How to Think More About Sex


Alain de Botton - 2012
    By examining sex from a subjective perspective, he uncovers new ideas on how we can achieve that balance.

Heart Talk: Poetic Wisdom for a Better Life


Cleo Wade - 2018
    Featuring over one hundred and twenty of Cleo’s original poems, mantras, and affirmations, including fan favorites and never before seen ones, this book is a daily pep talk to keep you feeling empowered and motivated. With relatable, practical, and digestible advice, including “Hearts break. That’s how the magic gets in,” and “Baby, you are the strongest flower that ever grew, remember that when the weather changes,” this is a portable, replenishing pause for your daily life. Keep Heart Talk by your bedside table or in your bag for an empowering boost of spiritual adrenaline that can help you discover and unlock what is blocking you from thriving emotionally and spiritually.

When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times


Pema Chödrön - 1996
    A collection of talks she gave between 1987 and 1994, the book is a treasury of wisdom for going on living when we are overcome by pain and difficulties. Chödrön discusses:    •  Using painful emotions to cultivate wisdom, compassion, and courage    •  Communicating so as to encourage others to open up rather than shut down    •  Practices for reversing habitual patterns    •  Methods for working with chaotic situations    •  Ways for creating effective social action

All About Love: New Visions


bell hooks - 1999
    In eleven concise chapters, hooks explains how our everyday notions of what it means to give and receive love often fail us, and how these ideals are established in early childhood. She offers a rethinking of self-love (without narcissism) that will bring peace and compassion to our personal and professional lives, and asserts the place of love to end struggles between individuals, in communities, and among societies. Moving from the cultural to the intimate, hooks notes the ties between love and loss and challenges the prevailing notion that romantic love is the most important love of all.Visionary and original, hooks shows how love heals the wounds we bear as individuals and as a nation, for it is the cornerstone of compassion and forgiveness and holds the power to overcome shame.For readers who have found ongoing delight and wisdom in bell hooks's life and work, and for those who are just now discovering her, All About Love is essential reading and a brilliant book that will change how we think about love, our culture-and one another.

Radical Acceptance: The Secret to Happy, Lasting Love


Andrea Miller - 2017
    He's funny, charming, smart, successful, and kind. He’s perfect. Except for when he is not. Like when he is late. Or short-tempered. Or impatient. Or lazy. Or he has just loaded the dishwasher incorrectly (again). Maybe he suddenly feels like the most frustrating person on the planet. Or maybe you’re simply not feeling heard or seen. Or loved enough.It’s these proverbial unlovable parts that make loving all of him so tough. But imagine if you let go of your itch to fix, judge, improve, or control your partner. Imagine if you replaced judgment with compassion and empathy. Tremendous empowerment and liberation come from loving someone—and being loved—for who we really are. This is called Radical Acceptance. Whether you're looking for Mr. Right or are already with him, this is your powerful five-step guide to attaining life’s ultimate prize: unconditional love.Through Radical Acceptance, you’ll learn how to increase your emotional resilience, feel more confident, determine whether you’re settling, quiet those doubt-filled voices in your head, get out of that endless cycle of dead-end dates, reduce conflict, and build a deeply fulfilling, affirming relationship—all through highly actionable advice. Best of all, you will discover how amazing it feels to have your heart expanded by an abundance of love and compassion for your partner and yourself. Featuring compelling stories from real-life couples and insights from the foremost thought-leaders and researchers in brain science, sexuality, psychotherapy, and neurobiology, Radical Acceptance illustrates that embracing your partner for exactly who they are will lead to a more harmonious relationship—and provides an unexpected path to your own personal transformation.

The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse


Ellen Bass - 1988
    Although the effects of child sexual abuse are long-term and severe, healing is possible.Weaving together personal experience with professional knowledge, the authors provide clear explanations, practical suggestions, and support throughout the healing process. Readers will feel recognized and encouraged by hundreds of moving first-person stories drawn from interviews and the authors' extensive work with survivors, both nationally and internationally.This completely revised and updated 20th anniversary edition continues to provide the compassionate wisdom the book has been famous for, as well as many new features:Contemporary research on trauma and the brainAn overview of powerful new healing tools such as imagery, meditation, and body-centered practicesAdditional stories that reflect an even greater diversity of survivor experiencesThe reassuring accounts of survivors who have been healing for more than twenty yearsThe most comprehensive, up-to-date resource guide in the fieldInsights from the authors' decades of experienceCherished by survivors, and recommended by therapists and institutions everywhere, The Courage to Heal has often been called the bible of healing from child sexual abuse. This new edition will continue to serve as the healing beacon it has always been.

Goodbye, Things: The New Japanese Minimalism


Fumio Sasaki - 2015
    The effects were remarkable: Sasaki gained true freedom, new focus, and a real sense of gratitude for everything around him. In Goodbye, Things Sasaki modestly shares his personal minimalist experience, offering specific tips on the minimizing process and revealing how the new minimalist movement can not only transform your space but truly enrich your life. The benefits of a minimalist life can be realized by anyone, and Sasaki’s humble vision of true happiness will open your eyes to minimalism’s potential.

Becoming Cliterate: Why Orgasm Equality Matters—And How to Get It


Laurie Mintz - 2017
    Mainstream media, movies, and porn have taught us that sex = penis + vagina, and everything else is just secondary. Standard penetration is how men most reliably achieve orgasm. The problem is, women don’t orgasm this way. We’ve separated our most reliable route to orgasm—clitoral stimulation—from how we feel we should orgasm—penetration. As a result, we’ve created a pleasure gap between women and men:50% of 18-35-year-old women say they have trouble reaching orgasm with a partner64% of women vs 91% of men said they had an orgasm at their last sexual encounter55% of men vs. 4% of women say they usually reach orgasm during first-time hookup sexIn Becoming Cliterate, psychology professor and human sexuality expert Dr. Laurie Mintz exposes the broader cultural problem that’s perpetuating this gap, and what we can do about it. Pulling together evidence from biology, sociology, linguistics, and sex therapy into one comprehensive, accessible, and prescriptive book, Becoming Cliterate features:Cultural & historical analysis of female orgasm (spoiler: the problem’s been going on for ages)An anatomy section (it’s all custom under the hood)Proven techniques for cliterate sex (it starts with training the sex organ between your ears)A comprehensive final chapter for men (because you don’t have to have a clitoris to be cliterate)By dispelling the lies, misunderstandings, and myths that have been holding us back, Becoming Cliterate tackles both personal and political problems and replaces them with updated outlooks and practical skills needed to change our collective perspective on sex. It’s time to finally inform women and men on how to have satisfying experiences in bed that benefit both parties.The revolution is cuming—and Becoming Cliterate offers a radical, simple solution to progress and pleasure for all.

Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids: How to Stop Yelling and Start Connecting


Laura Markham - 2012
    Laura Markham’s approach is as simple as it is effective. Her message: Fostering emotional connection with your child creates real and lasting change. When you have that vital connection, you don’t need to threaten, nag, plead, bribe—or even punish.This remarkable guide will help parents better understand their own emotions—and get them in check—so they can parent with healthy limits, empathy, and clear communication to raise a self-disciplined child. Step-by-step examples give solutions and kid-tested phrasing for parents of toddlers right through the elementary years.If you’re tired of power struggles, tantrums, and searching for the right “consequence,” look no further. You’re about to discover the practical tools you need to transform your parenting in a positive, proven way.

What You Really Really Want: The Smart Girl's Shame-Free Guide to Sex and Safety


Jaclyn Friedman - 2011
    Friedman decries the hypocrisy and mixed messages of our culture (we’re failures if we don’t act sexy, but we’re sluts if we actually pursue sex; we need to be protected from rapists lurking in bushes, but deserve “whatever we get” if we have a drink at a party and wear a skirt), and encourages readers to separate fear from fact, decode the damaging messages all around them, and discover a healthy personal sexuality.Educational and interactive, What You Really Really Want includes revealing quizzes, creative exercises, and reality-based advice about sex and sexuality today. With Friedman’s informed advice to guide them, readers will build new skills for safely expressing their sexuality with lovers and explore effective ways to talk about tricky issues with family and friends—and learn how to make the world a little safer for everyone else’s sexuality along the way.

Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware


Andy Hunt - 2008
    Not in an editor, IDE, or design tool. You're well educated on how to work with software and hardware, but what about wetware--our own brains? Learning new skills and new technology is critical to your career, and it's all in your head. In this book by Andy Hunt, you'll learn how our brains are wired, and how to take advantage of your brain's architecture. You'll learn new tricks and tips to learn more, faster, and retain more of what you learn. You need a pragmatic approach to thinking and learning. You need to Refactor Your Wetware. Programmers have to learn constantly; not just the stereotypical new technologies, but also the problem domain of the application, the whims of the user community, the quirks of your teammates, the shifting sands of the industry, and the evolving characteristics of the project itself as it is built. We'll journey together through bits of cognitive and neuroscience, learning and behavioral theory. You'll see some surprising aspects of how our brains work, and how you can take advantage of the system to improve your own learning and thinking skills.In this book you'll learn how to:Use the Dreyfus Model of Skill Acquisition to become more expertLeverage the architecture of the brain to strengthen different thinking modesAvoid common "known bugs" in your mindLearn more deliberately and more effectivelyManage knowledge more efficientlyPrinted in full color.

She: Understanding Feminine Psychology


Robert A. Johnson - 1976
    Johnson explores these questions in this new edition of She, updated to reflect the growth of his thinking on these subjects.Many writers and scholars have long considered that the ancient myth of Amor and Psyche is really the story of a woman's task of becoming whole, complete, and individuated. Here, examining this ancient story in depth and lightening up the details, Johnson has produced an arresting and perceptive exploration of what it means to become a woman. You will not read these pages without understanding the important women in your life and a good deal more about yourself as a woman.

Sex


The School of Life - 2017
    Yet nothing could be further from the truth. Despite a veneer of openness, sex remains an extraordinarily complicated business, hard to discuss and surrounded by shame and unspoken desires. This book provides a relief from the loneliness and confusion, explaining how sex truly operates and what it aims at. The book demonstrates that far from thinking about sex too much, we haven’t begun to think about it as deeply as we should.

Mama Gena's School of Womanly Arts: Using the Power of Pleasure to Have Your Way with the World


Regena Thomashauer - 2002
    So if you need a refresher course in fun—and you know you do—come to Mama.

The Alabaster Girl


Zan Perrion - 2013
    I will sing you the song of women.What women? you ask.All women, I answer.Even me? you ask.Especially you, I answer.And what will you sing to me? you ask.Ah, my love, I will sing to you of hidden truthsYes, hidden truths and secret secrets..."On a nameless train somewhere between here and nowhere, a woman and a man sit facing each other. She is a journalist there to interview him. He is the world’s greatest seducer. Thus begins “The Alabaster Girl,” the new novel by Zan Perrion. We get to join the two on this train ride, a fly on the wall, as the seducer recounts his life, philosophy and startling insights, interspersed with excerpts from his new book: “The Alabaster Girl.” The book within the book...