The novel cure: books for healing, mindfulness and meditation to look out for this year
Bibliotherapy is becoming a regularly appearing term in health and wellness discussions. The healing power of reading is something that us book fanatics know to experience every day when we pick up a book that makes us feel things and lifts our spirits by transporting us into another world. But as well as being proven to help with mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety, there have also been studies that suggest that people who read a lot might even live longer than those who don’t. As we begin to recover from this pandemic of illness, (both physical and mental), looking after our health is becoming increasingly significant. Since books can provide something of a cure, here are four novels to help you heal.
Book Therapy by Jordi Nadal
Publisher: Mensch Publishing
Publication date: 15th July 2021
Book Therapy by Editor and Founder at Plataforma Editorial, Jordi Nadal, is an extremely diverse and intriguing collection of stories that have provided Nadal with lessons in life and living in times of difficulty and stress. The book reflects on thirty-three authors from all over the world and across time periods, with names including Chekhov, Elena Ferrante, C. S Lewis, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Buddha.
To reflect on these authors and their stories, is to ‘sit by the fireplace of heaven’, as Nadal has described. Each story provides a kind of soothing balm to life’s everyday anxieties, and the book serves as an instructional manual for living your life better by reading. What’s more any profit made from the book will be donated to Give A Book, a charity that ‘promotes the pleasure of reading in the hardest places’, working mostly with prisons and disadvantaged children.
Pre-order the book here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Book-Therapy-Reading-Jordi-Nadal/dp/191291431X/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1624004271&sr=8-1
Mind Full by Dermot Whelan
Publisher: Gill Books
Publication date: 16th April 2021
Comedian Dermot Whelan arrived at a comedy festival in 2007 in an ambulance, following a panic attack on route. Finding himself on what he thought was the brink of death, became an enlightening moment in which he realised the mess of his mind had taken control and was at the point of deeply affecting his physical health. Through the discovery of the healing power of meditation, Whelan is now a corporate stress management expert.
This book is for those who might be sceptical about meditation, as Whelan gives an everyday man’s guide to the practice that doesn’t descend into the overly scientific, or overly religious. Described as a ‘lovely, funny and honest book’, this story might just encourage you to practice, if not get you laughing along the way.
Buy the book here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mind-Full-Unwreck-your-stress-ebook/dp/B08Z7FYL87
This Is It by Conor Creighton
Publisher: Gill Books
Published: 2nd April 2021
Written during the height of the pandemic, This Is It is part memoir, part instructional manual on meditation and Conor Creighton’s life. In practice and in life, Creighton learned that meditation had one goal: to recognise that this is it. There is nothing else. To recognise the inherent inability to change what is in the present moment, and instead to recognise it for what it is, truly and with attention.
Described as ‘Ireland’s Answer to Sam Harris’ (the American neuroscientist and meditation teacher), this book is enlightening, painful as well as healing, and beautifully Irish.
Buy the book here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/This-Conor-Creighton/dp/0717190404
Grounded by Ruth Allen
Publisher: Welbeck Publishing
Published: 4th March 2021
A year of endless daily walks: the pandemic has done one positive thing for many people. It has got us all out and into nature more. I think those of us that live near some sort of green space have come to recognise more than ever the healing power of nature and being outside.
Grounded explores how our connection with nature can improve our mental and physical wellbeing by the physical practice of grounding: connecting our bare feet with the earth. With stunning nature images and beautifully written practices throughout, this book is sure to get you out laying in the grass and rewilding yourself again.
Buy it here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Grounded-connection-improve-physical-wellbeing/dp/1787395863
