I have always loved reading. (Clearly.) Long before it became a habit or a hobbyI felt like it was part of who I was – something instinctive, almost essential. But even with this identity firmly in place, I still find myself sinking into guilt. The voice that wonders if the hours spent curled up with a book could be better spent elsewhere – more productive, more impressive, more effective. This is me at my worst, when even joy seems like something to be gained.
But at best, reading brings me back to myself. It reminds me that getting lost in a good story or immersed in a new idea isn’t an escape from life, it’s a way of facing it more fully. Books broaden our perspective, soften our judgments, and provide language for feelings we didn’t know how to name. Through fiction, I enter lives lived differently from my own; through non-fiction, I find frameworks to understand my inner world and the one beyond. Both make me more curious, more empathetic and more alert.
Featured image of our interview with Rémi Ishizuka by Michelle Nash.
That’s why, during times of burnout, disconnection, or nostalgia, I return to reading not as a self-optimization tool, but as a companion. The good book doesn’t tell us how to improve our life, it helps us pay more attention to it. And sometimes that’s all it takes to fall back in love with the life we already live.
Why wellness books are important
We often think of “feel-good” books as light or escapist, but research– and lived experience – suggest that something deeper is happening. Reading has been shown to reduce stress levels, improve emotional regulation, and build empathy by allowing us to inhabit perspectives beyond our own. When we slow down with a book, our nervous systems follow, bringing us out of urgency and into a more reflective state.
Stories, in particular, help us make sense of our own lives. Fiction enhances our ability to empathize and imagine, while nonfiction gives us language and frameworks to better understand our inner worlds. Both invite us into presence, asking us to pay attention, listen, and feel without immediately needing to respond or perform. In a culture that rewards speed and efficiency, reading offers something increasingly rare: sustained focus and emotional space.
At their best, feel-good books don’t promise constant happiness or easy answers. Instead, they remind us of what already exists: connection, curiosity and possibility of change. They help us to come back to ourselves with more kindness and to the world with a little more openness. And sometimes that slight change is enough to change the way life feels.
Our Top Wellness Picks
The books below are the ones we return to when we want to feel more connected: to ourselves, to others, and to the beauty of everyday life. It’s not about hustle or reinvention, it’s about attention: the kind that softens your inner dialogue, broadens your perspective, and reminds you why life is worth paying attention to in the first place.
Some are gently grounding, others emotionally expansive, but all offer that rare feeling of being both comforted and changed, if only in small and significant ways.
Perplexity of Richard Powers
What does it look like to remain tender in a world that seems increasingly noisy, fractured, and unforgiving? Perplexity do not rush to answer this question. He sits with him, patiently and beautifully.
Centered on the relationship between a widowed father and his neurodivergent son, the novel unfolds as both an intimate family story and an understated elegy for the natural world. Powers combines neuroscience, ecology, and love with remarkable restraint, trusting the reader to feel the weight of what is at stake without being told what to think.
It’s a book that asks you to slow down and notice moments of wonder that flicker and disappear if you don’t look closely. In doing so, it gently reorients you toward caring for each other, the planet, and the fragile beauty of being alive.
Perfect if you feel: overwhelmed by the world, hungry for meaning or needing to be reminded that wonder is always available.
Richard Powers
A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood
This novel takes place over a single day. That’s it – and somehow, it’s enough to hold an entire lifetime. A single man follows George, a middle-aged professor who moves through the ordinary rhythms of his day while carrying the private weight of grief after the loss of his partner.
What makes the book extraordinary is its thoughtfulness. Isherwood dwells on the mundane – lecturing, driving in traffic, making conversation – and, in doing so, reveals how presence becomes both a refuge and a countdown.
While reading A single man sharpens your sensitivity to the present moment. It reminds you that even in times of loss, life still provides texture, connection, and meaning, often in the smallest and least expected ways. In the final pages, you find yourself with a deeper respect for the courage of simply showing up for a day, and letting that be enough.
Perfect if you feel: tender, lonely or needing to be reminded that presence itself can be an act of survival and grace.
Christopher Isherwood
Tove Jansson’s summer book
Not much happens in The summer bookand that’s exactly his gift. Set on a small Finnish island, the novel follows a grandmother and granddaughter through a season of shared days, conversations, silences and ordinary rituals.
Jansson’s writing is deceptively simple, capturing the texture of everyday life with warmth and restraint. The book dwells on small moments – the weather, animals, small disagreements, the joys of everyday life – and in doing so reminds us how many meanings there are. The heartbreak and love are present, but never exaggerated. They exist alongside humor, curiosity, and the easy pleasure of being together.
While reading The summer book it’s like learning to slow down your gaze. It invites you to notice what is already in front of you, to find comfort in routine, and to believe that a life does not need to be dramatic to be deeply felt. In its quiet, unpretentious way, it restores your faith in beauty for beauty’s sake.
Perfect if you feel: overstimulated, tender, or eager to be reminded that quiet moments can bring true joy.
Tove Jansson
Insomnia by Annabel Abbs-Streets
This is the book you reach for during the hours when the world has gone quiet, but your mind has not. Sleepless takes place in the liminal space of night – those periods of wakefulness when thoughts soften, memories surface, and creativity feels both fragile and electric.
Abbs-Streets integrates history, memoir, and cultural observation into a meditation on insomnia, not as a flaw to be corrected, but as a condition that has shaped the inner lives of artists, thinkers, and writers throughout time. The pages move gently, honoring the loneliness of insomnia while reframing it as a portal rather than a problem.
While reading Sleepless we want to keep each other company. It gives you permission to slow down, to listen to what rises when the noise fades, and to believe that meaning can be found even in the hustle and bustle. Instead of urging you to go back to sleep or move toward productivity, it invites you to linger, notice, and feel less alone in the dark.
Perfect if you feel: awake when the world is sleeping, creatively agitated, or in need of a book that includes quiet hours.
Annabel Abbs-Rues
How do you feel? by Jessi Gold
How do you feel? starts from a simple but radical premise: that learning to name and interpret our feelings is fundamental to living well, and not a luxury reserved for moments of crisis.
Written by psychiatrist Dr. Jessi Gold, the book combines clinical insight with deep compassion, providing practical language for emotions that often seem confusing or overwhelming. Rather than pathologizing what we feel, Gold normalizes the entire emotional experience, helping readers recognize what their feelings communicate and respond with caution rather than judgment.
Reading this book feels stabilizing. It doesn’t promise quick fixes or emotional mastery, but it does offer something more lasting: a framework for self-understanding that leaves room for nuance, imperfection, and humanity. As you learn to feel more clearly, you begin to live more gently, with yourself and with others.
Perfect if you feel: emotionally overwhelmed, disconnected from your inner world or ready to build a gentler relationship with your feelings.
Jessi Gold
The Healing Power of Resilience by Tara Narula
Some books are emotionally reassuring. Others do something just as important: they help you regain confidence in your body. The Healing Power of Resilience offers a calm, evidence-based reminder that wellness isn’t about overcoming or fixing yourself, it’s about learning to support your body so it can support you.
Cardiologist Dr. Tara Narula combines medical research with human insight, reframing resilience as a skill that can be strengthened through everyday choices. It connects heart health, stress, sleep, movement and emotional well-being not as separate concerns, but as an integrated system that responds to care, consistency and compassion.
Reading this book feels stabilizing. There is no scaremongering, no pressure to rethink your life. Instead, it reassures that taking care of your physical health – gently and sustainably – is a meaningful way to invest in your future. In a culture that often treats the body as something to be disciplined or ignored, this book reframes care as an act of respect and an expression of love for the life you live.
Perfect if you feel: exhausted, disconnected from your body, or ready for a hopeful, science-based reminder that small acts of care really do add up.
Tara Narula
H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
Grief can shrink the world. H is for Hawk widens it again. After the sudden death of her father, Helen Macdonald set about training a goshawk, imbibing the discipline, patience and physical presence that the work required.
Part memoir, part nature writing, part meditation on loss, the book resists easy metaphors. Macdonald does not tame grief or transcend it; she learns to live alongside him. Training the falcon requires focus, ritual and humility – bringing her back into her body, into the weather and into the present moment.
While reading H is for Hawk reminds you that healing doesn’t always come through insight or catharsis, but through devotion. Devotion to a task, to the natural world, and to staying awake to what is real. By paying close attention to something outside of herself, Macdonald finds a way to challenge herself. in the present in his own life.
Perfect if you feel: detached by loss, drawn to nature, or in need of a book that honors grief without trying to resolve it.
Helen Macdonald
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
Told as a letter from an aging minister to his young son, Gilead unfolds as a series of reflections on love, faith, forgiveness and the moral beauty of ordinary life. Nothing is rushed. Everything is considered.
Robinson’s writing is patient and radiant, attentive to the small graces that make up a life: the meals shared, the conversations remembered, the light that passes through a room. The novel offers a vision of good that is neither naive nor sentimental, but hard-won. It is a perspective rooted in humility, compassion, and a willingness to see others clearly.
While reading Gilead we have the impression of remembering what endures. As a final note on this list, the novel leaves you soothed and softened, with the feeling that a meaningful life is built not through certainty, but through care.
Perfect if you feel: thoughtful, spiritually curious or attracted to books that make you want to live a little more gently.
Marilyn Robinson
Takeaways
Falling in love with your life again doesn’t require a total reset or optimized routine. Sometimes it starts with something simpler: choosing a book, opening a page, and letting yourself be changed in a small, honest way.
The stories we return to don’t so much give us answers as teach us how to look at the world. How to pay attention to our feelings, to others and to the moments that make up a life. When we read with presence, we find that what we were searching for was already within reach: a deeper meaning, a gentler way of being, and the reminder that this life—messy, ordinary, and always in progress—is worth loving again.
The position 8 books to make you fall in love with life again appeared first on Camille Styles.
