Books To Boost Your Bank Holiday Monday

From whether happiness really begins at home (spoiler alert: yes – sort of) to what love, friendship, wealth, laughter and success actually do to our brains, this book offers a uniquely entertaining insight into what it means to be human.

Rebel Talent: Why it Pays to Break the Rules at Work and in Life by Francesca Gino

In Rebel Talent, award-winning Harvard Business School professor and behavioural scientist Francesca Gino shows us why happiest and most successful among us are those who break the rules and how we can all do it more.

Francesca Gino has been studying rebellion and conformity for more than fifteen years. She has discovered that when we mindlessly follow rules and norms rather than constructively rebelling against them, we become less happy and less successful in every area of our lives. While rebels may seem disruptive, they are ultimately good for business: their passion, drive, curiosity and creativity can raise organizations to a new level.

When we break the rules, we fix our lives.

Kindness: Change Your Life and Make the World a Kinder Place by Gill Hasson

Have you ever helped someone out of instinct, because not helping never even occurred to you? Remember how surprised you were at their gratitude? Kindness shows you how to be aware of the kindness, empathy and gratitude around you, and inspires you to take part with tips, ideas, recommendations and advice. You will learn to see yourself and your surroundings in a kinder, happier way.

Kindness is not people–pleasing; people–pleasing comes from a place of anxiety, while kindness is borne out of empathy. Kindness expects no reward or recognition, and is just as beneficial to the giver as the receiver. Kindness can be a grand gesture, or something as simple as a smile. It can be quiet or loud, simple or complex. This book helps you internalise the fundamental truth that kindness does not require wealth or possessions, or material giving at all whatever you have to offer is enough, and it may just change someone s life.

Opportunities to be kind present themselves every day, and here you ll learn how to notice them. Your self–esteem and confidence will grow as you discover the pure joy of helping others, and you ll feel more comfortable allowing others to help you. In a world where kindness seems to get lost in the shuffle of worry, anxiety, aggression and worse, Kindness shows you how to bring it back into the light.

Two Steps Forward: the uplifting new novel from the author of The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion & Anne Buist

A smart and funny novel of second chances from the author of The Rosie Project – two misfits walk 2,000 km along the Camino to find themselves and, perhaps, each other.  Zoe, a sometime artist, is from California. Martin, an engineer, is from Yorkshire. Both have ended up in picturesque Cluny, in central France. Both are struggling to come to terms with their recent past – for Zoe, the death of her husband; for Martin, a messy divorce.

Looking to make a new start, each sets out alone to walk two thousand kilometres from Cluny to Santiago de Compostela, in northwestern Spain, in the footsteps of pilgrims who have walked the Camino (the Way) for centuries. The Camino changes you, it’s said. It’s a chance to find a new version of yourself, and a new beginning. But can these two very different people find themselves? Will they find each other?

Two Steps Forward is a novel about renewal – physical, psychological and spiritual. It’s about the challenge of walking a long distance and of working out where you are going. And it’s about what you decide to keep, what you choose to leave behind and what you rediscover along the way.