Looking to make some positive changes in 2020? Great! Not making any new year’s resolutions this year? No problem! We’ve put together a list of books that can either inspire change or help you celebrate the wonderful you, you already are. So however you’re ringing in the New Year—in 2020, you do you.
New Year, New You:
Designing Your Work Life: How to Thrive and Change and Find Happiness at Work by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans
From the authors of the #1 New York Times bestseller Designing Your Life, a job-changing, outlook-changing, life-changing book that shows us how to transform our work lives and create a dream job that is meaningful without necessarily changing the job we have
In Designing Your Work Life, Burnett and Evans show us how design thinking can transform our present job and our experience of work in general by utilizing the designer mindsets: Curiosity. Reframing. Radical collaboration. Awareness. Bias to action. Storytelling.
Dysfunctional Belief: Good enough isn’t good enough.
Reframe: Good enough is GREAT–for now.
Burnett and Evans show us how, with tools, tips, and ideas, to enjoy what we have and to live in a state of “good enough, for now,” one of the strongest, most effective reframes there is, and how this idea, once understood and accepted, can make new possibilities available, giving us the energy to enjoy the present moment and allowing us to begin to prototype possible futures. And if we want to quit? Burnett and Evans show us how to use the job we have to get the job we want (in another company), and show us as well, the art and science of quitting (leave the campsite better than we found it), using the power of the quit design to reframe how we finish our current job and get a better one.
Click to Watch Bill Burnett’s TED Talk.
Click to View Author Website.
Breaking Up With Sugar: Divorce the Diets, Drop the Pounds, and Live Your Best Life by Molly Carmel
A proven plan to break free from your unhealthy relationship with Sugar—and reclaim your health and your life for good.
The solution to your food and weight problems isn’t willpower or the next fad diet—it’s breaking up with Sugar. Molly Carmel, an eating disorder therapist with a thriving clinic in New York City, discovered the devastating role Sugar played in her own 20-year struggle with disordered eating. After reaching a peak weight of 325 pounds and trying every diet imaginable, Molly was finally able to dramatically transform her life—and find her happy weight-by breaking up with Sugar. Molly has since helped thousands of people overcome compulsive overeating, repetitive dieting, and Sugar addiction to reinvent their lives. Here, she shares her empowering 66-day blueprint for kicking Sugar to the curb—once and for all.
Molly explains how Sugar is not only bad for your health, it’s also a substance with highly addictive potential—one that creates physical, neurological, and hormonal changes that often make moderation impossible. This is the first book to address the emotional, spiritual, chemical, and physical components of this toxic relationship and help guide you through the steps to create a new and lasting relationship with food . . . and with yourself.
Click to Read an Excerpt.
Listen to a Clip from the Audiobook.
For Small Creatures Such as We: Rituals for Finding Meaning in Our Unlikely World by Sasha Sagan
“How often have you asked yourself: What is the meaning of life? Sasha Sagan finds its meaning everywhere—with her family, around the world, and especially among the stars of the cosmos. Read her work; you’ll have a deeper appreciation for your every step, every bite, and every breath.”—Bill Nye, author of Everything All At Once
Sasha Sagan was raised by secular parents, the astronomer Carl Sagan and the writer and producer Ann Druyan. They taught her that the natural world and vast cosmos are full of profound beauty, that science reveals truths more wondrous than any myth or fable.
When Sagan herself became a mother, she began her own hunt for the natural phenomena behind our most treasured occasions–from births to deaths, holidays to weddings, anniversaries, and more–growing these roots into a new set of rituals for her young daughter that honor the joy and significance of each experience without relying on religious framework.
As Sagan shares these rituals, For Small Creatures Such as We becomes a moving tribute to a father, a newborn daughter, a marriage, and the natural world–a celebration of life itself, and the power of our families and beliefs to bring us together.
Click to Read an Excerpt.
Listen to a Clip from the Audiobook.
Quit Like a Woman: The Radical Choice to Not Drink in a Culture Obsessed with Alcohol by Holly Whitaker
The founder of a female-focused recovery program offers a radical new path to sobriety.
“You don’t know how much you need this book, or maybe you do. Either way, it will save your life.”—Melissa Hartwig Urban, Whole30 co-founder and CEO
We live in a world obsessed with drinking. We drink at baby showers and work events, brunch and book club, graduations and funerals. Yet no one ever questions alcohol’s ubiquity—in fact, the only thing ever questioned is why someone doesn’t drink. It is a qualifier for belonging and if you don’t imbibe, you are considered an anomaly. As a society, we are obsessed with health and wellness, yet we uphold alcohol as some kind of magic elixir, though it is anything but.
When Holly Whitaker decided to seek help after one too many benders, she embarked on a journey that led not only to her own sobriety, but revealed the insidious role alcohol plays in our society and in the lives of women in particular. When Holly found an alternate way out of her own addiction, she felt a calling to create a sober community with resources for anyone questioning their relationship with drinking, so that they might find their way as well. Her resultant feminine-centric recovery program focuses on getting at the root causes that lead people to overindulge and provides the tools necessary to break the cycle of addiction, showing us what is possible when we remove alcohol and destroy our belief system around it.
Click to Read an Excerpt.
Listen to a Clip from the Audiobook.
Yoga for the Inflexible Man: A How-To Guide by Yoga Matt
A yoga book for the chronically inflexible, with practical, down-to-earth advice for weekend warriors, aging athletes, and anyone else who could benefit from a bit more flexibility in their lives.
The benefits of yoga–greater strength, flexibility, and presence of mind–are for anyone, no matter their skill level. But most classes don’t feel that way if you’re a first-timer–or an inflexible male. Enter Yoga for the Inflexible Male, a welcoming and humorous guide for people of all stripes that gives three vetted hour-long yoga routines, each with roughly a dozen yoga poses. The poses are illustrated and described in depth, and each one contains variations so that they are accessible to anyone, no matter their flexibility. The back of the book also has sequences geared for practitioners of specific sports, like running, biking, climbing, and so on. As more and more men are encouraged to increase their flexibility, the health advantages of yoga are no longer beyond their reach.
Click to Read an Excerpt.
What to Eat When: A Strategic Plan to Improve Your Health and Life Through Food by Micheal Roizen, Michael Crupain, and Ted Spiker
New York Times bestselling author Dr. Michael Roizen reveals how the food choices you make each day—and when you make them—can affect your health, your energy, your sex life, your waistline, your attitude, and the way you age.
What if eating two cups of blueberries a day could prevent cancer? If drinking a kale-infused smoothie could counteract missing an hour’s worth of sleep? When is the right time of day to eat that chocolate chip cookie? And would you actually drink that glass of water if it meant skipping the gym? This revolutionary guide reveals how to use food to enhance our personal and professional lives–and increase longevity to boot. What to Eat When is not a diet book. Instead, acclaimed internist Michael Roizen and preventive medicine specialist Michael Crupain offer readers choices that benefit them the most–whether it’s meals to help them look and feel younger or snacks that prevent diseases–based on the science that governs them.
No Thanks, I’m Good:
Older, but Better, but Older: From the Authors of How to Be a Parisian Wherever You Are by Caroline de Maigret and Sophie Mas
From the bestselling authors of How to be Parisian, what smart, savvy, fabulous French women think, feel and advise as they hit forty on life, love, and everything else.
Older, but Better, but Older has the playful wit, self-deprecation and worldly advice we have come to expect from these bestselling authors, but now that advice is focused on the French woman’s mindset as she hurtles towards forty. Caroline de Maigret and Sophie Mas are back to amuse you with how they find they are modifying their favorite bad-girl behavior as they address beauty, love, seduction as well as lifestyle, family, work, and living alone.
They are still bohemian iconoclasts saying what you don’t expect to hear. They will tell you things aren’t what they used to be–when a thirty-year-old guy arrives at a party and does not even glance at you; when you wake up feeling great and everyone tells you how tired you look; you know you’re an adult when you’re excited just to go home.
Neuroses vs. confidence, resistance vs. acceptance, passion vs. serenity, de Maigret and Mas through spirited short stories capture the different stages of ageing–as nostalgic but modern Parisian women. From the privately absurd to the strangely universal, this book captures moments of everyday life that will make the reader nod, cringe, and laugh out loud.
Click to Read an Excerpt.
Listen to a Clip from the Audiobook.
My Drunk Kitchen Holidays: How to Savor and Celebrate the Year: A Cookbook by Hannah Hart
New York Times bestselling author and Food Network star Hannah Hart is back with her biggest book ever: a humorous holiday cookbook celebrating year-round festivities with food, drink, and friends.
In a world where everyone is looking for some good news and something to celebrate, Hannah Hart is there with almost fifty ideas, arranged into twelve months of themes and recipes for how to celebrate with family and friends.
A collection of recipes, activities, and suggestions about hilarious and joyous ways to celebrate with family, friends, pets, and your entire community, My Drunk Kitchen Holidays! will commemorate holidays from Valentine’s Day to Graduation, Pride Month and International Left-Handers’ Day (really!). The book will culminate with the fall holidays that get much deserved attention: recipes for Halloween, Thanksgiving, and a celebration of Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/Christmas that is festive, inclusive, and incredibly hilarious.
Click to Read an Excerpt.
Listen to a Clip from the Audiobook.
Everything Chocolate: A Decadent Collection of Morning Pastries, Nostalgic Sweets, and Showstopping Desserts by America’s Test Kitchen
Make your decadent dreams come true with this chocolate-covered collection of more than 180 foolproof recipes that showcase the treasured dessert ingredient—chocolate.
Chocolate may be the most universally loved (and craved) flavoring, and Everything Chocolate is the definitive guide to any sweet treat you can imagine featuring it, for any time of day. Wake up with streusel-topped Chocolate-Walnut Muffins that are easy to make or professional-grade Chocolate Croissants when weekend time allows. Pack lunches with pleasing Milk Chocolate Revel Bars or serve Magic Chocolate Flan Cake or Chocolate Pavlova with Berries and Whipped Cream after dinner.
Much of why we fall for chocolate is because it brings back memories of candy bar snacks and sneaking just-baked chocolate chip cookies while they’re still warm. But chocolate is also a grown-up favorite for black-tie desserts. The full range of chocolate recipes is here, avoiding the pitfalls of unbalanced chocolate flavor (too bitter or too sweet) or dry, crumbly baked goods (chocolate contains starch and we’ve learned how to mind it). Become a home chocolatier by learning all about chocolate nomenclature, how to shop for the best-tasting cocoa powder, when you should use chocolate bars versus chips, decorating dazzling desserts with chocolate, and how to make candies and cookies with shiny, snappy chocolate coatings with our shortcut to tempering.
The Martini Cocktail: A Meditation on the World’s Greatest Drink, with Recipes by Robert Simonson
The first book in decades to celebrate and explore the history of the most iconic of classic cocktails, the martini, with 50 recipes.
A classic martini includes gin, vermouth, sometimes bitters, a lemon twist or olive, and lots of opinions–it’s these opinions that New York Times cocktail writer Robert Simonson uncovers in his exploration of the long and tangled history of the classic martini and its subtle variations. The book features examples of age-old recipes, such as the first martini recipe published in 1888, modern versions created by some of the world’s best bartenders, and martinis sought out by enthusiasts around the world, from Dukes Bar at the Dukes Hotel London to Musso and Frank Grill in Los Angeles. In The Martini Cocktail, you’ll discover everything you need to know about what components make a great martini, as well as a collection of 50 recipes to create your own drinks (and form your own opinions) at home.
Click to Read an Excerpt.
Listen to a Clip from the Audiobook.
