Top Book Recommendations 2021

Hello friends and welcome to another episode of Wellness Wednesday! So going along the lines of the last week, I think maybe two weeks, frequently asked questions, today I wanted to talk about book recommendations. Don't know if you follow me on Goodreads yet. I will add my Goodreads like username and link and all that stuff in my— in the description of this video, but I am proud to say that I have read 27 books this year. It is March 24th. I will say Okay, one of those books I didn't finish and one of those books is like a cookbook and one of them is like a coffee table illustrated book. So 27, 26, 25, so 24 books like novels this year. And so I really wanted to talk about book recommendations. I've mentioned in some previous videos that last year I got really into, towards the end of last year, reading. I'm usually reading on my trusty Kindle. It's just really easy, you know, to like carry around and— read in bed or read in between clients, etc. And so this is what I read on most of the time, um, but I also have some paper books and I wanted to talk about my favorite books. Now this is going to kind of COVID different genres. We got memoir, fiction, non-fiction, historical fiction. Um, I'm going to go to my favorites shelf, my all-time favorite shelf on Goodreads. It's just a really— Goodreads is great. It's basically a website where you can look at books reviews, look at the reviews of different books, and then kind of like social media, you can connect with friends on there and you can identify what you're reading. You can give stars and review things that you've read. You can shelve certain things like these are the books I barely finished, these were page-turners, these were my all-time favorite books, etc. And so a lot of the books that I've been reading this year have really been novels, mostly fiction, not like self-help or anything like that. And I've gotten most of my sort suggestions from what I see other people reading on Goodreads and what the reviews are. So highly recommend joining Goodreads. I've shared before that it's been, I think, exactly a year since I deactivated all social media. I did keep TikTok for quite a while, but I'm off TikTok as well. And it's wild how much more time I've had to be reading. And it's like, I can't binge-watch Netflix and binge-read, so I've really been erring on the reading side. But not because I'm trying to like make myself a better person. Once you find books that you're into, it's genuinely so fun and really hard to stop. So yay for reading. So I'm gonna talk about just some of my all-time favorite books. And again, because this is like a mental health channel, I wanna start with more of the mental health geared stuff. So here we have coming in at number 1 for relationships and overall personal like self-help, I will say it is Melody Beattie's The Codependence Guide to the 12 Steps. Now, if you're familiar with the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, the next book is Alcoholics Anonymous: The Basic Text. Um, highly recommend even for people that are not alcoholics, but I'll get into that. The 12 steps of Coda are almost exactly the same as the AA 12 steps, but it's framed through the lens of I'm powerless over others and my life has become unmanageable as a result of essentially trying to control other people. Now, The Codependent's Guide to the 12 Steps, each chapter focuses on one of the 12 steps, and then there's questions after that you can ask yourself and journal about. And so I commonly refer my clients to this book. Um, it's just a really great read. It can really be informative and help you to figure out what codependencies you're bringing into a relationship. And all of us as humans can display different levels of codependency. The goal in healthy relationships is interdependence, where we each have our own lives and autonomy and maybe more partners in the relationship if you're in a polyamorous dynamic, right? So each person has their own autonomy, independence, emotional stability, and you can come together in a relationship as opposed to have your needs and happiness and contentment totally contingent on the other person, etc. That's like a really, really short synopsis. Anyway, Melody Beattie, Codependence Guide to the 12 Steps. Big fan. Next up, like I said, we got the basic text of Alcoholics Anonymous. If you're in recovery or if you are questioning whether or not you have a drinking problem, read this. Great tools on just how to live, not just how to be sober, but of course, all-time favorite, one of my all-time favorites. So this is a book I have not read yet. It just happens to be next in line, but one of my clients is reading it and sends me excerpts from it often. And again, this is something I'm going to refer many of my clients to read. I'm going to read it so I can better help them, but it's called Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents. Now you can find that on Amazon. I'm not sponsored by any of these books, by the way, probably be, but it's fine. Lindsay Gibson, who's a CID. Again, emotionally immature parents. Um, yeah, based on the two clients I have that are reading this, I'm like, oh wow, okay. So haven't read it. Now getting into more of a mindfulness, uh, kick. If you're into mindfulness, meditation, uh, being a peaceful human being, if you haven't read anything by Thich Nhat Hanh, I highly recommend it. This is my favorite Thich Nhat Hanh book, and it's called Peace Is Every Step. Ah, Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life. I think often we think of mindfulness, or we can think of mindfulness as like, I need to be in a field alone somewhere, or like on a mountain in Tibet or something like that. And reality is we can actually bring mindfulness into everyday life, washing the dishes, brushing our teeth, et cetera. I haven't read this in years, but I remember being pretty moved by it. Sticking with, this is for my recovery folks. If you've read Drop the Rock, which I'm sure you've heard of if you're in a 12-step program, which is really about steps 6 and 7 and those character defects and shortcomings. I never knew until the last couple years that there's a Drop the Rock... The Ripple Effect, which is about applying step 10 or using steps 6 and 7 to really live out a step 10, using step 10 to work 6 and 7 every day. So highly recommend. Again, if you're in recovery and if you're just like, what is that? You can ask me. Oh, okay. One of my favorite— I don't want to call it a memoir because there's like a really big scandal about it on Oprah's Book Club because apparently he embellished a lot of these details, but if you kind of forego that there's all this drama surrounding this book, or there was years ago, this is, I mean, my favorite, maybe my favorite book of all time. A Million Little Pieces by James Frey. This along with Dry by Augusten Burroughs are my two favorite addiction memoirs. In those, I will also add Straight Pepper Diet by Joseph Nouse. Wonderful book, wonderful book. I'll add all of these in the description, or maybe I won't, so you have to watch this, I don't know. No, I probably will. I love it so much. I just love the way that he writes. It's just, it's a really phenomenal book. Also, since I'm mainly reading on Kindle, these are just books that I found like around my home. And I was like, "I like these." I mention this book in almost every single video I make. The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz, tattooed on my arm. Really big fan of The Four Agreements. It has been life-changing for me. There's also A Fifth Agreement, which is a book that I have not yet read. But this is a really easy read. You can keep it in the bathroom, you know? Just like read it. Maybe don't bring your phone into the bathroom, just hang a little bit. Going along the lines of phones, another absolutely life-changing book for me was and continues to be How to Break Up with Your Phone by Catherine Price. I did a whole video about this book. So if you click on my videos and scroll, you'll find an entire video on how to break up with your phone. Really big fan. Pretty mind-blowing. The whole first half of this book is about like neurologically what our smartphone addiction essentially does to us. And the second half is like how to wean away from compulsive phone use. It doesn't mean like get rid of your phone altogether, but just how to become more intentional and mindful about our phone use. Really big fan. This is in my kitchen. I just think it's really cute. How to Be Vegan and Keep Your Friends. I am obviously like I've talked about a newer vegan and this is a great Cute little book that is funny, and anyone that comes into my kitchen post-COVID will see that I'm a vegan by seeing this. And also it has really great recipes, which is great. If you are a new therapist or a therapist at all or interested in becoming a therapist, this will be my number one on being a therapist book, which is actually called On Being a Therapist. Phenomenal book. Oh, sorry for hitting the microphone. By Jeffrey Kotler. Just really honest and raw and relatable and illuminating. Just a really great book. It's phenomenal. On Being a Therapist, Jeffrey Kotler. Okay, one of my favorite books of all time. Anyone that watches this channel or knows me personally knows that I absolutely love Brené Brown. Brené is a social worker PhD who studies fear, shame, and vulnerability and has numerous books. I love all of her books. I just wanna start by saying that. The first Brené Brown book I read was called Daring Greatly. I don't have a physical copy of it 'cause I lent it to a friend of mine. What's up, Morgan? But this might be my favorite Brené Brown book, and it's called "Braving the Wilderness." Now, the subtitle is "The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone." One of the reasons I love "Braving the Wilderness" is because she really illuminates our tendency to trade authenticity for approval. And one thing that, again, if you watch this channel or know me at all, you know that I speak about often, professionally and personally, is barriers to authenticity and what blocks us from truly being ourselves and what blocks us from, um, yeah, true authenticity. I truly believe that loneliness can stem from a lack of authenticity in our relationships. A lack of authenticity can lead us to feel imposter syndrome, which I have a video about. But, um, this is such a good book and it's a pretty short book. Um, so those are the physical books that I have. And now I just wanted to talk a little bit about some of the books I have on Goodreads. And these are more novels and fun books. Some are intense, some are not. The book I just read, which is now a Netflix show, is called The One, and it's a dystopian Black Mirror type thing. I mean, it's not dystopian, it's just what the world is now, but if dating— if the main dating service was a DNA match thing. So if you do this service, then you find your DNA match, and of course it can break up marriage and stuff. The book is done so well. You can watch the show before you read the book because the show is based on this book but it's totally different characters and kind of a different plot. So I gave it 5 stars. I thought it was entertaining, suspenseful, there were tons of twists and I, I really liked that. This year I also read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I mean it's one of my favorite movies, one of my favorite books now too. But it's kind of like a cult classic. I think if you watch it now as an adult— depends on your humor, it's a very, very specific kind of humor. One of my favorite books that I read in this last year was called Anxious People by Fredrik Backman. It's a novel and it's funny and it's deep. I mean, I laughed out loud and I cried, but it was definitely one of my favorites. And now my new favorite author as of this year, his name is Matt Haig, H-A-I-G, and he wrote The Midnight Library, which if you struggle with regret and looking at past decisions and wondering what would be different if you made different decisions, read The Midnight Library. It actually won the 2020 Goodreads Choice Awards for best fiction book. Matt Haig also wrote another book— he has numerous books— called The Humans, which I liked even more than The Midnight Library. Just so clever. Matt Haig is very open about struggling with mental health issues in his own personal life, and that definitely seeps through the pages of the book and make it relatable. If you haven't read Night by Elie Wiesel, kind of like Holocaust 101. That's a weird way to say it. I had to read Night as a kid and then as a teenager and then I'm pretty sure in college too. I've read Night numerous times but I read it as an adult as well and it is just an incredibly raw gripping story of a man and his father in concentration camps and I would say I've read a lot of Holocaust fiction, nonfiction, memoir books and I would say this is my favorite one. Not like enjoyable read but a really well-written, intense read. So Night by Elie Wiesel. My favorite sci-fi book is probably Ender's Game. It's a movie, big fan. Okay, historical fiction, The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah, and she actually is the one who wrote Firefly Lane, which is a very intensely trending show on Netflix. She has a bunch of books. I only ever read The Nightingale, but it's historical fiction set during World War II Unbelievable. I mean, I cried. My favorite kind of disturbing sexual trauma book— that's a very specific, it's really specific— is called Taming the Beast by Emily Maguire. She's a less-known author. She's Australian. If you have a history with sexual trauma, do not read this book unless you've done some serious work with your therapist and it's actually healing for you too. But it's, it's just an incredible book. I've read it I've read it numerous times called Taming the Beast. My favorite Chuck Palahniuk book. Now Chuck Palahniuk, I don't know how to pronounce his last name, but he wrote Fight Club, which is one of my all-time favorite movies. He's written a lot of books and I love them all, but my favorite book of his is called Survivor. Fiction. It's just really interesting plot line, really enjoyable. The book that made me ugly cry more than any other book, same thing with movie, is The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky. Again, if you're not new to my channel, then you will have heard me say numerous times, we accept The Love We Think We Deserve. That's from The Perks of Being a Wallflower. And then of course all of the Harry Potters, everything by Brené Brown. I have pages upon pages of, uh, of books that I've reviewed and rated on here, so I think I'm just gonna pull back now because we're already at 14 minutes. But basically this is my first book haul, book review. I hope I give you some suggestions. Again, feel free to follow me on Goodreads. I'm very active on it. Right now, I just finished Dark Matter by Blake Crouch, which was so good. Kind of sci-fi-esque. Really, really good fiction book. And I'm currently reading on my Kindle Scythe, like S-C-Y-T-H-E. So good. Can't put it down. I'm reading Scythe and I'm listening to— what am I listening to? The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. So what I like to do, if you struggle with reading, as many, many people do, I really like to listen to Audible. So audiobooks, right? The narrators are usually great. Um, I love Audible. I think I've listened to over 100 books on Audible. I would open my phone and check, but I'm using my phone right now. So when I used to have a long commute to work, I would listen to Audible. And now that I don't really drive anywhere, I put in headphones and listen to audiobooks when I'm walking my dog, when I'm cleaning, when I'm doing laundry. It actually makes me more productive cuz if I wanna be listening to my book, I seldom just just like sit and listen to it. I like to be doing something. And so my house is way more clean these days because I'm always listening to Audible. So I'm always listening to a book and reading a different book, and that's likely how I've gotten through so many this year. And, um, yeah, I hope this inspires a love of reading that may be buried deep inside of you. I find that it's de-stressing, it's grounding, it's a really great break from reality, but it's not— it's not mindless. There's something different about reading a book than watching a movie or playing a video game that just, I feel my vocabulary gets better, my language comprehension gets better. I feel more on the ball. I feel more able to concentrate. And when I notice that I've been scrolling a lot, not on social media, because I'm not on social media, but on Google or YouTube or something like that, it drains me and I feel kind of groggy and my attention span gets shorter. And if you read How to Break Up with Your Phone, you'll find that there's actually like scientific scientific reasons as to why that is. But anyway, if you're looking for ways to really strengthen your brain, read! There's also so many good genres. I know I'm missing like a billion books, but, um, yeah. Okay, thanks, bye!