Getting older is a pleasure with you by my side.
• I'm overwhelmed with love and gratitude for all the birthday wishes. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.
• You really bring the party! Thanks for dancing the night away.
• Thanks for the best birthday gift ever — of always being older than me.
• Waking up to your birthday text made my whole day.
• Your birthday messages made me feel like royalty. Thanks!
• People like you make every year special.
• I'm so blessed we could spend my special day together. Thanks for being there.
• It means the world that you took the time out of your busy schedule to spend some time with me. Thank you!
• Thanks for being one of the people who knew me when (and for sticking around all these years!)
• You made what can be a tough day so much lighter. Thank you.
• If I have to get older, at least I can spend more time with people like you.

• I'm thankful to have you in my corner as I take this next step.
• I wouldn't be where I am without your help along the way.
• Thank you for being such a great friend and mentor to me. It means a lot.
• Thanks for the thoughtful gift to help start me on my next phase of life.
• I wouldn't have made it this far without you. Thank you for your support.
• It means so much that you were there to celebrate my graduation.
• Seeing you in the crowd made graduating that much sweeter. Thanks for being there!
• You've always been one of my biggest cheerleaders. Thank you for your support.
• I believe in myself because you believed in me first. Thank you.
• Thanks for celebrating this achievement with me.
• Thank you for being the teacher who made me want to come to class.
• I never thought I'd like math/science/English/gym, but you made it fun. Thanks for all you do!
• It's teachers like you who make school a blast. Thanks for all of your hard work for students like me!
• Thank you for being there as I start my next chapter.
• Going off to college is a big step, but you helped me feel ready.
• Thanks for always believing in me.
• It's such a gift that you've always been there for my milestones, and especially this one.

• I am so grateful for your generosity and willingness to lend a hand. You've made a positive impact on my life.
• I don't know where we'd be without you. Thank you for your help.
• Thank you for being my rock.
• You're my port in a storm. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
• Thanks for always putting up with me. It means more than you know.
• You showed up just when I needed a shoulder to lean on, and it means so much to me.
• There aren't enough words to express what your support means.
• Thank you for always being the person I can count on.
• I am so blessed to have you in my life!
• Thank you for always being the first to show up and the last to leave.
• You're the peanut butter to my jelly.
• You always lift me up when I'm down.
• Thank you for coming through on such short notice. You're a lifesaver.
• I love you and am so thankful for you.
• How can I ever thank you enough? This is a start.
• Everything turned out perfectly, thanks to your help.

Lizz (she/her) is a senior editor at Good Housekeeping , where she runs the GH Book Club, edits essays and long-form features and writes about pets, books and lifestyle topics. A journalist for almost two decades, she is the author of Biography of a Body and Buffalo Steel. She also teaches journalism as an adjunct professor at New York University's School of Professional Studies and creative nonfiction at the Muse Writing Center, and coaches with the New York Writing Room. 

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• Library of Congress
• Research Guides

Mangyan Bamboo Collection from Mindoro, Philippines, circa 1900-1939, at the Library of Congress

Background information on the mangyan.

• Introduction
• Transcriptions, Transliterations, and Translations
• List of Bamboo Items in the Collection
• Accompanying Documents and Publications
• Using the Library of Congress

Asian Studies : Ask a Librarian

Have a question? Need assistance? Use our online form to ask a librarian for help.

The term “Mangyan” is an umbrella term that refers to several indigenous communities on the island of Mindoro in the Philippines. There are eight recognized groups: Iraya, Alangan, Tadyawan, Tawbuid, Bangon, Buhid, Hanunuo, and Ratagnon. While these groups are often referred to as “Mangyan,” they speak different languages, and only one of the ethnic groups—Hanunuo—refers to itself as Mangyan. “Hanunuo” is an exonym for both the ethnic group and the language, and is often tagged onto “Mangyan” to form “Hanunuo Mangyan.” “Hanunuo” means “truly, real,” or “genuine.” Hanunuo Mangyans tend to drop the descriptor “hanunuo” within their communities, and refer to themselves and their language as “Mangyan.”

Of the eight groups of Mangyan listed above, only the Hanunuo and the Buhid from the southern part of Mindoro Island have attested writing systems. Both writing systems, called “Surat Hanunuo Mangyan” and “Surat Buhid Mangyan” respectively are thought to be of Indic origin, and perhaps introduced into Mangyan culture from what is now Indonesia around the 12th or 13th centuries. The Hanunuo Mangyan and Southern Buhid have similar syllabic scripts due to their geographical proximity. The Northern Buhid, on the other hand, have their own syllabary. These syllabaries, that date back to pre-Spanish times (before the early 1500s), are one of the few pre-Spanish writing systems that survived Spanish rule, and enabled the Mangyan peoples to preserve a rich literary tradition.

One of the most widely loved Mangyan literary forms is the song poem. There are three distinct classes of song-poems: ambahan , urukay , and adahiyo . The ambahan is a poem with 7 syllables per line with the last syllable of each line rhyming with the others. Ambahan are composed anonymously and still immensely popular. They cover a wide range of subjects such as birds, plants, and natural phenomena. The composers use the symbolism of these subjects to express their desires, deal with embarrassing situations, and in courting, among other things. Ambahan are often recited during large gatherings and there is no musical accompaniment. Those who participate in ambahan sessions often go back and forth in exchanges that highlight the improvisational skills of the poet. In addition to public settings, ambahan are also recited in more private surroundings for pleasure. The Library’s Mangyan bamboo collection contains 22 ambahan (Set 1).

Another poetic form is the urukay . Urukay consist of lines of eight syllables and have uniform end-rhymes. The word urukay probably comes from the neighboring island of Panay where it means “merrymaking.” The language of the Mangyan urukay is old Hiligaynon-Bisaya and is no longer understood by most Mangyan singers today. Urukay was probably acquired by the Mangyans from early contacts with Bisayans. Usually, urukay is less popular with younger audiences and confined to the older generation of Mangyan. They are sung to the accompaniment of a guitar.

The adahiyo is the third kind of poem in the Mangyan literary tradition. The term comes from the Spanish adagio or “adage.” The adahiyo usually has six syllables to a line but without a fixed final syllable rhyming scheme. This literary form is not widely performed among the Mangyan and might have been acquired through contacts with Tagalogs who settled in Mindoro. The adahiyo is recited without the accompaniment of music, and contains many adapted Spanish words and Catholic religious terms.

As is evident, the Mangyan have a rich literary tradition with a long history. Despite its deep roots, most of the extant historical examples of Mangyan writing are no more than a century old. This is because Mangyan writing was carved on bamboo, a material that deteriorates quickly in the local, tropical climate. The Library of Congress’s Mangyan bamboo collection—which dates to between ca. 1904-1939, thus preserves a link between the current living tradition of Mangyan writing and literature and its past.

While the Mangyan script is still not widely known, its preservation has received a boost in the last few decades. In 1997, the Mangyan script was declared as a National Cultural Treasure by the government of the Philippines and the following year, it was inscribed in the Memory of the World Registers of UNESCO (United Nations Scientific and Cultural Organization).

The work of Antoon Postma—a Dutch scholar who originally went to Mindoro as a Society of the Divine Word or SVD missionary in 1958 and lived among the Mangyan for more than half a century—inspired the establishment of the Mangyan Heritage Center, a non-profit organization based in Calapan City. The Mangyan Heritage Center continues to promote and keep alive the cultural heritage of the indigenous peoples of Mindoro through digital collections, recordings, and publications on the Mangyan as well as through programs to revive Mangyan syllabic scripts and ambahan .

At the Library of Congress, in addition to the Mangyan bamboo collection, users can also listen to recordings of ambahan donated by the Mangyan Heritage Center onsite.

Rare Materials Notice

Further reading.

The following titles link to either fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog or to the Library of Congress E-Resources Online Catalog. Links to additional online content are included when available.

Conklin, Harold. Hanunóo-English vocabulary . Berkeley: University of California Press, 1953.

Delgado Fansler, Lolita, Quintin V. Pastrana, Raena E. Abella, and Emily Catapang, eds. Bamboo whispers : poetry of the Mangyan . Makati City, Philippines: Bookmark, Inc., Calapan City, Oriental Mindoro, Philippines: Mangyan Heritage Center, Inc., 2017.

Gardner, Fletcher. “Three Contemporary Incised Bamboo Manuscripts from Hampangan Mangyan, Mindoro, P. I.,” Journal of the American Oriental Society , Dec., 1939, Vol. 59, No. 4, pp. 496-502.

Gardner, Fletcher and Ildefonso Maliwanag. Indic writings of the Mindoro-Palawan axis , 3 vols., San Antonio, Texas: Witte Memorial Museum, 1939-1940.

Postma, Antoon. Annotated Mangyan bibliography (1570-1988) : with index . Panaytayan, Mansalay, Oriental Mindoro, Philippines: Mangyan Assistance and Research Center, 1988.

Postma, Antoon. "Mangyan folklore," Philippine Quarterly of Culture and Society , March-June 1977, Vol. 5, No. 1/2, Philippine Cultural Minorities II, pp. 38-53.

Postma, Antoon. Treasure of a minority : the ambahan, a poetic expression of the Mangyans of Southern Mindoro, Philippines . Manila: Arnoldus Press, 1981.

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The Criterion Collection

• My Collection

The Criterion Closet 40

By Peter Becker

Aug 8, 2024

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The following is the introduction featured in   CC40,    a monumental forty-film box set that celebrates forty years of the Criterion Collection.

O ver the past forty years, the Criterion Collection offices have played host to a huge network of directors, actors, writers, artists, musicians, technicians, and scholars of all kinds. Many come in to collaborate with us on Criterion special-edition releases, others to work on original productions for our streaming service, the Criterion Channel. Little by little, our offices have become a kind of unofficial hub for film folks visiting New York. Word spread, and soon people started stopping in just because they had heard there was something special about this place.

Whenever luminaries arrive, we like to give them a little tour. People seem to enjoy floating through corridors lined with huge vintage film posters and Criterion’s original work, then turning a corner into the art department, where the next, yet-to-be-unveiled designs are pinned up on the walls. Only a few steps away is a book-lined conference room that, on any given day, might have been transformed into a professional studio and set up for a two-camera shoot. Down the hall, past producers’ offices rife with the relics of previous releases, the editorial team works on essays, not far from the rooms where new video interviews and introductions are in postproduction and the finishing touches are being made to the picture and sound of a 4K master. Channel programming, social media, and customer service all work in the same space where a group of students or journalists might be waiting for a film to start in our screening room. We like showing that everything Criterion makes is a team effort, that it all emanates from this one place, that it all happens right here.

In the back of the office is a big, open, sunlit kitchen where there is a wall of hand-signed Fujifilm Instax portraits (like widescreen Polaroids) pinned on a white board in a huge grid. There’s Agnès Varda, Bill Hader, Barry Jenkins, William Friedkin, Willem Dafoe, Cate Blanchett and Todd Field, Juliette Binoche, Alexander Payne, Greta Gerwig, Bong Joon Ho, Aubrey Plaza, Anna Karina, Flying Lotus, Chloë Sevigny . . . It’s dizzying. The more you look, the more familiar faces you see. And while some of the photos were taken in the kitchen, most were taken in a tiny room, the inevitable last stop on the tour, the Criterion closet.

The people who visit us have one thing in common. They all love movies, and the Criterion product-storage closet is one of the most concentrated doses of cinephile inspiration anywhere on the planet. In something like sixty square feet are nearly two thousand gems of world cinema, from the silent period to the present day. And for as long as I can remember, we’ve wrapped up every visit to the office with a little offer: Is there anything you’re pining for? Would you like to visit the closet? No one leaves empty-handed.

We’ve had many memorable conversations in the closet over the years. Spurred by the presence of so much cinematic stimulation, our guests have opened up about their most formative film experiences in casual, intimate, off-the-cuff ways. Learning someone’s movie taste turns out to be a great way to get to know them personally: what breaks their heart or blows their mind, feeds their guilty pleasures or triggers their pet peeves. And then, of course, there are the stories, the behind-the-scenes tales and details too trivial to chase down for a formal supplemental feature but just delicious when shared between friends.

Guillermo del Toro was not the first person to raid the closet, but he was the first to do it on camera. The most passionate, generous, and hardworking film fan you’ll ever meet, Guillermo was excited to have us shoot his closet visit when he stopped by one day in September 2010. He was in and out in under three minutes, for the most part offering little more than brief exclamations of enthusiasm for each new choice. But watching the video after he left, we knew it was something special. “A very small robbery,” he said, before ducking out the door with a black Criterion tote bag full of his favorite films. And with this, the Criterion Closet Picks video was born.

Today, the Criterion Closet Picks videos have taken on a life of their own, accumulating millions of views on YouTube. Publicists have made the Criterion closet a stop on many art-house filmmakers’ publicity tours. Now, more often than not, the first thing people say when they come to the office is, “Where’s the closet?” and then, when they see it, “My gosh, it’s so small!” and then, “It really is just a closet!” Watching these movie lovers championing their favorites from the collection and discovering new things to watch has introduced a new generation to Criterion, and to the array of important classic and contemporary films that we have published over the decades.

When it came time to choose a theme for this commemorative collection in honor of our fortieth anniversary, in 2024, we struggled. How could we choose forty editions from among the 1,200 we had so carefully selected, each on its own terms, each for the story it had to tell? Gradually we realized that the answer was in the closet itself and all the passionate choices that had been made in that space. In a sense, the closet is the heart of the collection in the world, the sum of our work in all departments for forty years, gathered in one place—with all its potential energy intact and ready to be unleashed. No single curator could make this choice, but what if we were guided by the passions of all those inspiring visitors, by their curiosity and hunger to choose new film experiences or to tell the world about the films they love most?

When we gathered the list of the films most frequently selected from the closet, there was a palpable sigh of relief. Here was a selection we could all get behind, at once iconic and adventurous, not obvious in any way, featuring many of the finest films ever made, handpicked by nearly two hundred of the most creative and thoughtful people we know. These movies are accompanied by all of the special features from their stand-alone editions, including the essays that follow in this book. The result is the collection you have in your hands, a labor of love, an archive of the work of our community, and a very partial record of four decades of dedication to cinema.

More: Features

My Own Private Idaho ’s Outsider Twist on Shakespeare

Made in an era when self-consciously postmodern takes on the Bard were popular, Gus Van Sant’s melancholy road movie mines the ambiguously queer tensions in the history play Henry IV.

By Shonni Enelow

How the Movies Captured Times Square’s Grimy Golden Age

During a tumultuous period in New York’s history, movies like Midnight Cowboy , Taxi Driver, and Shaft found excitement and squalor in one of the city’s most infamous tourist attractions.

By Nathaniel Rich

The High-Wire Energy of Great Ensemble Acting

At their best, movies that showcase a sizable collective of virtuosic actors can give you the feeling of a rich ecosystem being brought to life.

By Isaac Butler

The Evolution of Synth Soundtracks

A collection on the Criterion Channel charts the evolution of the synthesizer—from its infancy in the 1950s to its maturity in the 1980s—and its transformative impact on film music.

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• Dear Life Kit
• Life Skills

6 ways grown-ups can recreate that fresh, buzzy feeling of a new school year

Back-to-school season can still be an opportunity for a refresh, even if you're not headed back to the classroom. Maria Korneeva/Getty Images/Moment RF hide caption

Ah, remember the excitement of starting a new school year? Shopping for new notebooks, picking out the perfect outfit for the first day of school, the smell of pencil sharpenings in the classroom?

Just because you’re a grown-up doesn’t mean you can’t harness that buzzy back-to-school energy. Here are seven activities you probably did in school as a kid -- like playing at recess and packing lunches -- updated for the adult version of you. We hope these ideas inspire new routines and positive changes as you transition into fall.

Miss packing a school lunch? Try meal-prepping

Kevin Curry, founder of FitMenCook , meal preps two nights a week. On these nights, he'll spend 45 minutes cooking five dishes to mix and match over the next few days — for example, chickpeas, chicken, jasmine rice, roasted vegetables and a green medley of spinach, chard and kale.

How To Learn A New Skill

"With those five foods I prepped, I made about ten different meal combinations," he says. One day you might want chicken, rice and greens, another day you might want chickpeas, greens and chicken. Transform the flavor of each meal with different condiments like tahini dressing or barbecue sauce. Read more tips here .

Miss back-to-school shopping? Spruce up your wardrobe

Even if you aren’t doing any back-to-school shopping this fall, you can prioritize your personal style with a closet purge. Asia Jackson, actor and YouTuber, says to try on every item in your wardrobe and ask yourself a few questions to determine if you should donate or keep that sweater you haven’t worn in years.

“Do you feel good in this item? Do you look good in this item?” says Jackson. “If it doesn't make you feel good, then you should get rid of it.” Once you’ve identified the pieces you love, use them as the foundation for your revamped style. Read more tips here . 

Miss learning new things? Read more books

If you want to read more books, try getting in a few pages in the morning before you start your day. NickyLloyd/Getty Images/E+ hide caption

Got a fall reading list you can’t wait to get through? Set yourself up for success by reading in the morning, says NPR culture correspondent Lynn Neary, “particularly on weekend mornings.”

You’re less likely to fall asleep the way you can if you try to read before bed, and it’s a nice way to start your day. Read more tips here . 

4 questions to ask yourself if you're considering going back to school

Miss writing in your planner make a better to-do list.

To create clear, short and doable action items, follow the two-minute rule. "If it takes less than two minutes, just do it right then and there," says Angel Trinidad , founder and CEO of Passion Planner, a company that sells paper and digital planners and journals. "It's not worth the bandwidth to write it down, remember it and do it."

For larger tasks, break them down into smaller chunks. People aren't specific enough when they write down items on their to-do lists, says Oliver Burkeman, author of Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals . And what ends up happening, he adds, is that "we don't get them done because we're not expressing them in a doable form." Read more tips here .

Miss recess? Bring more play into your life

Not sure how to incorporate more play into your life? Ask yourself what kind of play you enjoyed as a child. Stephen Zeigler/Getty Images/The Image Bank RF hide caption

If you want to bring more play into your life, you don't necessarily need to make any significant life changes or rework your entire schedule. Play is as simple as observing tiny moments in nature, says Stuart Brown , founder of the National Institute for Play. Any increase in play throughout your day is a win – whether it's a playful hobby like painting, playing a board game, or just a new, playful outlook.

If you aren’t sure what kind of play you’ll enjoy now as an adult, ask yourself – how did I like to play as a kid? And how can I incorporate that form of play into my life now? Read more tips here .

Miss meeting new people? Change your mindset on friendship

If you want to make more friends, assume that other people also need friends, says Heather Havrilesky, author of the advice column Ask Polly .

“People assume that everybody already has friends,” she says. The truth is, “nobody already has their friends.”

It may feel uncomfortable to send the first text message to hang out one-on-one for the first time. But accept the awkwardness, she says. It stems from vulnerability -- and you can't have friends without getting vulnerable. Read more tips here .

This digital story was written by Clare Marie Schneider. It was edited by Malaka Gharib. The visual editor is Rebecca Harlan. We'd love to hear from you. Email us at [email protected]. Listen to Life Kit on Apple Podcasts  and Spotify , or sign up for our newsletter .

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The Memoir in Essays: A Reading List

Elizabeth kadetsky on the multiple ways we can look at the self.

While the personal essay has enjoyed continued popularity, a book-length collection of linked essays, centered on an author’s self or life, is less common than a traditional memoir or novel. A truly successful essay collection can reveal the author processing experiences at many different points in time and through many different lenses. As a writer, I’ve always been drawn to the essay as a form, for its concision, for its ability to highlight an intriguing gap between author and narrator that lends an inherent tension and self-questioning. A collection of essays treating the same or related inquiries multiplies this effect.

The distance afforded by those multivalent lenses can allow an author to regard one’s younger self as a different character, a different persona. This can create an unease or uncertainty that is exciting, and also very relatable to the reader. An author’s ability to forgive that earlier version of herself is especially prevalent in the memoir-in-essays, perhaps because of the extended time period covered as a writer composes essays across years or even decades.

We are lucky enough to be in the middle of a renaissance. Several recent and upcoming memoirs-in-essays use the inquisitive essay form to tell life stories from different vantage points and make the reader question and revel in unreliable narrators and new perspectives. The more traditional memoir focuses on seeking and attaining redemption. The nonlinear structure of an essay collection reveals that there is never easy redemption, never clear resolution: bad things happen for no reason; overcoming one trial does not lessen the need to adapt in the next.

These new, enchanting and powerful collections are a welcome reminder that in our collective state of unrest and unknown futures, there is a comfort in knowing that there is an inherent uncertainty in having the answers.

Emily Arnason Casey, Made Holy: Essays (University of Georgia Press)

In beautiful, scenic prose, Emily Arnason Casey probes her middle American childhood from the stance of different venues, times of life, and primary characters—a family cabin and repository for memories both happy and sad; a little sister who grew up and wasn’t a sidekick anymore; a mother who didn’t reveal the family propensity to alcoholism until it was too late; an aunt who succumbed to the illness’s lure. In a spiral-like structure that keeps returning to a central and unanswerable question—how, and why, must this family battle the draws and effects of alcohol addiction—Arnason Casey tells a poignant story of a “normal” family that through its quirks and desires must find a path to survival. The author finds solace in nostalgia and a way forward by examining the errors of the past and by embracing, as a mother, the promise of the future generation. Her probing and compulsive need to question reminds us that alcoholism has no simple etiology, and that its cures are as individual as they are elusive.

Sonja Livingston, The Virgin of Prince Street: Expeditions into Devotion } (University of Nebraska Press)

At a time of dwindling religiosity, Livingston finds herself wishing for greater connection to her Catholic roots while also exploring the physical space of the church in upstate New York that made memories for her as a child. Because of religious attrition, the church that she grew up in becomes the gathering space for dozens of rescued saint statues deaccessioned from other churches nearby. Livingston embarks upon a quest to find a missing Virgin Mary statue, that moves not in straight lines but elliptically, following a parallel physical and emotional journey that is an exploration into faith, Catholicism, and a desire for spiritual connection on modern terms. In examining the sustained power of a central icon of the Catholic church and an object of personal, sentimental attachment, Livingston’s linked essays highlight the irresolvable paradox of modern religiosity—that the seeker must follow an uncharted middle pathway when the old texts and their tropes, their patriarchy and their strictures, necessarily fall away.

Amy Long, Codependence (Cleveland State University Poetry Center)

In this haunting and troubling book, Long revisits scenes and anecdotes from her  boyfriend’s heroin addiction and her subsequent dependence on opioids for chronic pain. Formal experiments such as essays disguised as lists, prescription forms, and medical reports are interspersed among scene-driven recollections from different points in time: the author’s first introduction to the drug; the allure of an older addict; attempts at recovery. The grounding presence of the author’s supportive mother is offset by the narrative’s tragic other constant—the euphoria and escape offered by the drug. By eschewing a linear narrative structure, Long illustrates the difficulty of achieving recovery and puts lie to the myth that addiction is a logical disease that naturally ends with a cure. In its very form, this memoir undermines the narrative so prevalent in media treatments of this illness—that in order to trounce the beast, the individual suffering from addiction need only attend a recovery program. Having written about and witnessed my own sister’s decades’ long struggle to overcome opioid addiction, I was drawn to Long’s wisdom in portraying addiction not as a problem to be solved so much as a complexity to be observed and penetrated.

Sejal Shah, This Is One Way to Dance (University of Georgia Press)

The Indian-American author continually revisits her troubled relationship to her American identity through layered essays treating her bifurcated Indian and American past. Exploring her family’s immersion in Gujarati subculture when she was a child growing up in Rochester, New York; her experience as one of few people of color in her MFA creative writing program; and many family weddings in which she must confront her presumed future as a desi bride, Shah questions her place in both American culture and the thriving American-Gujarati subculture. By placing dates at the ends of the essays, it is suggested that her complicated and lifelong conflicts about race and cultural identity can be told chronologically. But, as she explains in her introduction, many essays had multiple end dates after having been revised and reconsidered as time moved forward. The multiple end dates elegantly upend the notion that a rational, hypothesis-thesis-synthesis structure can encompass the complexities of identity and belonging. Shah’s choice to write non-narratively about her conflicts of identity provide insight for anyone raised with a dual or multiple cultural identity—anyone who may, at different points of time, feel a greater allegiance to one culture, another, or a never straightforward amalgam of many. Who we understand ourselves to be, Shah’s book tells the reader in subtle ways, is not a fact so much as a moving target, an unending query.

Sue William Silverman, How to Survive Death and Other Inconveniences (University of Nebraska Press)

Silverman is the author of three previous memoirs. In How to Survive Death and Other Inconveniences , she tells her life story through the lens of an obsession with death and the desire to come to terms with the inevitable but often avoided reality that in the end we are mortal. The essays begin with a chronological life story of growing up in New Jersey and encountering American culture’s death-avoidance, but then take a swerve when several brief but elusive mentions accrue into an account of a rape at a young age and a discovery that her memory of the event connects to her fixation on death. A chronological structure gives way to a thematic plot, in which Silverman seeks to confront her topic through reporting, immersion, and reflection—for instance by visiting a morgue, exploring mythological figures associated with death, and recollecting a family funeral. The sophisticated writing and structure make the whole greater than the sum of its many fascinating and worthy parts. Silverman’s essays continually reveal the irrational functioning of memory and how it connects our pasts to our worldviews. Honoring subconscious logic, How to Survive Death and Other Inconveniences makes the gambit that the mysteries of the self are both keys to understanding and uncertainties to be celebrated. We become who we are without being fully conscious of our choices—probing those choices won’t give us easy answers, but the discoveries along the way will be illuminating and well worth the necessary befuddlements.

__________________________________

Elizabeth Kadetsky’s memoir , The Memory Eaters, is available now from University of Massachusetts Press.

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