Four Thousand Weeks
Oliver Burkeman
A witty rethink of time management that says you can't do everything, and that this is freeing. A calm alternative to productivity advice.
All moods
New year reading
A new year is a good excuse to read something that gives you room to think. These aren't all self-help: there are memoirs, a novel and a few big ideas, each about starting over, slowing down or choosing what matters. Pick one for the first week of January and see where it takes you.
Books to start with
Man's Search for Meaning
Viktor E. Frankl
A psychiatrist's account of surviving the camps, and what purpose can hold up. Short, and worth rereading.
Wild
Cheryl Strayed
A woman walks the Pacific Crest Trail alone to rebuild her life after loss. Honest, gripping and hopeful.
Big Magic
Elizabeth Gilbert
A warm, practical pep talk about making things and living with curiosity instead of fear.
Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine
Gail Honeyman
A lonely office worker slowly opens her life to other people. Funny first, then moving.
Educated
Tara Westover
A memoir of a girl raised off the grid who teaches herself enough to reach university. A story of reinvention.
How to choose
Choose by the kind of fresh start you want. Four Thousand Weeks argues that you can't do everything, and it ends with a few practical tools. Big Magic is upbeat, practical advice on creative living. Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine is the novel: funny and ultimately hopeful, though it handles loneliness and past trauma.
For true stories, Wild and Educated are memoirs about rebuilding a life. Wild follows a solo 1995 hike on the Pacific Crest Trail and includes grief over the author's mother and heroin use. Educated describes abuse and family violence, and members of the author's family dispute her account. Man's Search for Meaning is the weightiest: it opens with Frankl's time in Nazi concentration camps before turning to his ideas about purpose.
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