Adulting: How to Become a Grown-up in 535 Easy(ish) Steps

"Yes. Every twentysomething needs to have this book on the reference shelf next to the dictionary. It includes tips on how to write a thank you note, how to clean a bathroom, how to ask for a raise at work, what you’re supposed to do after a job interview. It’s the most practical guide to those little things you didn’t even know you didn’t know. There’s something in it that everyone should re-teach themselves. “There’s a difference between being able to be a functional adult and being able to be a good adult” I know the phrase ‘adulting’ has sort of become a bit of a joke, in the sense of: ‘Why do you need to learn how to become an adult?’ But there’s a difference between being able to be a functional adult and being able to be a good adult who knows how to keep in touch with friends and maybe cook one dish. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . I also think a personality I put on briefly was ‘the mess who doesn’t know how to live her life’—part of that is even in the title to Choose Your Own Disaster . But the fact of the matter is that that’s not a super charming person to be, and I want to be someone who knows how to roast a chicken and write a thank you note. That is a question that I’ve wrestled with in my head. By my age, my mom had met my dad and begun setting up her family. I don’t know if it’s that we’re immature, but we have moved the goalposts for what it is we want to accomplish. Women are, in a good way, pickier with their significant others—you don’t have to marry young and pop out three babies by the time you’re thirty. It’s a win culturally for women in general that we have more time to explore our potentials before we’re just relegated into being mothers. And once we’re mothers, the universe is still open to us. What’s often attributed to a lack of maturity should also be attributed to some cultural wins—that we don’t need to get married by twenty-one; you’re not old by twenty-five. Yeah, it’s a funny book. I think I gave it to my high school friends for graduation. It’s the perfect book: you don’t have to be embarrassed about the things you don’t know. Everyone has gaps in their knowledge. Everyone, even a generation ago. By addressing that conversationally and with humour, this book makes you feel like you’re okay for the things you don’t know, and we still have time to learn."