These uplifting books will remind you how good it feels to read something that lifts your heart. When it comes to the news, being informed is one thing. We can do that in less than five minutes a day. But instead we doom scroll and check in all day long. The news is broken. The way we are consuming news is broken. As a result, we are breaking. At least that’s how I feel when I am glued to the news. It sneaks up on us. We skim the headlines, subscribe to news email, check in on our regular news sites and then one day, we notice that our nervous systems are shot. We try to be informed but end up feeling more confused and distraught than before.
The news is everywhere. It’s on tv, radio, the internet and all over social media. The news on social media can be so addictive, very upsetting (read any comment section) and totally unhelpful because after scrolling for an hour, you can’t remember what happened anyway. You don’t know what you saw, but you know how you feel … completely overwhelmed and/or depleted.
Currently, it feels like all news is breaking news. There is such a fine line between being informed and becoming completely overwhelmed. Every time I get lost in the news I am little worse for wear. Every time I get lost in a book, I am recharged, rested and feel more creative and happy.
8 Uplifting Books to Read If You are Overwhelmed with Breaking News
These are 8 of the most interesting, uplifting books I’ve read or am about to read. I’m including a couple of favorites from an Instagram poll too. The synopsis for each book comes from StoryGraph (the app I use to track my reading).
1. Summer Romance by Annabel Monaghan
I watch The Holiday in July so you can read Summer Romance in October (or any month at all). For your next uplifting book, I’d start here.
The heart-tugging and hilarious story of a professional organizer whose life is a mess, and the summer she gets unstuck with the help of someone unexpected from her past, from the bestselling author of Same Time Next Summer and Nora Goes Off Script.
There aren’t enough labeled glass containers to contain the mess that is Ali Morris’s life. Her mom died two years ago, then her husband left, and she hasn’t worn pants with a zipper in longer than she cares to remember. She’s a professional organizer whose pantry is a disgrace.
No one is more surprised than Ali when the first time she takes off her wedding ring and puts on pants with hardware—overalls count, right?—she meets someone. Or rather, her dog claims a man for her in the same way he claimed his favorite of her three children: by peeing on him. Ethan smiles at Ali like her pants are just right—like he likes what he sees. The last thing Ali needs is to make her life messier, but there’s no harm in a little Summer Romance. Is there? Find Summer Romance here.
2. Other Birds by Sarah Addison Allen
I didn’t read what this book was about before I started it. My daughter said it was a wonderful book and I jumped in.
When one of her new neighbors dies under odd circumstances the night Zoey arrives, she is thrust into the mystery of The Dellawisp, which involves missing pages from a legendary writer whose work might be hidden there. She soon discovers that many unfinished stories permeate the place, and the people around her are in as much need of healing from wrongs of the past as she is. To find their way they have to learn how to trust each other, confront their deepest fears, and let go of what haunts them.
When Zoey Hennessey comes to claim her deceased mother’s apartment at The Dellawisp, she meets her quirky, enigmatic neighbors including a girl on the run, a grieving chef whose comfort food does not comfort him, two estranged middle-aged sisters, and three ghosts. Each with their own story and their own longings. Each whose ending isn’t yet written.
Delightful and atmospheric, Other Birds is filled with magical realism and moments of pure love that won’t let you go. Sarah Addison Allen shows us that between the real and the imaginary, there are stories that take flight in the most extraordinary ways. From the acclaimed author of Garden Spells comes an enchanting tale of lost souls, lonely strangers, secrets that shape us, and how the right flock can guide you home. Find Other Birds here.
3. Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in Our Busy Lives by Wayne Muller
In today’s world, with its relentless emphasis on success and productivity, we have lost the necessary rhythm of life, the balance between work and rest. Constantly striving, we feel exhausted and deprived in the midst of great abundance. We long for time with friends and family, we long for a moment to ourselves.
Millennia ago, the tradition of Sabbath created an oasis of sacred time within a life of unceasing labor. Now, in a book that can heal our harried lives, Wayne Muller, author of the spiritual classic How, Then, Shall We Live?, shows us how to create a special time of rest, delight, and renewal–a refuge for our souls. Find Sabbath here.
4. Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelly Van Pelt
I listened to this uplifting book and highly recommend the audiobook version. The voice of the octopus will melt your heart.
A charming, witty, and compulsively readable exploration of friendship, reckoning, and hope that traces a widow’s unlikely connection with a giant pacific octopus.
After Tova Sullivan’s husband died, she began working the night shift at the Sowell Bay Aquarium, mopping floors and tidying up. Keeping busy has always helped her cope, which she’s been doing since her eighteen-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished on a boat in the Puget Sound over thirty years ago.
Tova becomes acquainted with curmudgeonly Marcellus, a giant Pacific octopus living at the aquarium. Marcellus knows more than anyone can imagine but wouldn’t dream of lifting one of his eight tentacles for his human captors—until he forms an unlikely friendship with Tova.
Ever the detective, Marcellus deduces what happened the night Tova’s son disappeared. And now Marcellus must use every trick his old invertebrate body can muster to unearth the truth for her before it’s too late. Shelby Van Pelt’s debut novel is a gentle reminder that sometimes taking a hard look at the past can help uncover a future that once felt impossible. Find Remarkably Bright Creatures here.
5. Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman
Time is our biggest worry: there is too little of it. The award-winning, renowned Guardian columnist Oliver Burkeman offers a lively, entertaining philosophical guide to time and time management, setting aside superficial efficiency solutions in favor of reckoning with and finding joy in the finitude of human life
The average human lifespan is absurdly, insultingly brief. Assuming you live to be eighty, you have just over four thousand weeks.
Nobody needs telling there isn’t enough time. We’re obsessed with our lengthening to-do lists, our overfilled inboxes, work-life balance, and the ceaseless struggle against distraction; and we’re deluged with advice on becoming more productive and efficient, and “life hacks” to optimize our days. But such techniques often end up making things worse. The sense of anxious hurry grows more intense, and still the most meaningful parts of life seem to lie just beyond the horizon. Still, we rarely make the connection between our daily struggles with time and the ultimate time management problem: the challenge of how best to use our four thousand weeks.
Drawing on the insights of both ancient and contemporary philosophers, psychologists, and spiritual teachers, Oliver Burkeman delivers an entertaining, humorous, practical, and ultimately profound guide to time and time management. Rejecting the futile modern obsession with “getting everything done,” Four Thousand Weeks introduces readers to tools for constructing a meaningful life, showing how many of the unhelpful ways we’ve come to think about time aren’t inescapable, unchanging truths, but choices we’ve made as individuals and as a society–and that we could do things differently. Find Four Thousand Weeks here.
6. Be Ready When the Luck Happens by Ina Garten
I’m listening to this now and it’s narrated by the Barefoot Contessa herself. I’m only a few chapters in but it’s a lovely listen so far.
In her long-awaited memoir, Ina Garten—aka the Barefoot Contessa, author of thirteen bestselling cookbooks, beloved Food Network personality, Instagram sensation, and cultural icon—shares her personal story with readers hungry for a seat at her table.
Here, for the first time, Ina Garten presents an intimate, entertaining, and inspiring account of her remarkable journey. Ina’s gift is to make everything look easy, yet all her accomplishments have been the result of hard work, audacious choices, and exquisite attention to detail. In her unmistakable voice (no one tells a story like Ina), she brings her past and her process to life in a high-spirited and no-holds-barred memoir that chronicles decades of personal challenges, adventures (and misadventures) and unexpected career twists, all delivered with her signature combination of playfulness and purpose.
From a difficult childhood to meeting the love of her life, Jeffrey, and marrying him while still in college, from a boring bureaucratic job in Washington, D.C., to answering an ad for a specialty food store in the Hamptons, from the owner of one Barefoot Contessa shop to author of bestselling cookbooks and celebrated television host, Ina has blazed her own trail and, in the meantime, taught millions of people how to cook and entertain. Now, she invites them to come closer to experience her story in vivid detail and to share the important life lessons she learned along the way: do what you love because if you love it you’ll be really good at it, swing for the fences, and always Be Ready When the Luck Happens. Find it here.
7. Kiss Me at Christmas by Jenny Bayliss
I’ve read more than one holiday book from Jenny Bayliss and they always fall in the category of uplifting books.
White Christmas meets Nora Ephron in Jenny Bayliss’ latest wholehearted, ensemble-cast holiday extravaganza.
Christmas can officially get stuffed because Harriet Smith is not feeling bright and merry this year. She hasn’t for a while. So when her college-aged daughter opts for Manhattan’s winter wonderland instead of Christmas at home, Harriet finds herself seeking solace in a wine-soaked one-night stand.
But how Harriet will spend the holidays is swiftly decided for her after she takes the fall for some students who break into the town’s old Winter Theater. To get the students off the hook, the theater’s elderly owner requests that Harriet direct the washed-out stage’s final Christmas performance. And Harriet will do anything to help the kids . . . even work with the owner’s lawyer who, as it turns out, is her less than impressed one-night stand. Directing the play with him won’t exactly change her life. But it might just reignite the Christmas spirit and remind her what makes life merry and bright again. Find Kiss Me at Christmas here.
8. Gentle by Courtney Carver
I had to include the book I wrote even though it’s not available yet. The moment it comes out, I hope it’s the most uplifting book on your shelf. For now, you can preorder here!
From the author of Soulful Simplicity and Project 333, a collection of 30 practices to overcome chronic overwhelm, cultivate self-compassion, and find permission to do less—perfect for readers of Rest is Resistance and Wintering.
Written by minimalism expert and celebrated author Courtney Carver, Gentle is the “don’t do it all” self-help book you need to live with less stress and more ease, less overwhelm and more joy by uncovering the Gentle You. Grounded in self-compassion and a fierce commitment to less, becoming the Gentle You isn’t about taking the easy road. It’s a practice of real self-care that, over time, will soothe your nervous system and strengthen your relationships.
Organized into three parts—Rest, Less, and Rise—30 challenges and simple practices will help readers radically and (yes) gently shift their pace, headspace, and heart. It’s time to find strength in your softness, fierceness in your flexibility, and to finally rise—not by pushing through but by connecting with the Gentle You, standing in your light and honoring the person you are. Preorder Gentle right here.
Even if you aren’t overwhelmed by the news or you never see the news, read these uplifting books. Your heart will thank you.
This post may contain affiliate links.