The classic American story of ambition—work hard and you will be rewarded—has never seemed more outdated. Wages haven’t kept pace with the cost of living. Mass layoffs are taking place in sectors that include tech and journalism. The pandemic, for many 9-to-5ers, prompted a large-scale assessment of what to reach for, how hard to try to attain it, and whether the object or the effort is truly worth it. Rather than seeing boundless striving as an unquestioned virtue, a wide swath of people are now just as likely to ask whether it might be doing them more harm than good.

This is a question that books are well equipped to answer. Literature is rife with characters like Jay Gatsby, whose ambition eventually brings him down, or who have no ambition to speak of, like Herman Melville’s Bartleby. Recent changes in my own job situation have encouraged me to reassess, with the help of reading, where I fall on that scale: What is it I actually want? If I had more of a say in directing the flow of my efforts, where would they go? When it really comes down to it, how hard do I actually want to be working—and when would I simply prefer not to?

The following seven titles offer ways to rethink our relationship to the sometimes kneejerk impulse that pushes us to want more. They acknowledge how social factors shape both what we aspire to and what’s considered attainable, and they challenge us to think critically about the things that we decide are desirable and why.

Grand Central Publishing

Free Food for Millionaires, by Min Jin Lee

Lee’s first novel opens with a warning: “Competence can be a curse.” The warned is Casey Han, a recent Princeton graduate. Her parents, who emigrated from Korea and manage a Manhattan dry cleaner, urge Casey to pursue a steady job in a field like law or medicine. But she covets a different kind of American dream: “a bright, glittering life” of luxury goods. Taking a summer internship at an investment-banking firm, she navigates its grueling hours and cutthroat competition very capably. But she carries the constant anxiety of trying to keep up with her primarily white peers who come from money and live a lifestyle she can’t afford. She’s also tripped up by her own expensive taste: Though she handles large sums on the trading floor, her personal finances are undermined by purchases of an antique book and luxe clothing. In her single-minded pursuit of wealth, she also manages to alienate her parents, her mentor, and her partner, and must confront whether the class mobility is worth the price. The dream of affluence lures Casey into its orbit but never quite admits her. Despite the supposed meritocracy at work, grit and determination are not enough.

Riverhead

Having and Being Had, by Eula Biss

After years of inconsistent employment, Biss, a writer and college professor, secures a stable job and is able to buy a house. Having and Being Had deploys memoir, research, and criticism to explore what happens after you get what you want—or what you have been told to want. Biss is ambivalent about her newly purchased home, perhaps the ultimate cultural symbol of prosperity: “After years of looking, I was no longer convinced that I wanted a house,” she writes. Her savings account once represented “hours banked, to be spent on writing, not working”; now she has no choice but to work full-time to pay the mortgage. Her discomfort also comes from being a gentrifier in her new Evanston, Illinois, neighborhood. Biss reminds us that private property is an idea, not an individual accomplishment, that sits at the center of a complex network of affluence and power. She redirects the reader’s attention from the white picket fence to exactly what gets bought—or bought into—with that down payment.

[Read: The cult classic that captures the grind of dead-end jobs]

Scribner

Born Standing Up, by Steve Martin

In this memoir, the writer and actor Steve Martin traces the rapid rise and decisive end of his career as a stand-up comic. His famously oddball act—which drew on props such as balloon hats and bananas—bore fruit faster, and on a bigger scale, than he could have imagined. It culminated in grueling arena tours that were so far from the sense of play and surprise that had brought him to the form in the first place that he decided to quit. Martin’s decision is bittersweet—he finds tremendous relief in escaping the exhaustion of the road and the isolation of fame, though he writes of the “war years” with a grudging affection. Because we see how much he wants comedic eminence and how deeply it shaped his childhood aspirations, we also understand the size of his sacrifice. But he’s able to parlay his fame into a film career, which has been even more successful than his career in stand-up was. By quitting at what seemed like his peak, Martin prompts his readers to consider whether material reward alone is reason to continue chasing a goal. What harmful patterns might it be keeping you bound to—and could there be freedom, or even greater heights, in letting it go?

Vintage

Astonish Me, by Maggie Shipstead

Set in the hypercompetitive world of professional ballet, Shipstead’s second novel follows Joan, a ballerina who helps another dancer, Arslan Rusakov, defect from the Soviet Union. Their relationship turns romantic, but their bond is tested by their respective levels of achievement—as Arslan’s star continues to rise, Joan’s career never really takes off, even though she’s dedicated her life to their art. Ultimately, their affair can’t withstand the tension. They break up and Joan retires from the stage, settling down with an old flame to raise her son and teach dance. When her child, Harry, shows unusual ballet prowess years later, Joan is brought back into Arslan’s orbit. The novel captures the frustrating limits of aspiration and offers the humbling reminder that, once you reach an elite level, further progress is determined by gradations finer than how hard you try. Astonish Me expresses the poignant loss of stepping back from the goals that once gave meaning to a life and the wistful feeling of nurturing those same yearnings in the next generation.

[Read: What we gain from a good-enough life]

W. W. Norton and Company

All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost, by Lan Samantha Chang

Chang’s third book is set in a prestigious writing program, a milieu the author knows well as the director of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. The narrative follows the friendship between two male poets, Roman and Bernard, who compete for the attention and mentorship of their female professor, the renowned poet Miranda Sturgis. Miranda’s legendary workshop “bludgeonings” make her equally feared and esteemed. Both men are determined to impress her; both, too, feel a degree of entitlement to her consideration. Their belief in their poetic talents leads them to believe that Miranda owes them guidance—one of many sharp observations the novel makes about ambition’s gendered dimensions. Though the two protégés go on to have very different careers—a prize nets Roman critical validation and an eventual academic job; Bernard toils in a tiny studio before completing a late-stage masterwork—each is irrevocably shaped by his relationship with Miranda. As in Astonish Me, all of the artists in this book are already starting from a place of above-average talent. The factors that determine their success or failure are subtler. These poets’ careers flourish in part because they cultivated a mentor in a field where hitting it big can depend on who you know.

Vintage

Constructing a Nervous System, by Margo Jefferson

Jefferson’s follow-up to her National Book Critics Circle Award–winning memoir, Negroland, is ambitious in both its goals and its form. In the previous book, she traced the relationships and networks that shaped her while growing up in the ’50s and early ’60s as part of an insular, affluent Black community in Chicago. Constructing a Nervous System turns inward, drilling down to the first principles of Jefferson’s artistry. She decides that she “must break [herself] into pieces … then rebuild.” These components take many guises, such as repurposed song lyrics, or stage directions and script notes that evoke a one-woman show. As she reassembles the fragments, she also communes with a cast of writers and artists, including W. E. B. Du Bois and Josephine Baker, whose work she idolizes. Part of Jefferson’s impetus is to transcend the limitations that have been projected onto her by history and social mores. Growing up as a Black woman, Jefferson writes—a member of two groups “ruled lesser”—made her want  “to play in private with styles and personae deemed beyond my range,” and “to access powers my upbringing denied me.” Jefferson makes a stylish production of casting off those constraints, and in doing so, composes something wonderfully fresh.

[Read: The paradox of caring about ‘bullshit’ jobs]

Simon & Schuster

Bullshit Jobs, by David Graeber

The titular jobs of Graeber’s book aren’t low-paid or even precarious: They’re well compensated and frequently attract the traditionally ambitious. But Graeber argues that they create nothing of value and exist for largely symbolic reasons—to make an organization look important, for example, or to delegate work to a group of employees who were just fine managing themselves. “Bullshit jobs” are “a form of paid employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence,” such as a full-time receptionist who can do their day’s work in an hour and a half, he suggests. What separates these positions from purposeful ones is how it feels to the worker: A Mafia hit man who follows a code that likely imbues his work with deep value would be disqualified, Graeber says. He views the proliferation of these positions as a serious problem. “How can one even begin to speak of dignity in labor,” he writes, “when one secretly feels one’s job should not exist?” Like buying a house, having a white-collar career would seem to be a sign of unambiguous triumph. But becoming too attached to traditional signifiers of stability can lead us away from more critical questions of how we should structure our working lives.