There’s a lot of bloggers and business people of all kinds posting their extensive list of books they’ve read and what they did in 2018. That’s great! I love hearing about new resources and sharing my own BUT once I’ve read through a 100 list, I don’t want to read another 12 of them. Why not share throughout the year and then link to them in a final post? Or create an entire feature like Jamie Ridler’s Creative Living Bookshelf. I get it, we want to seal the year off and open up to more books coming out way.

With that here are a list of books I’ve got so much out of reading, there are only 12 physical books and others were audio or iBooks. I hadn’t given much time to reading last year, a book a month.

Before I list them, here’s a quick summary: I read Bird by Bird on a girls trip camping her tone is so to the point and made me laugh out loud, Life is a verb in the Summer sat on the grass or in my car between work because it’s full of little real life short stories. Big Magic I also read on a seaside trip, so many little stories of true determination of a writer. Everyday matters got me drawing on the go again then Draw your day got me drawing more of what had meaning in my day.

I listened to Tom Hanks on a Beautiful Writers podcast and bought his book of fictional short stories Uncommon Type that I read at the end of the day, usually in bed. I read Coaching the Artist within and The Red Tent at the same time and WOW what a shift. I read them between work, on the buses, while waiting around, the Artist within really got me fired up to create again and really did coach me, I went on to do more writing, Eric Maisel is always a great go to. The Red Tent is fiction based on a Biblical story and is well written, there are highs, lows, babies and blood shed, it’s got it all.

I was bought Bumps in motion and it has lots of yoga resources in it and sequences to try (probably best for people who already do yoga from home) it had a section on bead properties and I went on to buy a beautiful Unakite bracelet on Etsy and make my own Malas with rose quartz and mother of pearl. The absolute best find was Bountiful Beautiful Blissful by Gurmukh who guides you through each trimester with wisdom, stories, meditations and exercises to try.

Lastly I ended the year with The life changing magic of tidying by Marie Kondo, I started it when I was decluttering two rooms and it helped immensely, I will share more on that soon. I felt called to buy On Writing to help with my memoir and it did fuel some of my writings on here and the practises I do, I don’t read his horrors but this is a great resource.

Here’s the list written out, non physical books are at the bottom:

Life is a verb – Patti Dingh

Everyday matters – Danny Gregory

Draw your day – Samatha Dion Baker

Coaching the Artist within – Eric Maisel

Bird by bird – Anne Lamott

The red tent – Anita Diamant

The life changing magic of tidying – Marie Kondo

On writing- Stephan King

Uncommon type – Tom Hanks

Beautiful bountiful blissful – Gurmukh

Bumps in motion – Patricia Anaya

ALSO…

The Gifts of imperfection – Brene Brown

I thought it was just me – Brene Brown

Rich Dad Poor Dad – Robert Kiosaki

Get rich lucky bitch – Denise Duffield-Thomas

Yours Truly Taran