In times of trouble, I need books.

Hello, old friend. So we meet again. You’re never very far, are you? Whether it’s work struggles, family strife that is slowly making you develop an ulcer, or Big Bad Politics rearing its ugly head and taking your sanity and sense of joy with it, existential dread is a constant companion I just can’t seem to ghost.

I try to do the right things. I avoid listening to melancholy music (though to the gravely voice of Tom Waits I always return). I meditate. I yoga. I buy myself fresh flowers and take baths, grind my own coffee beans and other analog rituals designed to help me slow down and live a less scattered, manic life.

Often, these things work. Despite my frequent complaining (which I usually milk for comedic effect), I sometimes feel like the happiest person I know. Still, the icy fingers of existential dread (or is it a clammy clutch?) find their way back to me like a stray dog whining for scraps.

The scraps are my mental health. And sometimes it’s in short supply.

When old existential dread comes a-knockin’, I try to find solace in books—but not the classic fictional reads in which the monsters are manufactured, the endings endearing, and the characters’ flaws cathartic. In times of trouble, I need poetry. Self-help books dressed up as philosophy. And yes, maybe even a novel or two—but they should be poignant enough to make me ponder.

Are you in times of trouble? I’m here for you—and so are my five go-to books for existential dread.

Related Posts:

• 9 Books on My 2025 Reading List
• The 5 Best Books I Read in 2024
• Easiest Classic Novels to Read | 18 Easy-to-Read Classics for Beginners

1. Instructions for Traveling West by Joy Sullivan

Confession: I’m superficial. When I enter a bookstore, I’m a bachelor(ette) on the prowl, scanning the room to see just who may come home with me—potentially into my bed or maybe even the bath.

TLDR, I judge books by their covers. So when I strolled past the colorful spine of Joy Sullivan’s Instructions for Traveling West, the nostalgia in me swooned. Years ago, I had developed an alternate reality for myself where I turned 40, got divorced, and moved to Montana to romantically live out my days on a horse ranch. (I recall having just bought a pair of Levi’s at the time.)

But I digress. Let’s look at Sullivan’s words, which are much more eloquent than mine. Her book flap reads:

“First, you must realize you’re homesick for all the lives you’re not living. Then, you must commit to the road and the rising loneliness. To the sincere thrill of coming apart.”

Hm. If “coming apart” doesn’t always feel like a thrill, you’d probably be classified as normal. When it feels like your life is coming apart at the seams, thrilling is hardly the word I would use. More like gut-wrenching. Or panic-inducing. Or hand-wringing, the kind you do when you start praying to a God you didn’t know you believe in.

But then there’s poetry.

Available at Better World Books and Barnes & Noble

2. The School of Life: An Emotional Education by The School of Life

When this book came home with me, it never made it to the bath. Instead, I remember staying up one night and reading it on my front stoop in my bathrobe like the crazy, unkempt woman my lace-up oxfords would never let you believe I really am.

I can’t remember where I heard about this book or why I bought it, but I remember one thing: It was bought during The Sad Time, i.e., the period of depression that ate my early twenties and caused me to do such things as read at odd hours in my bathrobe on my front stoop.

To respond to all the curious passersby (I lived on a fairly busy street at the time), yes, it was a good book. I even recommended it to a friend several years later who was battling with his own Sad Time. And now I recommend it to you.

The School of Life is apparently a media company with lots of articles and podcasts and YouTube videos to help you deal with daily traumas like work, relationships, and socializing.

I didn’t know that at the time. What I did know was this book felt like a wise, distant, older cousin whom you’ve really only met about six times in your life, but when you reconnect in your adulthood, they manage to pass on a philosophical pat on the back that releases the tension you didn’t know was taking custody of your shoulders and whispers to your whole being: “It’s all going to be okay.”

Available at Better World Books and Barnes & Noble

3. Magnificent Obsession by Lloyd C. Douglas

Oh, this book! It bears (what I like to think) is the much sought-after title of A Merry Loner’s favorite book of all time.

I bought a beat-up old copy at a used bookstore on a whim and have read it several times since. I even sent my husband a copy in the mail when he was my long-distance boyfriend and we did cute things like that from time to time.

This 1929 tale recounts the existential crisis of a rich playboy (a real tragedy, I know) and his yearslong quest to make his life worth something.

The first time I read this book, I stayed up until all hours of the morning, so pressed was I to find out what became of our protagonist’s moral journey.

It’s incredible to think this book is almost one hundred years old, yet it still intrigues. It still inspires. And it still reminds us during dark times that no matter how rotten you think you might be—no matter what mistakes color your character—it is never too late to turn yourself into the person you wish you were.

Available at Better World Books and Barnes & Noble

4. Beautiful World, Where Are You

My marathon of Sally Rooney reading continues. All I have left is her latest Intermezzo, which tops the nine books on my reading list this year.

Normal People was the first book I read by Rooney (on a stay-at-home Loner date with myself, a large bowl of pasta with fresh tomato sauce, and a bottle of rosé), and it ignited my fascination with the Irish writer’s works. But I don’t think it’s my favorite—that accolade would have to go to Beautiful World, Where Are You.

According to Rooney’s acknowledgements, the title of this book is a translation from Friedrich Schiller’s 1788 poem, The Gods of Greece (in the original German: Die Götter Griechenlandes)—a fact that really tells me nothing about the book itself but nonetheless heightens my intrigue.

In this novel, four youthful protagonists are also dealing with The Sad Times. At frequent intervals, they will annoy you. They are not always characters you want to root for. But they translate a realness that many, rosier novels choose to overlook. And amidst all of this wallowing, their fictional tribulations make real-life existential dread seem just a little more surmountable—and the beautiful world, a little more identifiable.

Available at Better World Books and Barnes & Noble

5. Yeats’s Poetry, Drama, and Prose

“A dreaded sunny day
So I meet you at the cemetery gates
Keats and Yeats are on your side
While Wilde is on mine”

I am an incurable fan of The Smiths, and their 1986 Cemetry Gates from The Queen Is Dead is on my list of most-enjoyed songs. (Truly, it is unrelated to this book, but when the topic of existential dread is on the table, are The Smiths not always relevant?)

This is the book I take off my shelf when—when anything is happening, really.

When I’ve been working too much and need to remind myself of art and beauty. When the world seems vapid and my spirit void and I need a poet to lean on. When I’m somewhere in that dreamy state of nostalgic melancholy and I want to hear such lines as:

“…Considering that, all hatred driven hence,

The soul recovers radical innocence

And learns at last that it is self-delighting,

Self-appeasing, self-affrighting,

And that its own sweet will is heaven’s will;

She can, though every face should scowl

And every windy quarter howl

Or every bellows burst, be happy still…”

This is only one excerpt from one poem (A Prayer for my Daughter) from one book—and yet it’s enough to lighten the load of the world that weighs upon us.

Available at Better World Books and Barnes & Noble

When the sky is falling, books are there

When doom-scrolling is killing your soul, frenemies are praying on your insecurities, family is suffocating you with expectations, or you’re having one of those days where the future looks bleak and empty of promise—turn to a book.

It won’t ask you to double-tap or subscribe. It won’t inquire about your romantic life or any developments in producing grandchildren. It won’t even talk back. Instead, it will be there when you need it. And even when you leave it, it will be waiting right where you left off when you’re ready to return.

Recommended Reading:

• How to Live a More Analog Life: 5 easy, cheap (or free) ideas
• Embrace Being a Loner—Why February Is the Perfect Time
• No Date? No Problem—A Guide to Dating Yourself in 2025
• Accepting Your Fate (Finding Acceptance Alone)
• 20 Journal Prompts for Anger | How Anger Writing Prompts Can Help You Work Through Your Feelings