Welcome back to Book Break! In today's video I have got a stack of books here to recommend you
that will give you some of the best advice you have ever had. We talked recently in our "books
about books video," which I will link to below, about how it feels like books can really change
your life. And sometimes that's literal! I've got a real mix here of some books that will give you
really helpful practical advice, and some that are just full of timeless wisdom passed through the
ages. Either way, they might be exactly what you need. So let's start with a classic: The Prophet
by Khalil Gibran is a collection of 26 prose poetry fables. And this is actually one of the
most translated books in the world, because this advice applies in every language. It's called The
Prophet but it's not a religious text, it's more spiritual, and they can work within any faith or
none, it's not exclusive or prescriptive at all, it's just genuinely very good advice on love and
friendship and parenting and so many different aspects of being human. And I'll just read you
one little pearl of wisdom from the book. "Say not I have found the truth, but rather I have found
a truth. Say not that I have found the path of the soul, say rather I have met the soul walking upon
my path." I think that's really lovely. Then on a much more whimsical note, you can also get some
pretty good advice from Alice in Wonderland. So this book, What Would Alice Do?, is a collection
of quotes from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. And I always loved
that quote about believing six impossible things before breakfast, I think that's great advice for
life. I maybe took it a little bit too literally, when I was growing up I believed all sorts of
impossible things, like thinking that I was a fairy until I was much too old to think I was
a fairy, but it definitely made childhood a lot more fun believing a load of nonsense. So I trust
anything this book says. So it's divided up into quotes that apply to different parts of your life,
like health and safety, or the workplace. So a useful quote for the workplace to never get too
emotional in the workplace: "Consider what a great girl you are, consider what a long way you've
come today, consider what o'clock it is, consider anything, only don't cry!" And then there are some
quotes that might be a little more obvious but they're definitely just as useful. "If you drink
much from a bottle marked poison it is almost certain to disagree with you sooner or later."
Definitely good to know. So you can definitely go a long way asking yourself "what would Alice do?"
in certain situations, but I also know a lot more people who ask themselves "what would Oprah do?"
So in The Path Made Clear, Oprah Winfrey has collected some of the key lessons and stories
from her life so far, and she also brings together quotes and advice and extracts from
interviews with her many famous friends. We've got everyone in here from Brene Brown to Jay-Z,
and one of my favourite quotes in here came from Gloria Steinem. "If you're in a place where you're
more powerful than the people around you, listen as much as you talk. And if you're less powerful,
talk as much as you listen." I think that's really great advice. Now another
celebrity with a strong focus on kindness and improving the world is Lady Gaga. Her Born This
Way foundation is a non-profit organisation dedicated to making the world a kinder place.
And Channel Kindness is a book full of stories collected by the Born This Way foundation from
young people all over the world. They're stories of strength and bravery and resilience, so we
hear in here from young people who stood up to bullies, people who set up LGBTQIA+ safe spaces,
people who opened up about mental health, the stories in here combine to show you a completely
different way of approaching the world to make it kinder. For some anthologies filled with really
inspirational writings, I've got this beautiful series here from the Macmillan Collectors Library.
This is part of a series that also includes a fourth book, Food for Thought, which I don't have
with me here, but it's equally beautiful. I'll show you the cover here. But I've got here with me
The Art of Solitude, Why Friendship Matters and The Joy of Walking. They're all such lovely books,
these would make wonderful presents, because they're absolutely stunning and just filled with
this wonderful advice, and musings on life. So for example The Art of Solitude contains an extract
from A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf, which is all about the importance of women having their
own spaces to create. And in Why Friendship Matters we get this really moving extract from
Instances in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs, which tells of how, after escaping from
slavery and living for years as a fugitive, Harriet Jacobs made a friend whose kindness
and conversation restored a lot of her trust. So you get all sorts of powerful stuff like that in
these books. And then for something more practical but just as life-changing, I really recommend Just
Eat It by Laura Thomas. So this is her anti-diet book, which is packed full of advice to help you
change your relationship completely with food. And there's another book coming early next year called
How to Just Eat It, which is going to be filled with exercises to guide you through the process. I
adore this book. In a world where body image is so complicated, and so many of us struggle with food,
genuinely some of the best advice I've ever got has been from this book. It's great because it's
so completely non-judgmental. So for example some really good advice in here on emotional eating.
"Emotional eating is actually kind of useful. It's your body's way of telling you something
is up." And then in the rest of this chapter she goes on to encourage you to think about times when
emotional eating has actually helped you, and to stop being so hard and judgmental on yourself for
emotional eating. Instead she advises you to add other tools to your emotional toolkit, rather than
just taking that one away. OK next I've got an interactive one. This is Journey by Paulo Coelho,
so this is a guided journal full of quotes from Paolo Coelho's books and speeches. And then along
the way it asks you questions to take you on this journey of self-discovery. So for example
you might have a quote on one page, "When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping
you to achieve it," which is from The Alchemist by Paolo Coelho, and then on the next page you have
an exercise. So it asks you to reflect on a time when the language of enthusiasm and your belief
in or desire for something, no matter how big or small, resulted in it manifesting in your life.
So it really encourages you to think about your experiences and reflect on them and write about
them, and you'll end up giving yourself some of your best advice. Really lovely reflective
experience. And then probably the person who gets quoted the most when people are reaching for
pearls of wisdom is Confucius. But there are also so many quotes misattributed to Confucius now,
and so many different ways of understanding his words, that really understanding Confucius's
philosophy, and how it can apply to us now, has always felt quite inaccessible to me. Which is
where this book, Confucius from the Heart by Yu Dan, comes in. In this book, which is
absolutely beautiful by the way, Yu Dan provides a modern interpretation of Confucian thought.
And she goes through and talks us through some of his stories, and shows us how Confucius's thinking
still really applies to us, over two and a half thousand years after he died. So quite a range
in there, and now I would love to know which books have given you the most life-changing
advice. Do leave your recommendations in the comments below, and in the meantime I
will link to a playlist here of other similar videos that you might enjoy. See you next time!