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Books are a boon companion.
Stop staring at the shelves of your local bookstore – let us point you towards some of our faves.
Culture, Society & Feminism
On Our Best Behaviour: The Seven Deadly Sins and The Price Women Pay to Be Good — Elise Loehnen’s Salve for the Soul
If you are an avid fan of Goop like us, you will likely be very familiar with the talents of Elise Loehnen.
Loehnen was Gwenyth Paltrow’s right hand woman in building the Goop empire, and she became even more familiar as the host of the Goop podcast, and a key person in the Goop Netflix series.
Since leaving Goop, she has launched her own podcast ‘Pulling the Thread’ (highly recommend) and has also made her debut as an author of her first book. Although it’s worth noting that Loehnen is no stranger to the literary world, having worked as a ghost writer for many successful books already.
In this book, Loehnen challenges the old and outdated societal pressures and standards placed on women in today’s society. She draws synergies between the archaic Seven Deadly Sins, and how they still somehow dictate the way a woman must behave in society, if they want to be perceived as ‘good’. Shattering this unfair and patriarchal paradigm, Elise reminds us that these sins may indeed be exactly what we need to embrace, if we are to thrive — reframing each one as a positive call for realignment within each of us, if we are to be truly good for ourselves.
SLOTH: Believing Sloth to be sinful, we deny ourselves rest.
ENVY: Believing Envy to be sinful, we deny our own wanting
PRIDE: Believing pride to be sinful, we deny our own talents
GLUTTONY: Believing gluttony to be sinful, we deny our own hunger
GREED: Believing Greed to be sinful, we deny our own security
LUST: Believing lust to be sinful, we deny our own pleasure
ANGER: Believing anger to be sinful, we deny our own needs
+ SADNESS: Believing sadness to be sinful, we deny our own feelings
Intelligently and honestly written, and full of personal anecdotes which are sure to strike resonance with many people — we highly recommend.
Choosing Wholeness Over Goodness: A Process for Reclaiming Your Full Self, Elise Loehnen and Courtney Smith
A provocative interactive workbook that leads us to reclaim our true selves so we can find the peace and wellbeing we deserve.
With the publication of her electrifying New York Times bestseller On Our Best Behavior, Elise Loehnen - often deemed "our culture's therapist" - offered a groundbreaking exploration of the rules women unwittingly follow in order to be considered good. She illuminated the centuries-old code of conduct that keeps us disempowered, exhausted, anxious, and disconnected - even from ourselves.
In Choosing Wholeness Over Goodness, Loehnen partners with Courtney Smith, a renowned Enneagram expert and coach, to share tools they have learned from the visionary healers, thinkers, and therapists that prompt readers to dig into the stories they tell themselves. These tools guide us to peel back the layers of cultural programming that prevent us from expressing our full potential. The paradigm-shifting process Loehnen and Smith teach on the pages of this workbook reveals the answers to the questions that tug at our souls: Who am I? What do I want? What's standing in my way?
Untamed: Stop Pleasing, Start Living, Glennon Doyle
A powerful exploration of the patriarchal programming we have all been shackled with—and what it takes to break free.
Who were you before the world told you who to be?
Part inspiration, part memoir, Untamed explores the joy and peace we discover when we stop striving to meet the expectations of the world, and instead dare to listen to and trust in the voice deep inside us.
From the beloved bestselling author and award-winning podcast host, Glennon Doyle invites readers to break free from societal expectations and embrace their true selves. With raw honesty and insight, she shares her journey of self-discovery and empowerment. This book serves as a rallying cry for anyone seeking to live authentically and courageously, making it a transformative read for all.
Guilt Free: Reclaiming Your Life From Unreasonable Expectations, Jennifer Reid
Why do women feel so much guilt? We're guilty when we don't do what we think we should, when others get upset with us, even when we indulge in moments of pleasure.
In Guilt Free, psychiatrist Dr. Jennifer Reid invites us to let go of all this guilt so we can start making choices based on what we want and need rather than what we think we should be doing.
Some guilt is good, even necessary, but women are uniquely socialized to hold themselves to unrealistic expectations. Guilt drives us to take on more than we should, and do things that we don't truly want to do. Any time we fall short - and we will, because we're human - there it crops up: guilt. It's too much, and it doesn't have to be this way.
Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, Caroline Criado Perez
Enraging yet essential reading for all of humanity. This book opens your mind to the unthinkable inequality women have faced—and still face—in society. We must do better, and awareness is the first step.
Caroline Criado Perez’s Invisible Women shines a light on the systemic bias against women in a world designed predominantly by and for men. Through compelling research and real-world examples, Perez uncovers how this oversight affects women’s health, safety, and opportunities.
This eye-opening book not only raises awareness but also advocates for a more equitable future, making it essential reading for anyone passionate about gender equality.
The Culture Map: Decoding How People Think, Lead, and Get Things Done Across Cultures, Erin Meyer
A fascinating journey through the key characteristics and social norms of cultures around the world. This is essential reading for anyone wanting to expand their cultural awareness and develop the skills to build stronger cross-cultural relationships.
The Culture Map by Erin Meyer is an essential guide for navigating cross-cultural communication in the business world.
Meyer provides a comprehensive framework for understanding diverse communication styles, helping readers bridge cultural gaps and foster effective collaboration.
This insightful book is invaluable for professionals working in global teams, equipping them with the skills to succeed in an increasingly interconnected world.
Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence, Dr Anna Lembke
Dopamine Nation reveals how endless scrolling hijacks our brain’s reward system—and why detoxing is key to balance.
This book is about pleasure. It's also about pain. Most importantly, it's about how to find the delicate balance between the two, and why now more than ever finding balance is essential. We're living in a time of unprecedented access to high-reward, high-dopamine stimuli: drugs, food, news, gambling, shopping, gaming, texting, sexting, Facebooking, Instagramming, YouTubing, tweeting... The increased numbers, variety, and potency is staggering. The smartphone is the modern-day hypodermic needle, delivering digital dopamine 24/7 for a wired generation. As such we've all become vulnerable to compulsive overconsumption.
In Dopamine Nation, Dr. Anna Lembke, psychiatrist and author, explores the exciting new scientific discoveries that explain why the relentless pursuit of pleasure leads to pain...and what to do about it. Condensing complex neuroscience into easy-to-understand metaphors, Lembke illustrates how finding contentment and connectedness means keeping dopamine in check. The lived experiences of her patients are the gripping fabric of her narrative. Their riveting stories of suffering and redemption give us all hope for managing our consumption and transforming our lives. In essence, Dopamine Nation shows that the secret to finding balance is combining the science of desire with the wisdom of recovery.
Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other, Sherry Turkle
Alone Together shows how constant connection through technology leaves us more isolated than ever—and why unplugging matters.
A groundbreaking book by one of the most important thinkers of our time shows how technology is warping our social lives and our inner ones.
Technology has become the architect of our intimacies. Online, we fall prey to the illusion of companionship, gathering thousands of Twitter and Facebook friends, and confusing tweets and wall posts with authentic communication. But this relentless connection leads to a deep solitude. MIT professor Sherry Turkle argues that as technology ramps up, our emotional lives ramp down. Based on hundreds of interviews and with a new introduction taking us to the present day, Alone Together describes changing, unsettling relationships between friends, lovers, and families.
The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource, Chris Hayes
From the New York Times bestselling author and television and podcast host, a powerful, wide-angle reckoning with how the assault from attention capitalism on our minds and our hearts has reordered our politics and the very fabric of our society.
We all feel it ― the distraction, the loss of focus, the addictive focus on the wrong things for too long. We bump into the zombies on their phones in the street, and sometimes they’re us. We stare in pity at the four people at the table in the restaurant, all on their phones, and then we feel the buzz in our pocket. Something has changed utterly: for most of human history, the boundary between public and private has been clear, at least in theory. Now, as Chris Hayes writes, ‘With the help of a few tech firms, we basically tore it down in about a decade.’ Hayes argues that we are in the midst of an epoch-defining transition: attention has become a commodified resource extracted from us, and from which we are increasingly alienated.
Because there is a breaking point. Sirens are designed to compel us, and now they are going off in our bedrooms and kitchens at all hours of the day and night, doing the bidding of vast empires, the most valuable companies in history, built on harvesting human attention. The Sirens’ Call is the big book we all need to wrest back control of our lives, our politics, and our future.
Messengers: Who We Listen To, Who We Don't, And Why, Stephen Martin & Joseph Marks
In an attention economy, this book decodes the power of communication and how to ensure your message is received in a noisy world.
In Messengers, behavioral scientists Stephen Martin and Joseph Marks explore the subtleties of communication and influence.
They delve into the traits that make some individuals more persuasive and trustworthy than others.
This groundbreaking work uncovers how our demeanor and seemingly trivial details can significantly impact how we are received.
With practical insights, this book equips readers with the knowledge to enhance their communication skills and effectively convey their messages in a noisy world.