Why am I passionate about this?

I am a curious, passionate, and introspective woman. My values have led me to a quest to have a profound impact on the world and leave a legacy of healing. Each book on my list has profoundly impacted me and led me to challenge my values, rethink my priorities, heal my inner turmoil, and use my lived experience to help others lead a more meaningful life.


I wrote...

Book cover of Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Anti-Diet Approach

What is my book about?

My book is a revolutionary book that has freed people from the shackles of diet culture. The first edition came…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of Anti-Diet: Reclaim Your Time, Money, Well-Being, and Happiness Through Intuitive Eating

Elyse Resch Why did I love this book?

I love this book and couldn’t put it down once I began it. It validated everything I believe about the dangers of diet culture and how it robs you of the joy of eating and the freedom to trust your inner wisdom. Christy offers scientific facts and psychological understanding to support her theories and help her readers release themselves from the prison of dieting. 

By Christy Harrison,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Anti-Diet as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Reclaim your time, money, health, and happiness from our toxic diet culture with groundbreaking strategies from a registered dietitian, journalist, and host of the Food Psych podcast.

68 percent of Americans have dieted at some point in their lives. But upwards of 90% of people who intentionally lose weight gain it back within five years. And as many as 66% of people who embark on weight-loss efforts end up gaining more weight than they lost. If dieting is so clearly ineffective, why are we so obsessed with it?

The culprit is diet culture, a system of beliefs that equates thinness…


Book cover of Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia

Elyse Resch Why did I love this book?

This book profoundly moved me, opening my eyes to a concept I had never contemplated. This book explores the origins of weight stigma and anti-fatness while linking them to the history of the development of racism.

Patriarchy, white supremacy, and the false conclusion that black people who were brought to Europe to be slaves were inferior because of their “larger appetite for sex and food” is a stunning revelation. This book rocked my world and incited inner rage and a quest to right this wrong.

By Sabrina Strings,

Why should I read it?

8 authors picked Fearing the Black Body as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Winner, 2020 Body and Embodiment Best Publication Award, given by the American Sociological Association
Honorable Mention, 2020 Sociology of Sex and Gender Distinguished Book Award, given by the American Sociological Association
How the female body has been racialized for over two hundred years
There is an obesity epidemic in this country and poor black women are particularly stigmatized as "diseased" and a burden on the public health care system. This is only the most recent incarnation of the fear of fat black women, which Sabrina Strings shows took root more than two hundred years ago.
Strings weaves together an eye-opening…


Book cover of The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

Elyse Resch Why did I love this book?

I love this book and recommend it to people struggling with negative body image.

Sonya Renee Taylor teaches that we are all connected and that self-judgment in one person extends to the judgment of all people. I found myself digging deeply into the roots of any critical views that I might have held of my own body and then challenging them. Ultimately, it helped me embrace body neutrality and, ultimately, body liberation.

By Sonya Renee Taylor,

Why should I read it?

9 authors picked The Body Is Not an Apology as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"To build a world that works for everyone, we must first make the radical decision to love every facet of ourselves...'The body is not an apology' is the mantra we should all embrace." 
--Kimberlé Crenshaw, legal scholar and founder and Executive Director, African American Policy Forum 

"Taylor invites us to break up with shame, to deepen our literacy, and to liberate our practice of celebrating every body and never apologizing for this body that is mine and takes care of me so well."
--Alicia Garza, cocreator of the Black Lives Matter Global Network and Strategy + Partnerships Director, National Domestic…


Book cover of Toward a Recognition of Androgyny

Elyse Resch Why did I love this book?

I found this book, which I read over fifty years ago, opening my eyes to the foundation of feminism. It taught me that all genders have both traditional female characteristics and male characteristics.   

Having been raised to be the beautiful and dutiful wife, this book gave me the courage to exert my autonomy and appreciate that I held a voice of wisdom that couldn’t be commandeered by another person.

By Carolyn G. Heilbrun,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Toward a Recognition of Androgyny as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In this quietly provocative book, Carolyn G. Heilbrun opens our eyes to the ways in which the concept of androgyny-the realization of man in woman and woman in man-has run, like a hidden river, from its source in pre-Hellenic myth through the literature of the Western world. The androgynous ideal shows itself to be a creative and civilizing force conducive to the survival of a truly human society.


Book cover of Howards End

Elyse Resch Why did I love this book?

I fell in love with this book from my first reading of it when I was in college many, many years ago. Each character was vibrant and perceptive. The writing was beautiful and portrayed images that have stayed with me all of my life.   

This book opened my eyes to class differences and privileges. It led me to evaluating my own life and values.

By E.M. Forster,

Why should I read it?

6 authors picked Howards End as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it. This book is for kids age 13, 14, 15, and 16.

What is this book about?

"Howards End" is E. M. Forster's classic story of the varying struggles of members of different strata of the English middle class. The story centers around three families; the Wilcoxes, who made their fortune in the American colonies; the Schlegels, three siblings who represent the intellectual bourgeoisie; and the Basts, a young struggling lower middle-class couple. "Howards End", one of Forster's greatest works, is a classic dramatization of the differences in life amongst the English middle class.


Explore my book 😀

Book cover of Intuitive Eating: A Revolutionary Anti-Diet Approach

What is my book about?

My book is a revolutionary book that has freed people from the shackles of diet culture. The first edition came out in 1995 and is now in its 4th edition. It has helped those who have suffered from one diet “failure” to the next, accompanied by weight cycling and lowered self-esteem. It has helped past dieters understand that they are not failures; instead, they are successes in ego development.

After all of the deprivation that they’ve experienced, they come to learn that diets assault their autonomy, and their rebellion against dieting is the true success. Finally, relief and a sense of freedom come with trusting your inner wisdom about eating. After all, you were born with this wisdom—it’s time to claim it once again.

Book cover of Anti-Diet: Reclaim Your Time, Money, Well-Being, and Happiness Through Intuitive Eating
Book cover of Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia
Book cover of The Body Is Not an Apology: The Power of Radical Self-Love

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Book cover of Victoria Unveiled

Shane Joseph Author Of Victoria Unveiled

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

Author

Shane's 3 favorite reads in 2024

What is my book about?

A fast-paced literary thriller with a strong sci-fi element and loaded with existential questions. Beyond the entertainment value, this book takes a hard look at the perilous world of publishing, which is on a crash course to meet the nascent, no-holds-barred world of AI. Could these worlds co-exist, or will they destroy each other? And more importantly, how will humans tolerate their own creations, the robots, on this planet?

In this, his latest speculative fiction novel, Shane Joseph, returns to the “what if” questions facing humanity that he raised in After the Flood, a book that won him the…

Victoria Unveiled

By Shane Joseph,

What is this book about?

With Chatbots and Large Language Models changing the world of writing and publishing dramatically, what happens when we introduce a sentient robot capable of feelings into the mix?

Phil Kruger, inventor, and serial womanizer, believes he has the answer in his creation, Victoria, the first sentient robot in the world, imbued with beauty, knowledge, and strength and on a crash course to acquire human feelings through massive infusions of data. Arrayed against him are independent trade publisher Artemius (Art) Jones and his rebellious and sexually starved daughter, Paula, an editor herself, who is determined to take her father's failing press,…


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Interested in obesity, body image, and humanism?

Obesity 31 books
Body Image 24 books
Humanism 34 books