19 Jun Inspiring Holiday Reads
A selection of 2015’s best books to inspire, relax, motivate and entertain you on your summer holidays!
The Year of Reading Dangerously: How Fifty Great Books Saved My Life by Andy Miller
Andy Miller had a job he quite liked, a family he loved and no time at all for reading. Or so he kept telling himself. But, no matter how busy or tired he was, something kept niggling at him. Books. Books he’d always wanted to read. Books he’d said he’d read, when he hadn’t. Books that whispered the promise of escape from the 6.44 to London. And so, with the turn of a page, began a year of reading that was to transform Andy’s life completely. This book is Andy’s inspirational and very funny account of his expedition through literature: classic, cult and everything in-between. Crack the spine of your unread Middlemarch, discover what The Da Vinci Code and Moby-Dick have in common (everything, surprisingly) and knock yourself out with a new-found enthusiasm for Tolstoy, Douglas Adams and The Epic of Gilgamesh. The Year of Reading Dangerously is a reader’s odyssey and it begins with opening this book…
Winners: And How They Succeed by Alastair Campbell
Drawing on the wisdom of an array of talented people – from elite athletes to top managers, from rulers of countries to rulers of global business empires – Alastair Campbell uses his forensic skills, as well as his own experience of politics and sport, to get to the heart of success. He examines how winners tick. He considers how they build great teams. He analyses how they deal with unexpected setbacks and new challenges. He judges what the very different worlds of politics, business and sport can learn from one another. And he sets out a blueprint for a winning mindset that we can all follow.
Mindfulness Pocketbook: Little Exercises for a Calmer Life by Gill Hasson
Gill Hasson, author of the bestselling Mindfulness is back and this time you can fit her advice in your pocket – ideal for your holidays! This little book is packed with over 100 quick exercises, each dealing with a different situation, to help you become calm, collected, and balanced. So whenever you start to feel the stress mounting, reach for your Mindfulness Pocketbook, find the relevant exercise and instantly make life better!
You can integrate these mindfulness exercises, practices, and reflections into your daily life and get in control and feel more confident, calm, and present. By progressing through the pocketbook, you will develop mindful ways of thinking and doing that will benefit a wide range of situations in your personal, social and work life.
The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload by Daniel Levitin
In the digital age we are overwhelmed by information. The 21st century sees us drowning under emails, forever juggling six tasks at once and trying to make complex decisions ever more quickly. This is information overload. The author explains that your brain has a daily processing limit. Like gives a dopamine hit because it’s addictive, daydreaming is your brain at its most productive and multitasking is a bad way to do nearly everything. Levitin’s ideas are surprising, powerful and will change the way you see the world.
By following the advice in The Organized Mind, you’ll function better, go further and find more time to do the things you actually want to do.
A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Bakman
At first sight, Ove is almost certainly the grumpiest man you will ever meet. He thinks himself surrounded by idiots – neighbours who can’t reverse a trailer properly, joggers, shop assistants who talk in code, and the perpetrators of the vicious coup d’etat that ousted him as Chairman of the Residents’ Association. He will persist in making his daily inspection rounds of the local streets.
But isn’t it rare, these days, to find such old-fashioned clarity of belief and deed? Such unswerving conviction about what the world should be, and a lifelong dedication to making it just so? In the end, you will see, there is something about Ove that is quite irresistible. The word-of-mouth bestseller causing a sensation across Europe, Fredrik Backman’s heart warming debut is a funny, moving, uplifting tale of love and community that will leave you with a spring in your step.