Winter Book Recommendations to Curl Up With

As we head into winter, I often find myself sharing with friends some of my favourite reads from this past year.?

During the summer, I will take a book to the beach, the park or to one of my favourite local patios to sit in the sun and enjoy the outdoors. With the colder weather upon us, my environment changes from "fun in the sun" to curling up by my fireplace with a hot beverage and my favourite oversized sweater.?

The one consistent over the year is that I can always be found with a good book.?

Below are five books I’ve appreciated and shared with friends. I hope you enjoy these as much as I did, and you can take some time before the year ends to cozy up with your own good read!?

The Happiness Advantage: How a Positive Brain Fuels Success in Work and Life

By Shawn Achor

Conventional wisdom holds that once we succeed, we’ll be happy; but science reveals this formula to be backward: Happiness fuels success, not the other way around.

Research shows that happy employees are more productive, more creative, and better problem solvers than their unhappy peers. Positive people are significantly healthier, less stressed and enjoy deeper social interaction than the less positive people around them.

The Happiness Advantage reveals how small shifts in our mind-set and habits can produce big gains at work, at home, and elsewhere.

The Fortunes of Jaded Women

By Carolyn Huynh

I found this multi-narrative work of fiction brimming with levity and candour. The Fortunes of Jaded Women is about mourning, meddling, celebrating, and healing together as a family. This story follows a Vietnamese family of women who are cursed to never know love or happiness, reunite and emerge victorious, even when it feels like the world is against them.

Namwayut We Are All One: A Pathway to Reconciliation?

by Chief Robert Joseph

In this profound book Chief Robert Joseph, Chief of the Gwawaenuk People, traces his journey of survival from residential school to his present-day role as a leader who inspires individual hope, collective change, and global transformation.

In Namwayut, Chief Joseph teaches us to transform our relationships with ourselves and each other; sharing lessons about honour and respect while discovering how to dismantle the walls of discrimination, hatred, and racism in our society.

Run Towards the Danger: Confrontations with a Body of Memory

By Sarah Polley

Sarah Polley (actor, screenwriter, and director) shares six essays showcasing pieces of her life as she remembers it. From stage fright to high risk childbirth to endangerment and more, Polley shows the power of retraining her mind by charging towards triggering activities in order to find a path forward.

The Diamond Eye

By: Kate Quinn

Based on a true story, this historical fiction novel follows the unforgettable World War II tale of a quiet bookworm who becomes history’s deadliest female sniper, Mila Pavlichenko.

The Diamond Eye is a haunting novel of heroism born of desperation, of a mother who became a soldier, an unexpected friend to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and ultimately a woman who found her place in the world and changed the course of history forever.