I’m starting an occasional series where I share a couple of my favourite books. First up, cookbooks and nutrition guides I live by. I’ve put nifty links to Amazon if you’re busting to get your hands on them….

photo via trendsters

Sally Fallon’s Nourishing Traditions

Sally is the co-founder and president of the Weston A Price Foundation, and this cookbook is a comfy, organic bible for anyone wanting to live a truly nourished, mostly paleo, sugar-free life. It’s the real deal. The lovely Jo Foster got me my copy and I pore over it regularly.

I love the sub title (“The Cookbook that Challenges Politcally Correct Nutrition and The Diet Dictocrats”. Right on, Sally!), the detailed nutrition tips all the way through and the fermented vegetables, sprouting and “how to make your own yoghurt, whey and kefir” sections. You can buy the book here.

Deepak Chopra’s Perfect Health

The best introduction to Ayervedic healing, hand’s down. I mostly live by the Ayervedic approach – which is to say I eat according to my dosha. This style of living is about healing through food. I’ve written on this here. Chopra weaves the Indian traditions with our western thinking, showing what types need to eat more root vegetables, more oil, less salad, more bitter foods etc. You can buy the book here.

Stephanie Alexander’s Cook’s Companion

This is the cookbook I keep going back to. Why? It orders recipes by the ingredient. Which is the logical way of going about things when you eat according to what’s in season. I buy fennel when I see it in season at the

I often get asked what books I’m reading. I’m really bad at answering definitely (on most things). In part because my memory is shocking. But also because everything is always “for now”.

photo by edina csoboth

So, here are five reads I’ve experienced recently that touched me because the author truly went deep into their search or their fear or their desire to share and connect. And in turn took me to my own version of this place. Not in a bash-over-the-head way. But just through the process. You might like them, too.

1. Your Voice in My Head by Emma Forrest.

A quirky memoir of an eccentric as she grapples with managing her weirdness and various breakdowns via what is almost an ode to her shrink. It’s a tender, sad and real read. It could be accused of being self-indulgent, in a Prozac Nation way. But it dodges such a call with the bravery and rawness of her writing. It’s unapologetic. And this frees it from contrivance. And freed me to dig down deep with her and to feel the freedom of it all. PS a big part of the book is her battle to recover from one particular ex…who is clearly Colin Farrell. Buy it here.

2. This is Not the Story You Think It Is by Laura Munson.

This book started as a Modern Love column in The New York Times in which Laura details how she sticks by her husband when he announces he’s leaving the marriage. She refuses to buy his story. Not because she’s a martyr or damaged or desperate. Instead it’s because she chooses not to do pain. This means sticking by the man she’s always loved. It’s a fascinating and very pragmatic approach to love and I like it. As real as it comes. I interviewed Laura and you can read about it here. Buy the book here.

This week in Sunday Life I get deliberately vulnerable

Illo by Erik Marinovich

I love the number three. It’s a thing (as they say on Twitter, preceded by a “hashtag”). When things come in threes – three knock-backs, three mentions of the same person in a week – I’ve learned to take note. And something always comes of it. There’s nothing particularly woo-woo about this predilection. I’m a wary, hesitant person – it takes three strikes, generally, for me to notice and trust something, and then to act.

This week University of Houston scientist Brene Brown told me she’s a three kind of a kid, too. Of course, I got around to watching Brown on TED.com only after three people mentioned her to me. Her talk on vulnerability has since become one of the most popular TED presentations ever. And so I contacted her to see if I could interview her for this column on Skype. And whattayaknow, she replied immediately to say she was due in Sydney the very day I was also going to be in town.

Woo-woo? Or just weird? Whatever. We met.

Can I just say, I was more excited about meeting Brown than anyone I’ve encountered in my weekly journey for this column. Three hands down. Brown’s spent eight years studying thousands of people to determine how best to live a wholehearted life.

It drills down to this:

This week I realise I’m a scanner. Which is to say, I realise my chaotic, excited way of being, and all the dreams I juggle, makes sense!

On Tuesday I got great news. All these years I’ve regarded the crazy array of careers I’ve dabbled in (restaurant reviewer, political speechwriter, TV dollybird, magazine editor and so on with no discernible theme), the disparate topics of interests displayed on my bookshelf (evolutionary biology to typography), and the endless hobbies I engage with, as signs of a weak, unfocused character. I’m a spray gun! A jack of too many trades and master of jack shit! A dilettante!

But Tuesday I was told I’m none of those things.

No, I’m a “scanner”.

New York-based author Barbara Sher, who coined the term, reckons I’m a classic case. A scanner, she tells me, is genetically wired to be fanatically interested in multiple things at once. “You love everything, right!” Well, yes. “But you get bored and go off on tangents! And you think it’s bad that you keep quitting things and moving on!” Yes, yes, I do! “Don’t! Have some fun with it instead!”

I’ve just finished this sweet little book, The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating.  It’s the memoir of a woman who gets sick and waits out her illness watching a little snail that a friend delivered to her in a flowerpot. She learns from the snail about slowness, although the snail moves faster than she does while she’s bedridden. Her understanding of the snail’s stillness over the course of 12 months mirrors her acceptance of her illness “standstillness”.

“The velocity of the ill, however, is like that of the snail,” Emily Dickinson.

If you’ve ever been sick or held back from everything that’s defined you for some reason, I reckon you’ll get this sweet journey. Elisabeth Tova Bailey was struck down with a particularly virulent strain of flu while travelling and it developed into a much more serious illness – something akin to CFS – which left her debilitated for almost twenty years. It was in the worst period that a friend gave her the little woodland snail as a (pretty weird!) gift.

The book opened me up. And it was beautiful to appreciate that some things have an inevitable pace. Meaning can be found in not moving, in being quiet. And that nature can find us and teach us what we need to know.

Happily, I was able to contact Elisabeth, who shared with me some thoughts on her illness.

“I have sought rest everywhere, and have found it nowhere, save in a little corner, with a little book.” – Thomas à Kempis

I’ve recently arrived at the same discovery as above. For the past month or two I’ve been coming home on a Saturday afternoon around 3pm and sitting in my cool loungeroom and reading on the couch.

But. My. God, it’s taken some work to get to this point.

Frankly I find it so hard to rest. I’m a gnarly, primordial beast who finds it hard to reverse my hyper, do-ing ways. But, as you’ve probably gathered, it’s become my priority for 2011. Reading, I’ve discovered, gets me focused on resting. It’s a forum for it. It’s still “doing”, but it’s doing in a very gentle, quiet way. I keep the light low and I make a pot of dandelion root, ginger and licorice tea. And I don’t move (which is key).

I’ve written in the past that I used to watch or hear about people who could “curl up on a couch and read a good book”. Just that phrase sounded alien. And would upset  me.  I’d never done it. Couldn’t fathom it. I thought it all seemed too indulgent. Possibly because as a kid if Mum found us reading she read it as “idle child” and would hand us a load of nappies to hang out. But now I can see the point. I’ve given it a broader purpose – to drag down my energy and rest.

And. My. God, I need rest these days. I bang on about it. I must find ways to DO it.

People like me (and no doubt you, if you’re following me on this blog) often need to trick our go-go-go, hyper-productive minds into seeing seemingly indulgent (non) activities like rest and healing as productive. It’s how we gradually get accustomed to new, gentler ways. We are so damn stubborn, we won’t even try it otherwise.

So, please, if you’re like me, try reading. And see if these work for you:

You might have noticed that Amazon carousel book thingo I’ve stuck on my site. It’s a bunch of books that I love, that have made my life better, and that I mention on this blog at some point. Bad idea? Annoy you at all?

To be upfront: if you buy the books via that widget I get some affiliate percentage for suggesting it to you. But I thought it might be handy for some…hmmm….

I lived without a car until I was 29. And last year my car was stolen and I took the opportunity to spend 6 months car-free. It was  liberating.  I reduced my circle of influence to a 10km radius (the distance I could ride my bike in comfortably). It limited my choices and steered things to simplicity, implicitly. Creating circumstances that limit our choices are key to living a more streamlined life. I swear!

Anyway, Tammy Strobel of Rowdykittens has put together this ebook with practical tips on how to do it yourself. You can buy it through me direct…and I’ll be upfront, I get 50% via her affiliate program. It’s a lovely set-up. I pass on the good word, and she says thank you. Click here to buy Simply Car-Free for $US9.95