A guide to adulthood

If you're looking for a literary graduation gift, you might want to check out Kelly Williams Brown's Adulting: How to Become a Grown-Up in 468 Easy(ish) Steps. I usually give out copies of Stella Gibbons's Cold Comfort Farm (my personal Guide to Life), but this Publishers Weekly excerpt from Ms. Williams Brown's book is pretty great. I was particularly impressed by her thoughts on good intentions versus real-world actions:

2. Your intentions are important —to you. Your actions are the only thing the world experiences

Let’s say you really really meant to send a thank-you note and didn’t. That is exactly the same as never even thinking about sending a thank-you card. The person who was good to you still gets zero thank-you notes.

Many, many people would benefit from this realization, which applies to so much more than thank-you notes. "I meant to [blank]" (and its cousins, "I didn't mean to [blank]" and "I wasn't trying to [blank]") only matter in your head, dear readers. Everyone else only cares about what you actually did.