My friends who have done a PhD told me that they stopped reading for pleasure while they were studying. That freaked me out a little bit. Reading for pleasure is what I do to relax. I’m super thankful to say that even during this PhD program I’m still reading for pleasure. Maybe you’ll like these books too!
So, these are my 3 favorite non academic books lately!
The first one isn’t really a book, it’s actually a gratitude journal. The tagline for this is “Start your day with gratitude, end your way with joy.” It really works! God created our brains to not be able to be grateful and be worried at the same time. I can’t recommend this highly enough! Here’s the link to buy one for yourself
The second book is The Sparrow, which might be my all time favorite fiction book. It’s not a happy book, you have to read the sequel to get to the good ending, but I just love the portrayal of crossing cultures and doing initial language learning. One beautiful quote is “His greatest satisfaction as a priest was to grant absolution, to help people forgive themselves for not being perfect, make amends, and get on with life.”
The third book that has really blessed me this year Is Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski. Can you imagine how a 21st grader like me would be feeling some burnout? One quote that has helped me is “The moral of the story is: We thrive when we have a positive goal to move toward, not just a negative state we’re trying to move away from.”
So, what are you reading these days?