Naomi Wolf - The Treehouse
Naomi Wolf is best known as a feminist thinker and polemic writer of books such as The Beauty Myth. But in this book, her most recent, she discusses her father’s views on personal happiness, via the story of how a tree house was built for her daughter. Leonard Wolf is a poet and teacher and his ideas on living well focus on honouring your inner artist in some creative endeavour. A beautiful and inspiring book.
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Tom Hodgkinson - How to be Free
Hodgkinson is the editor of The Idler magazine and the author of How to be Idle. How to be Free is a radical look at the modern world and a critique of what he sees as the constraints on developing true freedom and happiness. Wildly eccentric in his views, this book might help you throw of the shackles of anxiety, work, debt, housework, ugliness, and also develop an anti-shopping, pro-ukulele outlook! |
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Joan Didion - The Year of Magical Thinking
Covering the year after her husband of 40 years died, and during which her daughter was seriously ill, this extraordinary memoir on grief was the surprise best seller of 2006. Showing just how your world can be turned upside down in a second, it is not a book of answers, but it cannot fail to help anyone who is grieving. Made all the sadder by the death of her daughter just after the book was published. |
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Po Bronson - What should I do with my Life?
Consisting of interviews with over 50 people who took the trouble to really consider what they wanted from life and produced some surprising answers. All are people who chucked in their routine lives and set out to follow their dreams. But unlike many self-help books, this book shows that not everything need go well in such circumstances – there are still struggles, doubts and fears. |
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Carl Honore - In Praise of Slow
Tracing the history of our increasingly breathless relationship with time, this books suggests the subversive idea that our obsession with productivity, speed and consumerism lies at the heart of what ails Western industrial society. Lots of clever observations, interesting facts and trivia and a constant source of views on slowing down and getting more out of life as a result
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Tal Ben-Sharar - Happier
Harvard University’s most popular lecture course is Ben-Sharar’s course on Positive Psychology for which this book is the backbone. A detailed review of the latest scientific studies, scholarly research, self-help advice, and views on spiritual enlightenment, this provides a good set of principles to help you be happier in your daily life |
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Oliver James - Affluenza
James defines “Affluenza” as an obsessive, envious, keeping-up-with-the-Joneses which he sees as resulting in a huge increase in depression and anxiety around the world. He discusses how to build one’s immune system against this, how to reconnect with what really matters and how to value what you’ve already got. Not always totally convincing but an interesting read. James is also the author of They f*** you up, a well-known and classic examination of how we develop as children, which is also well worth a look |
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Matthieu Ricard - Happiness
Ricard is a former geneticist who gave it all up to become a Buddhist monk in the Himalayas thirty five years ago. Combining modern psychology with the wisdom of Buddhism, this provides some of the best views on recent ideas on being happier and living well. Full of practical advice. |
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Richard Schoch - The Secrets of Happiness
In a review of three thousand years of searching for the good life, from Marcus Aurelius and the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths to modern times, Schoch suggests that by understanding the philosophical and religious traditions of happiness, we can greatly enrich our lives today. This is a rigorous intellectual exposition and makes us all think harder about the meaning of life |
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Nassim Taleb - Fooled by Randomness
One of the great books of the last ten years in our view, Taleb is a US-based hedge fund manager with a deep philosophical bent. He ponders on some of the deepest questions of chance, luck, probability and risk, relating it all back to individual lives. He later developed many of his ideas on unforeseen large events in another book, The Black Swan – The Impact of the Highly Improbable, which is also very good. |
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Daniel Gilbert - Stumbling into Happiness
This is another book on the current insights of psychology into questions of personal happiness. More academic than many others, it argues particularly strongly that we are actually very poor at predicting how we will feel in the future, so we misimagine our tomorrows, mispredict our satisfactions and so we stumble along in our perennial quest for happiness. |
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Jed McKenna - Spiritual Enlightenment – The Damnedest Thing
A very unusual book in that the author proclaims from the start that he has achieved spiritual enlightenment and then spends much of the book reducing the highest goals of life to the simplest of terms. In effect, he takes much of the spirituality out of spiritual enlightenment! Might well be compulsory reading for anyone pursuing spiritual enlightenment, if only to dispute its conclusions. |
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Nicole Beland - Girl Seeks Bliss
This could, at first glance, be dismissed as a somewhat superficial book on spirituality for the twenty-something girl in the modern world. But actually it is a very good introduction to the most basic principles of Buddhism. Beland is an agony aunt for a US men’s magazine, which perhaps makes this book even more amazing. The list of further reading pointed us towards the website www. buddhanet.net which contains loads of free e-books on most aspects of Buddhism. We were very impressed.
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Isobel Losada - The Battersea Park Road to Enlightenment
One of the funniest books on the spiritual quest, Losada sets out to sample many alternative lifestyles and therapies, including life-skills courses, Tai Chi, Tantric sex, various types of massage, nude goddess workshops, colonic irrigation, etc. Also recommended are her books on Tibet and the lives of modern nuns. See www.isobellosada.com for more info.
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Douwe Draaisma - Why Life speeds Up as You Get Older
This is a complex and serious academic book covering the nature of autobiographical memory – how we remember our own past. It considers topics such as why, as we grow older, does time seem to condense and speed up, while significant events from our childhood still seem vivid. If you can penetrate through the surface, this is actually a deeply moving book. |
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Lucy Edge - Yoga School Drop Out
Lucy’s quest is simple; to visit a selection of yoga and meditation ashrams in India, to find a guru and return a yoga goddess – “a magnetic babe attracting strong and sweaty yet emotionally vulnerable men with my pretzel like body and compassionate grace”. Needless to say, it doesn’t quite work out that way. Perfect preparation for that spiritual trip to India you’ve always thought about.
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Christy Turlington - Living Yoga
This is definitely not your typical celebrity book. Instead it is a wide ranging and detailed look at yoga from someone who has clearly made it a major part of their lives. Turlington dropped her career as a supermodel in her late twenties to return to University, studying Eastern Religion. Her book covers both historical and technical aspects of yoga and the anecdotes from her life fit the book well
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Hall & Hall - Astanga Yoga & Meditation
An excellent introduction to both astanga yoga and meditation. Astanga yoga is a very vigorous sequence of postures and requires a reasonable level of fitness to really benefit from. This book covers the entire Primary Series and offers a number of useful modifications of the more difficult postures. Contains over 1,000 photos. |
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B.K.S. Iyengar - Yoga: Path to Holistic Health
A mammoth book of over 400 pages, this is a superbly comprehensive view of yoga from one of the world’s leading teachers. Iyengar yoga is noted for an emphasis on precise alignment. This book features unique 360º views of each posture and details of the many props that can be used to assist postures. There are dozens of posture sequences outlined and the discussion of the holistic aspects of yoga beyond just the postures is very illuminating. |
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Tara Fraser - Yoga for You
One of Jonathan’s favourite yoga books combining a detailed look at a wide range of asanas with excellent chapters on the history of yoga, yogic breathing and meditation. The sequences of asanas are a very good basis for most home practices. Also good is Fraser’s book on Astanga yoga. |
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Emily Kelly - Pilates step-by-step
There aren’t as many books on Pilates as yoga, and this is one of the best. It contains over 300 photos showing loads of sequences in a clear step-by-step manner which captures the elegance of the movements very well. Also features a series of timed sequences that can be a useful aid to home practice. |
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Jack Kornfield - Meditation for Beginners
Kornfield is one of the most well-known meditation teachers in the Insight Meditation (or Vipassana) tradition. He trained as a Buddhist monk in Thailand before returning to the USA and founding the Insight Meditation Society, and later the Spirit Rock Center. This short book sets out the essential teachings and practices that you would learn at an intensive beginner’s meditation retreat. Comes with a free cd containing several guided meditations, |
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Christina Feldman - Beginner’s Guide to
Buddhist Meditation
Written by one of the co-founders of Gaia House, the well-known meditation retreat in Devon, this book offers loads of practical advice on getting started in a meditation practice, and provides a number of guided meditations. It also discusses a number of ways in which daily life can be made into a meditation practice. Very comprehensive for such a short book. |
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Martine Batchelor - Meditation for Life
Another teacher from Gaia House in Devon, this introduction to Buddhist meditation generally forgoes jargon and focuses on the everyday life of the practitioner. It covers the three main Buddhist traditions – Tibetan, Theravadan and Zen – and prover of guided meditations to get you started. |
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Eric Harrison - Teach Yourself to Meditate
This book focuses on meditation as an aid to relaxation and as a method of combating stress and promoting good health generally. It provides a good introduction to what meditation is, how to do it and why it works. It also contains 10 core meditation practices which work best for anyone, and which often take only a few minutes a day. Not the deepest book, but a great introduction |
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Vienne & Lennard - The Art of Doing Nothing
More than just a book about doing nothing, this is a concentrated guide on cultivating a sense of serenity. Little snippets of wisdom combined with some beautiful photos, this is an excellent antidote to stress. Contains a number of mini-lessons on subjects like how to meditate, procrastinate, or how to turn a bath or a wine tasting into a spiritual experience. |
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Suzanne Martin - Stretching
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Christina Rodenbeck - The Gaia Busy Person’s
Guide to Meditation
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Tarthang Tulka Tibetan Relaxation
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Jerome Segal - Graceful Simplicity
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Georgene Lockwood - The Complete Idiot’s
Guide to Simple Living
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Janet Luhrs - The Simple Living Guide
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Ferenc Mate - A Reasonable Life
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Stephanie Mills - Epicurean Simplicity
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Polly Ghazi / Judy Jones - Downshifting
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Helen Nearing - Loving and Leaving the Good Life
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Judi Levine - Not buying it
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Alvin Hall - What not to Spend
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Stephanie Kaza - Hooked – Buddhist writings on Greed, Desire and the urge to Consume
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Carlo Petrini - Slow Food
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Tove Jansson - The Summer Book
A series of short stories based on a Grandmother and Granddaughter sharing a summer together on a tiny island off the coast of Finland, this is a deceptively simple book written beautifully and with dozens of insightful observations, especially on aging and the relationship between young and old. Jansson is most well-known in the UK for her Moomin books for children, but her adult fiction has recently started to appear |
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Jack Kerouac - The Dharma Bums
Most famous as the author of “On the Road”, this is Jonathan’s favorite book and one that he re-reads most years. Set in the mid-1950s, it is focused on the character of Japhy Ryder – a poorly disguised Gary Snyder, who later became a well-known American poet, environmentalist and Buddhist. This is both a book of spiritual quest and the book that inspired much of the outdoor movement that followed. |
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Peter Matthiessen - The Snow Leopard
This tells the story of Matthiessen’s trip to a remote valley in the Himalayas, accompanying the naturalist George Schaller on his expedition to study the wild sheep that live in the area. It is one of the greatest examples of travel writing, covering not just the location they are in or the people of Nepal, but reflecting on the recent events of Matthiessen’s own life, especially the death of his wife. Another book that Jonathan reads and re-reads over again. |
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William Least-Heat Moon - Blue Highways
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Barry Lopez - Crossing Open Ground
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Sarah McDonald - Holy Cow
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Rory Maclean - Magic Bus
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