I know a lot of readers who only read fiction, and I know many of these readers also try to make a resolution every year to pick up non-fiction (hint: the reader is me…). So this year, whilst my reading resolutions are to read the non-fiction already on my shelves, I did want to do a little bit of research on what non-fiction is out there from the past year or so that would be perfect for anyone wanting to start reading non-fiction in 2023.
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And Finally: Matters of Life and Death is a bit of a heavy hitter for the first book on this list. It follows the transition from doctor to patient after a cancer diagnosis and goes deep into the thoughts about mortality, life and death, and the importance of living.
Blurb:
As a retired brain surgeon, Henry Marsh thought he understood illness, but he was unprepared for the impact of his diagnosis of advanced cancer. And Finally explores what happens when someone who has spent a lifetime on the frontline of life and death finds himself contemplating what might be his own death sentence.
As he navigates the bewildering transition from doctor to patient, he is haunted by past failures and projects yet to be completed, and frustrated by the inconveniences of illness and old age. But he is also more entranced than ever by the mysteries of science and the brain, the beauty of the natural world and his love for his family.
Elegiac, candid, luminous and poignant, And Finally is ultimately not so much a book about death, but a book about life and what matters in the end.
Fix the System, Not the Women is a book that brings forward all those “isolated incidents” of misogyny and lays down the pattern of the systemic violentce in our society. Another heavy subject topic (I promise the whole list isn’t this deep!) but one that’s important for everyone to acknowledge and work on dismantling.
Blurb:
10 years after founding the Everyday Sexism Project, feminist writer and activist Laura Bates connects the dots between the ‘isolated incidents’ of violence against women and the institutional and systemic misogyny that is so deeply ingrained in our society.
Every three days in the UK, women are murdered by their current or former partners. 137 women worldwide are killed by a family member every day. These are not isolated incidents. They are part of a devastatingly clear pattern. But it is a pattern we are so used to seeing that we simply don’t notice it anymore. These incidents are the product of a society in which misogyny is so deeply ingrained that it has simply become part of our daily lives.
This book will lay these patterns bare for everyone to see. Joining the dots from an epidemic of school sexual violence to the failings of the police and CPS, institutional and systemic misogyny, political apathy and media distortion, this will be an examination of how the entire system lets women and girls down, again and again.
In Isolated Incidents, Laura puts forward her own bold and ambitious solution for combating misogyny and violence against women – one that includes structural change and tackles institutionalised prejudice.
Enough is enough.
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Moving onto a self-help book that can help almost everyone (even those who already are pretty confident!). How to Be Confident works on breaking a cycle of negativity, which is a cycle often used for CBT and ensuring we have the confidence to meet our ambitions, wants and needs in life.
Blurb:
From two times number one Sunday Times bestselling author, James Smith, comes How to Be Confident – the third instalment in James’ no-nonsense guides to gaining the tools to empower your decision-making and change your life.
Now, more than ever, we are so often lost within a cycle of negativity – from comparing ourselves to others and doom scrolling on social media, to a paralysis of choice and chasing external gratification that does nothing to nurture authentic happiness.
We need confidence to master our true ambitions, realise our genuine strengths, and achieve the life we need, but might not know we want. Luckily, with his candid, no-nonsense advice, experience, and passion, James is here to lead the way.
Another memoir about cancer and the importance of really living. How to Live When You Could Be Dead also brings in the conversation about negative spirals, and breaking the cycle to be more realistic, ambitious and hopeful.
Blurb:
I’m alive when I should be dead. In another movie, I missed the sliding door and departed this wondrous life long ago. Like so many others, I’ve had to learn to live not knowing if I have a tomorrow, because, statistically, I shouldn’t have. At the age of 35, I was blindsided by incurable bowel cancer – I was given a less than 8% chance of surviving five years. More than five years later, my only option is to live in the now and to value one day at a time.
So how do you flip your mind from a negative spiral into realistic and rebellious hope? How do you stop focusing on the why and realise that ‘why not me’ is just as valid a question? How we learn to respond to any given situation empowers us or destroys us. We have the ability in our minds to dictate our own outcomes – bad or good – and with the right skills and approach, we can be the master of our lives.
How to Live When You Could Be Dead will show you how. It will awaken you to question your life as if you didn’t have a tomorrow and live it in the way you want to today. It will show you how to build a positive mindset and, through this, invite you to think about what you could do if you believed you could do anything you want.
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I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki is a book I saw on *everyone’s* best books of 2022 list (for those who read non-fiction anyway!). It’s about depression, and how she manages to be high functioning and hide this from friends, colleagues etc. This is another read that includes learnings from CBT (feedback loops, negative cycles etc.) so I might be on a bit of a one path mind when picking these reads out, but it’s super helpful to see other people who have similar experiences to you and to say “that’s okay” and that there’s a way to improve.
Blurb:
PSYCHIATRIST: So how can I help you?
ME: I don’t know, I’m – what’s the word – depressed? Do I have to go into detail?
Baek Se-Hee is a successful young social media director at a publishing house when she begins seeing a psychiatrist about her – what to call it? – depression?
She feels persistently low, anxious, endlessly self-doubting, but also highly judgemental of others. She hides her feelings well at work and with friends; adept at performing the calmness, even ease, her lifestyle demands. The effort is exhausting, overwhelming, and keeps her from forming deep relationships. This can’t be normal. But if she’s so hopeless, why can she always summon a yen for her favourite street food, the hot, spicy rice cake, tteokbokki? Is this just what life is like?
Recording her dialogues with her psychiatrist over a 12-week period, Baek begins to disentangle the feedback loops, knee-jerk reactions and harmful behaviours that keep her locked in a cycle of self-abuse. Part memoir, part self-help book, I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki is a book to keep close and to reach for in times of darkness.
Did you know that just one simple thing can affect your life? Dr Michael Mosley has been researching all those “little” things you can do that help impact your mental and physical health.
Blurb:
Based on the popular BBC podcast, Just One Thing, this book brings to life Dr Mosley’s mission to unearth small, simple things you can introduce into your routine which will have a big impact on your mental and physical health.
Did you know that eating chocolate can help your heart, that singing can give you a natural “high” and that having more houseplants can boost your productivity and brain power?
Dr Michael Mosley unearths a range of Just One Things, whose impacts are so surprising and intriguing you will be desperate to try them out. He chats to experts, road tests all his tips and even enlists the help of some special guests to help you find that one small thing that could really make a difference to how you feel every day.
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Similar to Just One Thing, Life Time is all about routines and habits. Then how the body clock and your sleep cycle affects these. Learning about how these things work, and how you can apply them to your life to make yourself the healthiest version of you.
Blurb:
In the twenty-first century, we increasingly push our daily routines into the night, carrying out work, exercise and our social lives long after dark. But we have forgotten that our bodies are governed by a 24-hour biological clock which guides us towards the best time to sleep, eat and think.
In Life Time, Professor Russell Foster shares his life’s work, taking us on a fascinating and surprising journey through the science of our body clocks. Using his own studies, as well as insights from an international community of sleep scientists and biologists studying circadian rhythms, he illustrates the surprising effects the time of day can have on our health, including:
– How a walk outside at dawn can ensure a better night’s sleep,
– How eating after sundown can affect our weight,
– The extraordinary effects the time we take our medication can have on our risk of life- threatening conditions, such as strokes.
In the modern world, we have neglected an essential part of our biology. But with knowledge of this astonishing science, we can get back into the rhythm, and live healthier, sharper lives.
You may have heard of Sarah Knights multiple other books, and with No F*cks Given she brings together some of the best of her life-changing advice into one beautifully packaged collection.
Blurb:
In The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving A Fck Sarah liberated you from people and things that don’t make you happy; with Get Your Sht Together she provided a tough-love push towards getting organized to achieve your goals; You Do You offered a roadmap to embracing your individuality; Calm the Fck Down delivered practical solutions for managing ever-more stressful times; and Fck No! taught you to set boundaries and stick to them with confidence and flair.
No Fcks Given: Life-Changing Words to Live By gathers the very best of this no-bullsht, life-changing advice into one must-have gift book that enlightens and entertains on every page.
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A memoir on heartbreak and how the joy and pain of being in love resonates with you throughout and after a breakup. Focusing more on relationships and what happens when they go south, Notes on Heartbreak is a read for anyone who’s gone through something similar (and even for those who haven’t).
Blurb:
Dark, fierce and raw, Notes on Heartbreak is a love story told in reverse, starting with a devastating break-up.
As Annie Lord deals with her broken heart, the book constantly revisits the past, from the moment she first fell in love, to the months that saw the slow erosion of a bond five years in the making. We feel Annie’s pain with her, join her as she begins to heal, and cringe or laugh in recognition of our own experience as Annie charts her attempts to move on, from disastrous rebound sex to sending ill-advised nudes, stalking your ex’s new girlfriend on Instagram and the sharp indignity of being ghosted.
This stunning exploration of love and heartbreak from cult journalist and Vogue columnist Annie Lord, is so much more than a book about one singular break-up. it is an unflinchingly honest yet lyrical meditation on the simultaneous joy and pain of being in love that will resonate with anyone who has ever nursed a broken heart. It’s a book about the best and worst of love: the euphoric and the painful, the beautiful and the messy.
Susannah Constantine has lived more of a life than being the nations guide for fashion for many years. Ready for Absolutely Nothing brings forward her troubled childhood and how she made her way to where she is now. If you’re a fan of biographies, and especially strong business women then this one is for you.
Blurb:
You might think you know Susannah Constantine but you may be surprised to learn the truth. That she made her name as a ‘style guru’ from What Not to Wear, is actually the least interesting thing about her.
Hers is a tale full to the brim with extraordinary anecdotes. From lavatory dramas with Princess Margaret, to behind-the-scenes power struggles between Thatcher and the Queen at Balmoral and eye-opening sex-club etiquette with pop royalty – her social landscape was nothing, if not varied.
But appearances are deceptive and beneath it all, life had a darker side: her mother’s bipolar disorder, her father’s inability to cope and her own subsequent alcoholism. Somehow she had to forge her own life, away from the expectations of others.
Told with gobsmacking honesty and great dollops of humour, Ready For Absolutely Nothing is essential reading for anyone who loves a good memoir but secretly just wants to read the naughty bits.
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You have likely heard the claim that as a society we’re struggling to focus more and more. Johann Hari has put the legwork and focus in to find out why this is, and how it is not down to individual flaw. Plus, even better, he’s found a way for us to get our focus back.
Blurb:
Why have we lost our ability to focus? What are the causes? And, most importantly, how do we get it back? For Stolen Focus, internationally bestselling author Johann Hari went on a three-year journey to uncover the reasons why our teenagers now focus on one task for only 65 seconds, and why office workers on average manage only three minutes.
He interviewed the leading experts in the world on attention, and learned that everything we think about this subject is wrong. We think our inability to focus is a personal failing – a flaw in each one of us. It is not. This has been done to all of us by powerful external forces. Our focus has been stolen. Johann discovered there are twelve deep cases of this crisis, all of which have robbed some of our attention.
He shows us how in a thrilling journey that ranges from Silicon Valley dissidents, to a favela in Rio where attention vanished, to an office in New Zealand that found a remarkable way to restore our attention. Crucially, he learned how – as individuals, and as a society – we can get our focus back, if we are determined to fight for it.
Not just know for the best tweets, Greta Thunberg has also written The Climate Book. Showcasing the bigger picture and the hope of what we can do to help the climate crisis, The Climate Book is all about bringing responsibility into our hands.
Blurb:
Greta Thunberg’s speeches shook the world. With The Climate Book, she has created an essential tool for everyone who wants to help save it.
It seems like an impossible task: secure a safe future for life on Earth, acting at a scale and speed that the world has never seen, in the face of vast and powerful forces–not just oil tycoons and governments, but the changing climate system itself. The odds are against us, and we are running out of time. But it doesn’t have to be this way.
Around the world, geophysicists and mathematicians, oceanographers and meteorologists, engineers, economists, psychologists and philosophers have been using their expertise to develop a deep understanding of the crises we face. Greta Thunberg has created The Climate Book in partnership with over one hundred of these experts in order to equip us all with this knowledge. Alongside them, Greta shares her own stories of learning, demonstrating, and uncovering greenwashing around the world, revealing the extent to which we have been kept in the dark. This is one of our biggest problems, she shows, but also our greatest source of hope. Once we are given the full picture, we will be able to act–and if a schoolchild’s strike could ignite a global protest, what could we do collectively if we tried?
The Climate Book shows that we all have the responsibility of being alive at the most decisive time in the history of humanity, and that, together, we can do the seemingly impossible. But it has to be us, and it has to be now.
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A fun book on the list about the latest dating terminology, the “ick”. Going through all the different types of ick you can find during your dating adnventures. It’s not just you, it’s everyone.
Blurb:
* When they mistime a beat drop in the car
* When their toenail scrape you in bed
* When they sit at a bar stool and their feet hang awkwardly
* When they run out of what they want to order in a restaurant and they say, ‘I was really looking forward to that’ …
You’ve been dating someone for a while and you notice something about them that turns your stomach. That’s the ‘ick’ – it might be something weird or unremarkable, it might even be something you do yourself. Whatever it is, once you’ve got the ick there’s no going back from it and, for better or worse, it’s onto the next swipe.
The Little Book of Ick is a celebration of the dating phenomenon that plagues millions. Split into chapters that chart all the stages of finding love, this book is a collection of 500 hilarious icks: some you’ll have already encountered, all ready for you to use when you need to get over someone – qu-ick-ly!
Cutting, relatable, witty, sharp – The Book of Ick will reassure you it’s fine to be fussy, it might even soothe your future heartbreak… or just make you laugh on the loo.
Mental health is constantly being talked about as more and more people are facing issues. With affirming stories that show off that “normal” is not really that possible from natural life, this book is uplifting and helpful for all.
Blurb:
We tend to believe that normality equals health. Yet what is the norm in the Western world?
Mental illness is on an unstoppable rise. Some 45% of Europeans suffer high blood pressure, and nearly 70% of Americans take at least one prescription drug. Illness and trauma are defining how we live.
In his new masterpiece, renowned physician, addiction expert and author Gabor Mate dissects the underlying causes of this malaise – physical and emotional, and connects the dots between our personal suffering and the pressures of modern-day living. Over four decades of clinical experience, Dr Mate has found that the common definition of ‘normal’ is false: virtually all disease is actually a natural reflection of life in an abnormal culture, as we grow further and further apart from our true selves. But he also shows us the pathway to reconnection and healing.
Filled with stories of people in the grip of illness or in the triumphant wake of recovery, this life-affirming book shows how true health is possible – if we are willing to embrace authenticity above social expectations. The Myth of Normal is Gabor Mate’s most ambitious, compassionate and urgent book yet.
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As a massive lover of art and visiting galleries I know there’s so many womens artists BUT I also know that so many of them had to work harder than their male counterparts to get to the point of those paintings I’m looking at. The Story of Art Without Men helps you to discover the amazing artists that have been dismissed or overlooked in the past.
Blurb:
How many women artists do you know? Who makes art history? Did women even work as artists before the twentieth century? And what is the Baroque anyway?
Discover the glittering Sofonisba Anguissola of the Renaissance, the radical work of Harriet Powers in the nineteenth-century USA, and the artist who really invented the Readymade. Explore the Dutch Golden Age, the astonishing work of post-War artists in Latin America, and the women artists defining art in the 2020s. Have your sense of art history overturned, and your eyes opened to many art forms often overlooked or dismissed. From the Cornish coast to Manhattan, Nigeria to Japan this is the history of art as it’s never been told before.
A cross between self help and philosophy novel, The Sun, the Sea and the Stars combines inspirational quotes with soothing illustrations to help with inner peace. An easy book to pick up and read, which can help heal with wisdom.
Blurb:
In this modern tale for the ages, hit Instagram illustrator @iuliastration takes us a on a healing journey.
Following the story of a traveller as they move from darkness to light through the rhythm of the seasons, this is a deeply relatable quest for inner peace told through calming and original illustrations.
Using ancient wisdom and philosophical quotes from around the world – from Rumi to Emily Dickinson – to anchor her striking visual storytelling, Iulia Bochis weaves a timeless story of personal growth and self-love.
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What We Owe The Future is an easily readable book about philosophy and optimisim for the future. Looking forward for humans feels impossible in many ways, but with climate change and all the other issues of the world – MacAskill explains argument that we have moral priority of our time is to positively impact the future.
Blurb:
The fate of the world is in our hands. Humanity’s written history spans only five thousand years. Our yet-unwritten future could last for millions more – or it could end tomorrow. Astonishing numbers of people could lead lives of great happiness or unimaginable suffering, or never live at all, depending on what we choose to do today.
In What We Owe The Future, philosopher William MacAskill argues for longtermism, the idea that positively influencing the distant future is a key moral priority of our time. From this perspective, it’s not enough to reverse climate change or avert the next pandemic. We must ensure that civilization would rebound if it collapsed; counter the end of moral progress; and prepare for a planet where the smartest beings are digital, not human.
If we put humanity’s course to right, our grandchildren’s grandchildren will thrive, knowing we did everything we could to give them a world full of justice, hope and beauty.
This is the story and learnings from Rebecca Humphries as she reclaims her identity back from the public victimhood endured in the press and media. With an insightful and thought provoking analysis of toxic relationships and heartbreak, this book is required reading for those in relationships.
Blurb:
Actor, writer and hopeless romantic Rebecca Humphries had often been called crazy by her boyfriend. But when paparazzi caught him kissing his Strictly Come Dancing partner, she realised the only crazy thing was believing she didn’t deserve more.
Forced into victimhood by the story, Rebecca chose to reclaim her power, posting her thoughts on social media, including advice for other women who might be experiencing what she realised she’d managed to escape: a toxic, oppressive relationship. A flood of support poured in, but amongst the well-wishes was a simple question with an infinitely complex answer: ‘If he was so bad, why did you stay?’
Empowering, unflinching and full of humour, this book takes that question and owns it. Using her relationship history, coming of age stories and experiences since the scandal during Strictly, Rebecca explores why good girls are drawn to darkness, whether pop culture glamourises toxicity, when a relationship ‘rough patch’ becomes the start of a destructive cycle, if women are conditioned for co-dependency, and – ultimately – how to reframe disaster into something magical.
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Putting work life balance under the microscope, Working Hard, Hardly Working brings modern work culture and self-care mantras together. It gives inspiration for career chasers, and allows meeting aspirations whilst not forcing yourself to burnout by being constantly stressed. Every young working person needs to try this book.
Blurb:
We all know the pressure of feeling like we should be grinding 24/7 while simultaneously being told that we should ‘just relax’ and take care of ourselves, like we somehow have to decide between success and sanity. It’s a seemingly impossible choice, and one that doesn’t reflect the complex working world we find ourselves in.
In Working Hard, Hardly Working, entrepreneur and self-proclaimed ‘lazy workaholic’ Grace Beverley confronts this unrealistic and unnecessary split, and offers a fresh take on how to navigate modern life. Full of practical advice for helping you focus when you’re finding it hard to get stuff done and for stepping back when you’re on the edge of burnout, Working Hard, Hardly Working provides a productivity blueprint for a new generation. Insightful, curious and refreshingly honest, it will make you reflect on what you want from your life and work – and then help you chart a path to get there.
