Hello beautiful bookworm 🐛

One of my tactics for quitting social media this year was reading. Whenever I'd get the urge to check some feed or notification tray, I'd open up my reading app instead and digest some words. This had the strange effect of opening a floodgate, and I found myself chewing through books like a very hungry caterpillar.

As of this email, I've read 37 books, a mix of fiction and non-fiction, short and long texts, serious and funny. And I'm on track to make it a nice round 39 by the end of the year. (Who reads in multiples of 10, honestly!)

In the interest of sharing, here are my top five reads, the books I felt were a proper punch in the face with pressing information or pure human emotion:

Tender is the Flesh — Agustina Bazterrica
aka. Best dark dystopian fiction that will make you feel a bit sick.
Nothing I can say will put it better than the blurb: "Now, eating human meat--"special meat"--is legal. Marcos tries to stick to numbers, consignments, processing. Then one day he's given a gift: a live specimen of the finest quality. Though he's aware that any form of personal contact is forbidden on pain of death, little by little he starts to treat her like a human being. And soon, he becomes tortured by what has been lost--and what might still be saved."

A World Without Email — Cal Newport
aka. Best book for breaking the spell of destructive work habits.
This book may offer a ton of benefit to teams and small businesses under the current economic climate. I'm fascinated by the idea that deepening our communication can have such an impact on wellbeing as well as the bottom line. This book is less about abolishing email, and more about doing away with the "Hyperactive Hive Mind" workflow that email and chat often facilitate. It's about using tools wisely, rather than becoming slaves to them.

Time Was — Ian McDonald
aka. Best science fiction romance novella that might make you cry.
A small book bursting with a beautiful story. I'm pretty sure it was a throwaway line about one character spotting another in a pub that made me burst into tears. It's embarassing how this author can make me ugly cry with the most mundane of things, but there we go. If you're a massive sook like me, and want a big emo experience without having to read a big epic tome, give this short novella a go.

ROAR — Stacy Sims
aka. Best nutrition and fitness book for active people with female physiology.
"Women are not small men. Stop eating and training like one. Because most nutrition products and training plans are designed for men, it's no wonder that so many female athletes struggle to reach their full potential." This book made me realise that having a certain body type doesn't mean you're at a disadvantage, as long as you learn to work with it instead of against it. Importantly too, that getting older isn't about deteriorating, but about learning to operate at a higher level.

Stolen Focus — Johann Hari
aka. Best doom and gloom that's actually worth paying attention to.
Tl;dr - if you're struggling to pay attention to stuff, it's probably not your fault. Your focus has been stolen from you, not just by Silicon Valley attention hackers and addictive technology, but also by warped social norms and biologically stressful changes in our environment. Thankfully, it's not a lost cause yet, this book suggests. We can still get our focus back.

Well, that's it. If you read any of these, please email me back so we can have a good chinwag/fingertype about them. I won't fall into the trap of setting a reading target for 2023 — that's just extra pressure I don't need. But I'm very much looking forward to reading and sharing more awesome books next year. Watch this space.

Now, I'm asking you: What were your five best books this year, and what did you love about them? And what is one book you are determined to read in 2023?

Hit reply and tell me.

Have a lovely Christmas and New Year! 💃🏻

Sandy.
sanlive.com

🤔

You feel like shit — an interactive self-care guide.

Oh, the places your data will go! A cute comic about a very un-cute data footprint.

Interval Type — A foundry of elegant fonts 😍

👩🏻‍💻

Finally, here's what I'm up to now.