Here are 100 books that Glow in the F*cking Dark fans have personally recommended if you like
Glow in the F*cking Dark.
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I’m an author and elementary librarian living in Northern California. My mind is a busy neighborhood: there are all sorts of thoughts and feelings running around up there like hordes of naughty unsupervised children. I need books to ground me, to encourage me to slow down, to help me feel and release those emotions. As an elementary librarian, I’m a voracious reader, but I only choose to return to the most necessary, beautiful books. These authors comfort me through their words, pulling forth laughter, tears, and the knowledge that I’m not so crazy after all. Or, if I am, I’m not the only one.
This memoir was written in 1955 but its wisdom is evergreen because, nearly seventy years later, it’s still very difficult to be a woman.
We are many things to many people and it’s easy to lose ourselves in that swirl of activity and to-dos, which is precisely what happened to me. Depression and anxiety had reading off limits to me for a time, and this was the kind, gentle book that brought me back to the page, the one that said, Yes, yes.
That’s how it is, to love. It’s hard, not because you’re doing it wrong, but because you’re doing it right.
'Quietly powerful and a great help. Glorious' Emma Thompson
'Women need solitude in order to find again the true essence of themselves.'
Holidaying by the sea, and taking inspiration from the shells she finds on the seashore, Anne Morrow Lindbergh meditates on youth and age, love and marriage, peace, solitude and contentment. First published in 1955 and an instant bestseller, Gift from the Sea's insights - into aspects of the modern world that threaten to overwhelm us, the complications of technology, the ever multiplying commitments that take us from our families - are as relevant today as they ever were,…
Out of all the flattering reviews of my books, my favourite is of a reader choking on her lunch. My book was about death. The reader, who survived, said it made her laugh so hard. I write about tough times by bringing out the it’s okay to smile now bits. The Midnight Years is about teen mental health, Happily Never After is about loneliness, and Flyaway Boy is about stereotyping. Making people laugh through tears is a tough task. Here are some books that cracked it.
I passively disliked gerkhins until I met this pink, clueless one who’s writing and drawing a book on mental challenges, among other things.
Yes, there are drawings and multicolored pages in an autobiographical book about depression so deep that it keeps the author in bed. Gaspingly funny and told with searing honesty, the book is about dogs, a partner, and a house that needs caring for–caring that she isn’t in the mood to do–and a to-do list that stays undone while she whiles away her time doing nothing.
“Funny and smart as hell” (Bill Gates), Allie Brosh’s Hyperbole and a Half showcases her unique voice, leaping wit, and her ability to capture complex emotions with deceptively simple illustrations.
FROM THE PUBLISHER: Every time Allie Brosh posts something new on her hugely popular blog Hyperbole and a Half the internet rejoices.
This full-color, beautifully illustrated edition features more than fifty percent new content, with ten never-before-seen essays and one wholly revised and expanded piece as well as classics from the website like, “The God of Cake,” “Dogs Don’t Understand Basic Concepts Like Moving,” and…
I’m an author and elementary librarian living in Northern California. My mind is a busy neighborhood: there are all sorts of thoughts and feelings running around up there like hordes of naughty unsupervised children. I need books to ground me, to encourage me to slow down, to help me feel and release those emotions. As an elementary librarian, I’m a voracious reader, but I only choose to return to the most necessary, beautiful books. These authors comfort me through their words, pulling forth laughter, tears, and the knowledge that I’m not so crazy after all. Or, if I am, I’m not the only one.
Maggie Smith is a poet, and this book about the end of her marriage is exquisite.
I loved her careful prose, her honesty, and the book’s format (with its varying chapter lengths and her perfect word choice, it often reads like poetry). I love being married to my husband of 20+ years, but this book reminds me that, in the end, I belong to me. It’s healthy and necessary to search out my own joy.
"[Smith]...reminds you that you can...survive deep loss, sink into life's deep beauty, and constantly, constantly make yourself new." -Glennon Doyle, #1 New York Times bestselling author
The bestselling poet and author of the "powerful" (People) and "luminous" (Newsweek) Keep Moving offers a lush and heartrending memoir exploring coming of age in your middle age.
"Life, like a poem, is a series of choices."
In her memoir You Could Make This Place Beautiful, poet Maggie Smith explores the disintegration of her marriage and her renewed commitment to herself in lyrical vignettes that shine, hard and clear as jewels. The book begins…
I’m an author and elementary librarian living in Northern California. My mind is a busy neighborhood: there are all sorts of thoughts and feelings running around up there like hordes of naughty unsupervised children. I need books to ground me, to encourage me to slow down, to help me feel and release those emotions. As an elementary librarian, I’m a voracious reader, but I only choose to return to the most necessary, beautiful books. These authors comfort me through their words, pulling forth laughter, tears, and the knowledge that I’m not so crazy after all. Or, if I am, I’m not the only one.
When my depression was intense, I was continually worried that something would happen to me or my family. It was a visceral fear, one that ranked up there with a child’s belief that something was hiding under the bed.
To read this story of the author’s experiences with her son’s epilepsy diagnosis was surprisingly comforting for me. She too was terrified, and yet she made her way through, as moms so often manage to do.
I loved this book’s tender, funny, well-crafted words about how little we really can control in our lives. It reminded me that worry won’t make the future brighter, but it will make the present darker.
A New York Times Editors' Choice One of NPR's Best Books of the Year
"A beautifully wrought ode to life...a precious gift to the world." -The Washington Post
From the bestselling author of I Miss You When I Blink comes a poignant and powerful new memoir that tackles the big questions of life, death, and existential fear with humor and hope.
As a daughter, mother, and friend, Mary Laura Philpott considered herself an "anxious optimist"-a natural worrier with a stubborn sense of good cheer. And while she didn't really think she had any sort of magical protective powers, she believed…
I’m deeply passionate about us all being happy and healthy at work. I’ve been this way ever since I was old enough to realise just how much time we would spend there! I grew up in a time filled with images of stressed out, chain-smoking professionals, where the word ‘executive’ was synonymous with ‘burnout’. I knew there had to be a better way. I’ve worked in mental health for twenty years and corporate wellbeing for over a decade and I love to combine those experiences to help people have their best day at work every day.
This may seem a ‘wild card’ recommendation as this book has nothing to do with work.
However, Beth Kempton uses the Japanese concept of ‘Wabi Sabi’ to help us come to terms with being imperfectly perfect. Life may not always go to plan and we can face disappointments. Perhaps your project fell through, or your pitch failed, or you realised you are on the wrong path or on a pathway that no longer serves you.
This book offers very gentle wisdom to overcome and accept these challenges in life, and therefore in work, providing the reader with comfort and knowledge to embrace their perfectly imperfect life.
The definitive guide that teaches you how to use the Japanese concept of wabi sabi to reshape every area of your life and find happiness right where you are.
Fed up with the exhausting challenges of our fast-paced, consumption-driven existence, millions of people around the world are turning to timeless cultural traditions to find true meaning. In this transformative handbook, Beth Kempton introduces you to wabi sabi (”wah-bi sah-bi”), a captivating concept from Japanese aesthetics that offers a whole new way of looking at the world.
With roots in Zen and the Way of Tea, wabi sabi teaches you to…
I'm Dr. Chloe Carmichael, clinical psychologist and USA Today bestselling author of Nervous Energy: Harness the Power of Your Anxiety(endorsed by Deepak Chopra). As a clinical psychologist, a lot of people ask me how to get rid of their anxiety. They're often surprised to learn that actually, we don't always want to get rid of anxiety—because the truth is that anxiety actually brings many benefits, if we know how to unlock them. Anxiety’s healthy function is actually to stimulate preparation behaviors. In this book, I share nine tried and tested tools with step-by-step instructions and real life examples to help readers harness the healthy power of anxiety.
This book is another great book for people with anxiety. The desire for social acceptance can be very anxiety-provoking for many people. This can lead to a pattern of self-denial and people-pleasing behaviors. This book teaches how to have healthy boundaries while still having positive relationships, thereby reducing anxiety. This book is very well-written, simple, easy to follow, and highly recommended by therapists and counselors.
What's wrong with being a "people pleaser?" Plenty!
"A fascinating book... If you struggle with where, when, and how to draw the line between your own desires and the demands of others, buy this book!" Kay Redfield Jamison, bestselling author of An Unquiet Mind and Night Falls Fast
People pleasers are not just nice people who go overboard trying to make everyone happy. Those who suffer from the Disease to Please are people who say "Yes" when they really want to say "No." For them, the uncontrollable need for the elusive approval of others is an addiction. Their debilitating fears…
Growing up in Brazil facing poverty and adversity, I was helped by my grandmother, who instilled in me a profound lesson: be the water, not the rock. She taught me the significance of adaptability in confronting uncertainty, stress, and discomfort. Later in life, while pursuing my PhD in clinical psychology, I discovered her teachings aligned with leading mental health practices. Today, I'm an associate professor at Harvard, a renowned global speaker, and an author, ardently committed to empowering individuals globally with evidence-based techniques to transform anxiety into power. Every book in this list resonates with my grandmother's wisdom about boldly navigating life and underscores the transformative potential of embracing discomfort.
I've always held immense admiration for Michelle Obama's honesty, empathy, and resilience—all of which are vibrantly evident in her latest work.
She delves into the ubiquitous yet unsettling realm of uncertainty, offering her own experiences and the tactics she's employed during times of change. I particularly resonated with her chapter on avoidance and how avoidance is the true enemy keeping us stuck, which is the core premise of my own book.
Obama's candid narrative inspired me to reveal my personal journey in my book and might just be the catalyst you need to surmount the upcoming hurdles in your life.
The powerful, inspiring follow-up to the critically acclaimed, multi-million #1 bestselling memoir Becoming
In The Light We Carry, former First Lady Michelle Obama shares practical wisdom and powerful strategies for staying hopeful and balanced in today's highly uncertain world.
She considers the questions many of us wrestle with: How do we build enduring and honest relationships? How can we discover strength and community inside our differences? What do we do when it all starts to feel like too much? Michelle Obama believes that we can all lean on a set of tools to help us better navigate change and remain…
Growing up in Brazil facing poverty and adversity, I was helped by my grandmother, who instilled in me a profound lesson: be the water, not the rock. She taught me the significance of adaptability in confronting uncertainty, stress, and discomfort. Later in life, while pursuing my PhD in clinical psychology, I discovered her teachings aligned with leading mental health practices. Today, I'm an associate professor at Harvard, a renowned global speaker, and an author, ardently committed to empowering individuals globally with evidence-based techniques to transform anxiety into power. Every book in this list resonates with my grandmother's wisdom about boldly navigating life and underscores the transformative potential of embracing discomfort.
I recommend this book because it resonated deeply in my professional life, as I often encounter patients seeking to eradicate anxiety, convinced that happiness lies in the absence of negative feelings.
Harris debunks this notion, revealing it as a trap. His philosophy aligns with my own—true satisfaction and happiness stem from navigating through anxiety towards what genuinely matters. Harris masterfully imparts wisdom and techniques rooted in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). Those grappling with stress and the elusive pursuit of happiness will find solace and direction in Harris's pragmatic advice.
This book is a valuable guide for anyone seeking a more fulfilling life.
Popular myths about happiness are directly contributing to our epidemic of stress, anxiety and depression - and popular psychological remedies are making it even worse!In this easy-to-read, practical and empowering self-help book, Dr Russ Harris, M.D., reveals how millions of people are unwittingly caught in The Happiness Trap! He then provides an effective means to escape, through a revolutionary new paradigm in Western psychology.Mindfulness is a transformative mental state of awareness, openness and focus. Although mindfulness is worlds apart' from the methods of popular psychology, it is easy to learn, and will rapidly and effectively help you to reduce stress,…
I embarked on my very first healing journey at the age of 4, after I lost my mother. Through the years, I wanted nothing more than to live a happy life. It wasn’t until the age of 21 that I understood the reason for my pain and discomfort –the lack of love that I had for myself. I started writing about my emotions and sharing these pieces on an online blog. Within a few months, my page grew tremendously. I realised then that we’re all on various healing journeys, and most of us struggle with self-love, even if we look like we’ve got it ‘figured out’ – we still struggle.
This is one of the first self-help books I read that didn’t feel like too much ‘hard work’ and was still incredibly helpful. What I mean by that is that often self-help books can get a little too theoretical, or hard to digest, and this makes it difficult to uncover the tools that we need without getting lost in all the words. Vex’s book wasn’t like that at all. Vex King breaks down self-love into positive vibes, emphasising that the way to become your greatest self is to welcome and experience these good vibes in various areas of your life. Vex’s approach to self-love is to unpack concepts such as lifestyle, mindset, acceptance, manifestation, and good habits and what they can do to promote your best life.
To love yourself, then, would be to ensure that you’ve adopted a healthy way of practising all, or most of the above. The…
The #1 Sunday Times bestselling non-fiction book of 2021 - over one million copies sold worldwide.
Join the self-love revolution with visionary writer Vex King and discover inspirational messages and universal wisdom to help you manifest positive vibes.
Vex overcame adversity to become a source of hope for thousands of young people, and now draws from his personal experience and his intuitive wisdom to inspire you to:
- practise self-care, overcome toxic energy and prioritize your wellbeing - cultivate positive lifestyle habits, including mindfulness and meditation - change your beliefs to invite great opportunities into your life - manifest your…
I’ve been obsessed with the creative process since I was 8 and read Harriet the Spy and realized her writing saved her and after I spied on one of my parent’s cocktail parties and wondered why everybody was so dull (I was so cheeky). Still, it’s the quest that drives me: how do we be fully ourselves in this world and how does creativity help? I explore this question on my podcast Create Out Loud and in my weekly newsletter, and these books have helped me formulate, if not answers, creative and mindful practices that sustain me daily. I hope they inspire you too.
Most creatives struggle with maintaining a creative practice in the face of busted water heaters, draining day jobs, and pesky emotions especially anxiety and depression. Beth’s refreshingly honest handbook is built on the premise you must find a way to make your art no matter what. She’s also been a guest on my podcast Create Out Loud and I loved everything she shared.
The Artist's Way for the 21st century-from esteemed creative counselor Beth Pickens.
If
you are an artist, you need to make your art. That's not an
overstatement-it's a fact; if you stop doing your creative work, your
quality of life is diminished. But what do you do when life gets in the
way? In this down-to-earth handbook, experienced artist coach Beth
Pickens offers practical advice for developing a lasting and meaningful
artistic practice in the face of life's inevitable obstacles and
distractions. This thoughtful volume suggests creative ways to address
the challenges all artists must overcome-from making decisions about
time,…
