Library
A slowly growing library of the books I'm reading now and the ones I keep returning to. Each one earns its place here for a reason — and I'll tell you mine.
by Claire Ragozzino (2020)
The book that gave me language for what I already felt — that food, movement and rest aren't separate from each other, and aren't separate from who you are. I return to it whenever I need a reminder that there's no single right way to live a healthy life.
by Charlie Mackesy (2019)
A small book I keep on hand for the days when nothing makes sense. Three sentences and a drawing can do more than a whole self-help shelf, and Mackesy proves it on every page.
Slow living
by Natalie Walton (2019)
The companion to This is Home, but quieter — Walton goes deeper into the homes of people who chose stillness on purpose. I keep this one near my desk for the days when "doing more" starts to feel louder than it should.
by Natalie Walton (2017)
Walton walks through real homes — not styled magazine pages — and pulls out the principles behind a life that feels settled. I keep returning to it for the reminder that home isn't a decorating project; it's an ongoing conversation between you and the space you live in.
by May Sarton (1973)
I keep coming back to Sarton's journals. She wrote slowly, from a quiet house, about the texture of a life lived on her own terms: gardens, weather, friendships, age, work. Reading her feels like permission to take a season more seriously than a deadline.
The journals I return to most:
by Cal Newport (2024)
Newport argues for doing fewer things, working at a natural pace, and obsessing over quality — and against the pseudo-productivity of "always visibly busy." It pairs unexpectedly well with the soft, body-led work I do; the conclusions overlap more than the styles do.
by Carl Honoré (2004)
The book that made me realize speed had become my default, not my choice. Honoré doesn't preach — he just shows, gently, what slowing down can return to you. I recommend it to almost everyone I work with.
by Courtney Carver (2017)
Carver writes from her own moment of being forced to slow down — a diagnosis that turned her life inside out — and pulls something honest out of it. The book isn't about owning fewer things; it's about asking what's actually nourishing you, and what's just loud.
by Cal Newport (2019)
Newport's argument is simpler than the title sounds: most of us never chose the apps that now eat our attention, so deciding what stays is a kind of self-respect. I came back to my own phone differently after this one.
by Nathan Williams (2013)
Not really a cookbook — more a quiet invitation to slow the table down. I came for the recipes and stayed for the gentler way of gathering that runs through the whole book.
Mindset
by Jennifer Breheny Wallace (2023)
Wallace names something I see again and again in clients — the quiet pressure of achievement culture, and how it gets internalized as "I'm only as valuable as my output." The reporting is sharp; the implicit invitation is to ask what kind of worth you actually want to teach yourself.
by Marshall B. Rosenberg (1999)
A book I quietly draw on in almost every coaching conversation. Rosenberg's framework — observation, feeling, need, request — sounds clinical until you try it in a hard conversation and feel how much weight the structure carries. It taught me how to listen without rushing to fix.
by Elsa Punset (2017)
Punset writes for the in-between moments — the morning you don't want to start, the conversation you've been avoiding. Each chapter is short on purpose, which is the point: small revolutions don't ask much from you in any given moment.
by James Clear (2018)
The book everyone has read, and for good reason — Clear is generous with the mechanics of small change. I disagree with the implicit "optimize yourself" frame, but the practical pieces I keep: identity-first habits, friction design, the 1% argument.
by Greg McKeown (2014)
The premise sticks even when the examples don't: that doing fewer things, better, is its own discipline — not a productivity hack. I treat the questions at the end of each chapter like a small ritual when I notice my calendar getting noisy.
Wellness
by Gabor Maté (2003)
One of the hardest, most necessary books I've read. Gabor Maté traces the threads between unspoken stress, suppressed emotion, and the body's eventual no — and once you see those threads, you can't unsee them.
by Michelle Ogundehin (2020)
Ogundehin treats the home as a wellbeing tool, not a styling project. The chapters move room by room and end up being more about your nervous system than about décor — which is the only way a book like this works.
by Verónica Blume (2018)
Blume writes about wellbeing as a way of being inside your own body, not a checklist to perform. I find myself underlining the lines that sound like things I'd want to say in a session but haven't yet found the words for.
by Héctor García & Francesc Miralles (2016)
The popular hook is the diagram, but the real value is the slower thread underneath — that purpose isn't a single big thing you find once, but the texture of small daily reasons to get up. I keep coming back to that frame.
Nutrition
by Xevi Verdaguer (2017)
Verdaguer writes the way I wish more practitioners did — clear, specific, willing to name what mainstream nutrition often avoids. It's the kind of book I lend to people who've been told their symptoms are "just stress" and feel the answer must be more layered than that.
by David Frenkiel & Luise Vindahl (2017)
A family cookbook that gets vegetables right — not as a sacrifice or a performance, but as the default. I open it on the weeks I need recipes that don't argue with me, just feed everyone.
by David Perlmutter (2015)
Perlmutter makes the gut-brain connection legible without dumbing it down. I'd argue with some of the prescriptive edges, but the underlying message — that what you eat shapes how you think and feel — is one I quietly carry into almost every nutrition conversation.
by Aran Goyoaga (2019)
A gluten-free Basque cookbook that taught me cooking can be both careful and unfussy. Goyoaga's food feels like it belongs to a real life — not a magazine spread — and I cook from it more often than any other book on the kitchen shelf.
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