5 Books You Should Read Before Your First Full-Time Job

By Danielle Wirsansky on January 22, 2016

Taking on a full-time job for the first time can be one of the scariest milestones in a young adult’s life. Once you’re done with college, that’s it. There’s not much else to take up your time and enrich you except working full time — or help you pay off those student debts.

Before you get there, here are seven books to read before taking on that first full-time job, either to prepare you, educate you, or just relax you. This is the time to read all those books you know you should have read but never quite got around to. Check out the list below!

1. Any play by William Shakespeare

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Yeah, most of us were required to read a Shakespeare play in school at some point or another. But it’s a different experience to read Shakespeare when you aren’t required to read it. Now you can read it at your own pace or even use a No Fear Shakespeare book where each page has been broken down into easier language to help you go through it.

However you choose to get through it, do it, and you can choose from comedies to tragedies. Everyone should get the opportunity to sit down and read a Shakespeare play in a way that they can savor it for life. Shakespeare always comes in handy and it will make you a more well-rounded person. Much Ado About Nothing and The Tempest are two of his most popular plays.

2. The Devil Wears Prada, by Lauren Weisberger

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Most of us have seen the glamorized version of this book in its film form with Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Stanley Tucci, and Emily Blunt (and so if books aren’t for you, you can always check out the movie!). Whether you read the book or watch the movie, the point is it deals with something we all worry about — that first full-time real job.

In this story, Andrea has just graduated college and is looking for work. She ends up being hired as the assistant of the head of a major fashion magazine. Her new boss ends up running her ragged and she doesn’t take care of herself or get to be with her friends and family. She puts all else on the backburner in her ambition because she has been told that one year with this boss and she can have any job she chooses. However, when she realizes she is becoming her boss, Andrea is forced to make some tough decisions.

3. The Illustrated Man, by Ray Bradbury

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This book is actually a collection of 18 science fiction short stories brought to you by the same man that wrote The Martian Chronicles and Fahrenheit 451. He weaves stories that transcend time and technology and explore the nature of mankind versus technology. The stories vary from different worlds, dimensions, and universes but they are all tied together by The Illustrated Man.

He is a man who escaped from a carnival freak show whose entire body is covered in animated tattoos, constantly telling different stories that the narrator watches, becomes entranced by, and relates back to us. These stories are haunting and visceral and will keep you thinking about them for years to come. You can store them in the back of your mind to revisit while you are at work doing a task you aren’t particularly thrilled with or use it to occupy your mind while doing something tedious.

4. Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

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There is a film version of this book as well and it’s a good adaptation for the complex story that is woven, but it is certainly more romanticized. It follows six different stories, each in different continents and time periods from the 1800s to an unspecified time in the distant, post apocalyptic future. Each section goes on until the pivotal moment, the crisis — before it switches to the next time and place, leaving readers hanging.

Once the sixth story gets to its pivotal moment, it is allowed to finish, and then each story gets to reveal the ending in reverse succession. It’s a daunting but beautiful piece full of lyricisms that will make you rethink your life (and the lives you may have had before and have ahead of you). It shows how in the little ways we are all connected and explores human nature — who are we and can we really change? It’s certainly something to contemplate as you make the new, big choices affecting your life.

5. Beautiful You by Chuck Palahniuk

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We’ve all heard of Fight Club even if we haven’t seen it. You know, “The first rule of Fight Club is: You do not talk about Fight Club.”

But most people don’t realize that it was a book first. The author has many outstanding books, but one of his most recent pieces is Beautiful You. It follows a young woman, Penny, on a journey of sexual self identity. The topics it broaches are very serious and pertinent to today’s society — but the way it approaches it are absurd to the point of awkward hilarity. You’ll learn a lot about yourself reading it while it upends your view on modern erotica, fame, feminism, and female pleasure.

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