North Star Books - my guiding lights for work and life.
I have been making my way through an extended period of ‘post-builder-burnout’ this year and so I originally set out to call this blog post 'books for burnout'. They certainly can be described as Books for Burnout - but I've realised as I'm writing that they're more accurately called my ‘North Star Books’.
What is a North Star Book?
These are the books that I come back to again and again because they help me remember myself and my values so that I can keep showing up to do my best work as my best self.
All of these books offer an exit ramp from the noise. They carry a kind of quiet wisdom and remind me that it is possible (and wonderful) to live in a way that is a slower, softer and truer.
They question dominant cultural scripts about success and productivity. They affirm the quiet truth that nature has something (everything) to teach us, if we’ll just stop to listen.
Without them I, and my creative work and life would simply get washed away by ‘The World’, with it’s relentless messages of, well, relentlessness.
Gentle resistance - baked in
I have created a special blog post for these books here on my Bread & Weather website because they’re guiding lights in my work every day.
I hand make candles and soaps from natural, healing ingredients because there’s something quietly defiant about choosing softness and a world that sells us the opposite.
The ritual of lighting a natural candle or using a bar of handmade soap can remind us that healing doesn’t always look like ‘doing more’. It often starts with doing less, and doing it with great care.
Lighting a candle made from plants and flowers or washing with a bar of soap crafted by hand to gently cleanse and nourish tired skin are small, sensory acts of resistance to a world that runs too fast.
I could put some corny line here about listening to the North Star books while you light a candle or take a moment to wash your face with an all natural handmade soap - but honestly - those ‘Instagram Perfect’ #selfcare moments don’t come around very often, and are often not true self care if they are forced.
I do hope these books might find you, comfort you and give you courage wherever and whenever you need it, as the have for me so many times.
If and when a perfect moment of pause does arrive, and you can stop and rest and perhaps light a candle or take a hot bath, I would like to imagine that the spirit of these books is poured and mixed into each candle and soap that leaves my studio. The words have swirled in the air of my studio for countless hours while I’ve been weighing, measuring, melting, mixing, wicking, pouring, slicing, wrapping and packing.
These book and hopefully by extension my work, all hold the same medicine.
Vive la resistance (gently).
A quick tip before you begin:
My preferred way to absorb these books is by ear. I have them all on audiobook and they are all exquisitely read aloud by their authors. I have listened to them on repeat, sometimes for hours or days at a time.
The Books
Wilding, by Isabella Tree
A deeply hopeful book about what happens when we let go of control.
A true story about surrendering a heavily farmed English estate back to nature.
Isabella and her husband Charlie decide to stop farming their land intensively and instead hand it back to nature. When the land is allowed to follow its own rhythms an astonishing transformation begins. Rare species return, ecosystems heal, and something ancient stirs back to life. The soil begins to heal and balance is restored.
This book speaks to the deep relief of letting go, the wisdom of nature, and the idea that wildness knows what it’s doing.
Note: Even putting aside the life changing content of this book - the way Isabella has written and reads this book is truly magnificent. Your nervous system will be instantly soothed just by her voice and her language.
I Haven’t Been Entirely Honest With You, by Miranda Hart
The gentlest, most comforting, gorgeous warm hug of a book.
Miranda Hart was house and bedbound for 10 years due to the effects of undiagnosed Lyme disease. During that time she went on an internal voyage of discovery and recovery. This book is her summary of everything she learned on said voyage. She calls these learnings ‘The Treasures’ because she found them in the dark cave of illness.
This book is a Trojan horse of wisdom. Written is such a light and easily absorbed style that it may not seem as ‘serious’ as the other titles on this list at first glance. But I find something new and a deeper meaning every time I return to this treasure of a book. Plus I now really want to be best friends with Miranda and go to her house for a crumble tasting party.
The Way of Integrity, by Martha Beck
‘All Martha all the time’ could be my motto in difficult times. She is a lighthouse.
If I had to choose just one of Martha’s many offerings to recommend it would be The Way of Integrity.
This book is her roadmap to coming home to yourself. Martha names the ache so many of us feel when our life looks fine but feels wrong, and offers a path towards home.
Drawing on everything from Dante’s Divine Comedy to her own extraordinary life, she shows what happens when we stop contorting ourselves to fit expectations and instead live in alignment with our truth. It’s deep, radical, and practical. I am going to be listening to and learning from this book for years and years to come.
Honorable Mention
In the interest of complete integrity (see above) I have kept the above list to the books that I genuinely listen to over and over, times without number. However, there is one more book that took just one listen to embed itself under my skin and cement my belief in finding another way to live that is kinder, slower and not hustle driven.
Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation, by Anne Helen Peterson
For engaging with The Rage ™️. This is the book that names the problem.
You know that ‘something ain’t right’ feeling, that swirls just below the surface but you can’t name or put a finger on exactly what it is? Well thank goodness for Anne Helen Peterson who has taken the time to write this book and point to them all.
It’s like she’s come into your house where there’s been a bad smell, and pulls out all the furniture and appliances and floorboards so that you can see exactly where it is.
And while she’s at it she found where that annoying buzzing was coming from and where the moths were getting in and at least 10 other daily irritants.
Petersen examines burnout not as a personal failure, but as a cultural condition. Her analysis is particularly sharp when it comes to the pressures on women and creative souls. Reading it feels like someone turning the lights on in a room you thought you were alone in. You’re not alone. You’re just living in a system that runs people into the ground and calls it ambition.
Petersen unpacks how burnout became the defining condition for an entire generation, particularly under late-stage capitalism. It blends cultural critique with personal narrative and pulls no punches.
““To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment” ”
