📚 Restless Reads #2
Book recommendations from travel & adventure, mindset and motherhood.
Hello Restless Gang,
I’ve interrupted the tale of a family cycle across France to bring you another round-up of recent reads from the past few months. Shocker! Who’s making the rules here? Oh wait, that’s me 🙋🏼♀️
🤓 Read on for the book recommendations below
🎧 Or listen to it as an audio
And fear not, if you’re a paid subscriber, I’ll drop part three of the cycling story into your inbox this Sunday as a bonus post. Ooo err.
If you’re not currently on the paid tier and want to know what happens in the cycling story, hit the button below to upgrade and join the exceptionally Restless Gang.
A few notices this week before we get going (Why is it I always have so much to tell you? How exciting.)
Substack Live tonight (5th Dec) with Lazy Girl Running at 8pm GMT / 3pm ET.
Laura and I have finally found a time that works. Horraay! If you’re around - drop in to say hello and comment on the live with any questions. We’ll be chatting about running, mindset, motherhood and rolling up your sleeves to publish your own books.
To join us, make sure you’ve downloaded the Substack app and have the notifications turned on. You’ll get a pop up on your phone when we’re live. Magic.
Christmas Gift Subscriptions for Restless Mumma
Let’s hear it for the non-physical-thingy presents this year (except if you’re buying books of course, books are great).
If, like me, you intended to carve an adventuresome friend a thoughtful wooden hedgehog, bake them cupcakes or make their face out of colourful fusilli pasta but have now realised you don’t have the time…
You can gift them an annual Restless Mumma subscription instead. I’ve made that gift subscription 20% off from now until Dec 25th.
Signed Christmas book orders are now all in the post
If they don’t turn up by the end of this week for UK peeps — you can officially send the reindeers after me. Or just email me. Either one. (Overseas orders will take a wee bit longer to arrive. Please don’t release the reindeer-hounds just yet.)
To the post!
Enjoy and catch you next week,
Anna xx
📚 Restless Reads #2
I am having a full-blown saucy love affair with reading at the moment. It could be to do with the fact that we’ve recently given up TV (there’s a post in that coming one day) or that I enjoy escaping into far-flung places in book pages at a time when I’m not travelling as much as I used to. Either way, I’m currently now happiest curled up, in bed, with a good book.
All of these books below are non-fiction, because that’s what I love to read. I do keep trying fiction, and will keep trying but (unless it’s a kids book) my brain just starts to wander off.
Which brings me to the first book…
🤯 Stolen Focus
by Johann Hari
Why I picked it up: Recently I’ve become quite concerned about my mind and it’s ability to concentrate. I’ve done many things to reduce distraction and noise in my life (leaving my phone untouched for hours, even a full day) and yet still, it doesn’t seem as easy as it once was to get into that state of sweet of writer’s flow.
What’s it about? Waaaay more than you think. I picked it up thinking ‘oh this’ll be about social media and advertising and how it’s rotting our brains’. But it takes a much broader view than that. Johann travels the world to interview experts on everything from social media, the internet, the way we socialise, the complexity of ADHD diagnoses, modern schooling and what we view as a successful life (usually growth = bigger/faster/more money).
Why I loved it: It’s a real journey. A scary one at that. It helped me to understand that there’s a reason why the world feels ‘always on’ and like it’s moving at a million miles an hour — because people make a lot of money by distracting us and want to keep the world moving that quickly. The interactions with experts make for great mini personal stories and it made me feel a little bit less crap about my currently inability to concentrate for any decent length of time.
👉🏻 Check out Stolen Focus here
🏔️ Braving It
by James Campbell
Why I picked it up: A massive thank you to Restless subscriber Laurel for recommending this one! I’m always drawn to books about surviving winter in the wilderness and have dreams of taking my kids on many, many adventures, so I hoped this would be inspo for that.
What’s it about: A beautiful father-daughter bonding adventure with a real purpose. James takes his teenage daughter on several trips to Alaska, in winter. The first one to build a cabin. He learns a lot about parenting and she learns a lot about surviving Alaskan winters.
Why I loved it: Beautiful descriptions of nature, a simple life ruled by the elements and some insight into history and indigenous Alaskan ways of life (Ever wondered how to skin the bark off a tree? Or how a to clear a winter runway for a plane to land? Me too). All-in-all it transported me to being right there with James and Adrian. There are some very honest moments. Zero machismo at all. How refreshing.
☹️ How to Be Sad
by Helen Russell
Why I picked it up: You know when you find an author that you like and you just go on a fangirl rampage and read all of their books? I have done that with Helen Russell. This one really stood out because I have been both the happiest and saddest I have ever been in my life, in the past two years. I’m keen to better understand my own sadness but also our default reaction to it in general, which is to push it away.
What’s it about? All the ways we avoid sadness and why we shouldn’t. There’s ooodles of knowledge from interviews with experts and she does a cracking job on getting you to zoom out and understand how we (in the west) deal with sadness, compared to other places around the world. Mixed in with all of the interesting insights is Helen’s personal story of grief after losing her sister at a very young age, and her struggles with an eating disorder.
Why I loved it: It is SO well researched. I love books like this, when the writer/journalist goes and wades through the mountains of evidence which I don’t have the patience to read and presents it all neatly in a little booky-gift and says kindly — ‘here’s some suggestions, do these things and see what happens.’
But most of all I love it because Helen doesn’t hold back in sharing her own sadness story — which makes it raw and beautiful. I cried at the end.
👉🏻 Check out How to Be Sad here
✨ Enchantment
by Katherine May
Why I picked it Up: I have been trying to up my gratitude recently. By ‘up it’ I mean focus on the little things, the smaller moments in life, closer to home. Katherine May has a much-loved Substack, which I follow and I saw her posting about this book — which led to me writing about a mini moment of awe of my own.
What it’s about: Opening our eyes to the possibility that awe is everywhere. Katherine talks about her own experiences of awe and heads off to places around Britain in search of things, stories and places that intrigue her. There’s a also a section about the importance of play as adults — and how that often gets lost or overlooked in favour of more serious/important things.
Why I loved it: This is a very gentle book. By that I mean, there’s no dramatics. It is like a meandering river - detailing life and the world through small, quiet moments — sunsets, starry skies and walks in nature. It’s so gentle that I had to fight to slow myself down to sink into it. I’m so glad I did.
p.s Isn’t enchantment just the lovliest word?
❤️ Matrescence
by Lucy Jones
Why I Picked it Up: I heard Lucy interviewed on a podcast and she made a lot of sense. I, on the other hand was (and still am?) trying to make sense of a lot of the changes that have come with being a mumma, so I thought this might help me out.
Also… I’d heard the term Matrescence before — used to describe the transition to motherhood and, even though it’s such a beautiful term, it’s not well-known. (Evidenced by the fact that my spellcheck while writing this is telling me that it’s not a word.)
What’s it about: How the transition from pre-mum to mumma life is a change as significant as puberty. Physiologically, neurologically, emotionally, culturally… in every single way. Using her own experience of motherhood as a backdrop, Lucy brings all of the evidence into one neat little book to explain quite why we feel so changed after having kids both within ourselves and in how we relate to the world around us.
Why I loved it: It made me feel a whole lot less mental. Lucy puts all of the facts in front of you and says ‘here’s what’s happened to your brain and your body and here are the cultural norms and expectations of the society we live in’. It made me breathe a huge sigh of relief. I felt like I finally understood why motherhood is such a brain-screwy TRIP.
🌊 Paddling North
by Audrey Sutherland
Why I picked it Up? I’d been reading a lot of books with a research / journalistic angle and I wanted to get back to being immersed in adventure and nature. I searched for books ‘with a strong sense of place’ and this was one that popped up. Oh My. I ADORED IT! How have I never heard of this woman before?
What’s it about? Audrey Sutherland was originally from California. She moved to Hawaii and then raised her four kids there as a single mum. This book is about a time in the 1980’s when the kids are grown, she’s sixty-years old and she spends two summers paddling alone, in an inflatable kayak, through Alaska’s gnarley yet beautiful ‘inside passage’ (a term used to describe the 1,000 islands and islets, coves, fjords and coastal towns which dominate Alaska’s south west coast.)
Why I loved it: Audrey was a badass! (She passed away in 2015 aged 94). The story is straightforward and quite ‘bish, bash, bosh — I paddled here, felt this way, did this, met this person, ate this… but it’s never dull. She has such a matter-of-fact way of describing the journey and not shy to tell you her fears. I also enjoyed reading about adventure at a time with limited technology.
Audrey also clearly LOVED good food. She drinks wine most nights and whips up delicious campfire feasts. She even shares some of the recipes in the book. *rushes off to mix up a Portuguese sausage soup*
👉🏻 Check out Paddling North here
And that’s the lot!
I hope you enjoyed the rundown on those Restless Reads. Let me know if you like the sound or any of them and I’m all ears for future book suggestions, please pop yours in the comments below.
❤️ Muchos love,
Anna xx
Looking forward to adding a few of these to my TBR list - I loved Matrescence, a must read books for all mums! Like you say it's so helpful because it states the facts and zooms out and let's us look at the bigger picture. Helps us to move away from self-blame and cultivate self compassion instead ❤️
Just finished Matrescence... Mind blown! I can't stop telling people about it