it changed my life

The most successful self-help book of all time... Carnegie has never seemed more relevant

This is indispensable reading for anyone who wants both breadth and detail in how sexual consent is expressed, understood and all too often violated. Rough is inclusive and sympathetic writing that, importantly, remains sex positive and optimistic for a future with more knowledge and more power. It's consent writing that would make anyone want to change the world from one of the UK's leading voices on the issue.

Rough speaks to how many women often feel after sexual encounters - violated but unsure of exactly why, and whether our feelings are valid. This book is excellent and demonstrates just how valid those feelings are.

An incredible investigation into a frighteningly common part of our sexual experience; determined to give ownership back to those who have had their agency stolen from them.

You need to read this.

2021's most important book about sex.

Cathy O'Neil's fascinating, important, and insightful book is a hard look in the mirror, but one that also gives us hope that we can marshal shame into a force for social reform and not just social punishment

Cathy O'Neil's Weapons of Math Destruction was a thunderclap -- using wonderfully vivid stories, it exposed the dehumanizing effects of a data-driven world. The Shame Machine is even more personal, but no less devastating. Whether it's through body-shaming mobs or a deeply flawed judicial system, humans use shame as a weapon to bully, demean, and devalue other humans. And with the unstoppable growth of digital tools, this power has become far too great. O'Neil reminds us that we must resist the urge to judge, belittle and oversimplify, and instead allow always for complexity and lead always with empathy

Whether it's smoking in public, masking against Covid-19, or promulgating political lies, O'Neil allows room for shame while also urging readers always to 'punch up' at the social and economic machine and its masters rather than down at the vulnerable. A thoughtful blend of social and biological science, history, economics, and sometimes contrarian politics

Serious, at times funny, but also kind and knowledgable

A lovely, thoughtful, caring and informative book which will help very many people

Include in 'Health solutions for your mind and body'

In this gripping account of a long personal journey to confront a difficult family history, Findlay explores the effects of trauma, reveals the healing power of art, and affords deep insights into contemporary memorial culture.

A brave and profound book which asks difficult questions about how we live with those parts of history which we would rather forget. Angela Findlay is tireless in her search for the truth - and for a reconciliation process which acknowledges that there can be no neat conclusions. Many readers will find this book informative, healing and inspiring.

A magnificent achievement. So honest, so thorough and so well written, both Angela's search for truth and this book are about the deepest possible experience of transmitted collective/personal trauma.

Angela Findlay has written a brave and unflinchingly honest exploration of the complex legacy of her German grandfather's activities as a top-ranking Wehrmacht officer in WW2. Her book is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the far-reaching impact of transgenerational memory, shame or trauma, and a moving testament to the personal and collective value of reckoning with the past.


r

*Best new wellness books of January 2021

A must-read... sharp, funny, it chronicles all of the big decisions a woman is expected to make between the ages of 25-40: where to live, if they should marry, what to do with one's career. And that other biggie: to have a baby or not.

Ab-definingly funny, The Panic Years captures the female experience perfectly. Discussing all of the large, looming decisions women have to make between their late 20s and early 40s, this is a must-read.

Offers advice and feminist learnings on how to survive when it feels like everyone around you is becoming a parent.

Wise, perceptive and refreshingly open...a memoir that feels inherently personal to womanhood and what being a woman means.

A must read. Timely, honest, brave and funny calling for a new kind of conversation about love, work and parenthood.

Bracingly honest...big-hearted... [and] page-turningly compelling

Some Body To Love is an honest and thoughtful memoir that touches on difficult contemporary topics . . . Incredibly moving and very, very powerfu

A powerful treatise on pain and love, this is an honest, moving and authentic examination of the end of a relationship, and the way our lives can fracture and recover from sudden, seismic shifts. Heminsley's writing is sharply resonant - you don't have to share her experiences to be struck by her observations about letting go with love, and how we can find strength in self-love too

Energetic, dark and hilarious. Paris Lees, with her loud and proud sense of self, is set to explode.. if you read one book this summer, make it What It Feels Like for a Girl... radically cool, explosive and riotous ... long may Lees' voice shine neon bright

Like Alan Sillitoe on acid... it's got to be a film. I've never read anything like it.

Raw and original

Extraordinary, riotous, furiously unique, moving and funny, What It Feels Like for a Girl is a deeply important book as well as being a fantastic read

Clever, gripping, messy, sad. I loved it.

Sadness and joy also go hand-in-hand in What It Feels Like for a Girl, an exuberant account of Paris Lees's tearaway teenage years in Hucknall, Nottinghamshire, where "the streets are paved wi' dog shit". Her gender nonconformity is just one aspect of an adolescence that also features bullying, violence, prostitution, robbery and a spell in a young offenders' institute. Yet despite the many traumas, Lees finds joy and kinship in the underground club scene and a group of drag queens who cocoon her in love and laughter.

Bold and compulsively readable... She writes with humour about heartbreakingly harrowing moments while simultaneously capturing the dazzling joy of Nottingham nightlife and the importance of finding those who accept you for who you truly are