Big books for big brains!

starting off 2025 with some self-help-y titles

It’s the time of year to make a nonfiction book your whole personality. Everyone will be extolling their new lifestyles, going to the gym, training for a marathon, doing dry January, doing Veganuary, all those things that we love to pick up in the worst month of the year to make it feel less bleak.

I’m not immune to any of it, and have some silly little things I’ve assigned myself to do every day of January and some goals for the year. But one thing I can’t stop feeling is an aversion to the rise of poorly written commercial fiction and the people who “read” it at 2x speed on audio or speed read it on their kindles just to get to the next book. Normally I think it’s great that people are reading more than ever, and I try and celebrate reading of all kinds. Positivity is good, generally.

Except I can’t do that right now, for some reason. Maybe it’s the rise of mindless media—get ready with me videos, listicles, materialism as a brand, amazon affiliate links—but all I can feel is a desire to not read what everyone else is f*cking talking about and to dive into dense books that require me to actually think. You know what I mean?

Anyway, I compiled a list of nonfiction books based on Ideas with a capital I. These are the kinds of books where you can latch onto an idea and decide to talk about it, think about it, and text about it for a week or a month. Should you go around telling your officemates how bad farmed fish is for the environment? Hell yeah. Describe the merits of stoicism to your mother-in-law? Obviously! Get into the systemic racism rampant in your town with your neighbor? Small talk, my dude! These books are overwhelmingly written by white guys, I realized after making this list, and that’s my bad, but it kind of hits at the ethos of these kinds of airport thought-provokers: you don’t have to take them too seriously, because these authors are taking themselves VERY seriously. But isn’t it fun to inject some new ideas into your brain when a new year begins?

Here’s a good way to completely reframe your existence. It’s going to be popular among a certain liberal set to be nihilists this year, for obvious reasons, but may I suggest stoicism? Focus on what’s actually possible, babes, and let go of everything that isn’t important. Listen to How to Be A Stoic by Massimo Pigliucci while you get your 10,000 steps a day to achieve this enlightenment.

Another guide on how to live your life, Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman, is more of a crash course in how to live fully. It encourages you to release the idea that your life will be on track as soon as you’re “on top of everything” by drawing from a variety of fields of thought to provide practical tools and shifts.

It’s time to self reflect, so why not second-guess your entire personality and whether you are, in fact, annoying? Me, Myself, and Us by Brian R. Little is an illuminating book on the science of personality, perfect for anyone who wants to have more self-awareness in 2025 (all of us?).

This is not not a book about manifesting. Got some big goals for the year? Read Wanting by Luke Burgis to learn how to make your unspecific desires into fulfilling wants, and maybe they’ll come true ;).

Silence in the Age of Noise by Erling Kagge is about the importance of silence. If you’re the kind of person who always has music or a podcast going, maybe it’s time you turned those off and sat down with this book and thought about it. You can use this knowledge at work when your coworker takes a Zoom call on loud with no headphones in their cubicle.

Four Fish by Paul Greenberg was written in 2011, and it details how our relationship with food from the sea changed drastically in a short amount of time. Can you imagine how bad it’s gotten now? I know all of y’all eat fish to survive so I think it’s mandatory to read about where it’s coming from and how bad some of the practices to obtain seafood are.

Most of us are addicted to coffee so we should know where it comes from. Right? Coffeeland by Augustine Seggewick is perfect for the cause, and who knows, maybe by the end of next year we’ll have all switched to tea.

In Caste, Isabel Wilkerson underlines the invisible caste system in the United States by linking the castes systems of India and Nazi Germany, and using real stories to show how the insidious undertow of caste is experienced every day. I challenge you to read this book instead of a sequel this year!!!

An intricate history of walking as a political and cultural activity, Wanderlust by Rebecca Solnit is a deep dive into the act of walking, and how it has shaped culture through political, social, and aesthetic meaning. Imagine whipping out knowledge from this book on your next hot girl walk??

Thanks for reading in 2024!!! Here’s to another year of words!