Lately I’ve been reading a lot. After my last trip I set the goal to read at least one book per week and miraculously I’ve been able to keep up with it so far!  Here are my top 5 picks from everything i read in the last few months:

 

KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL by ANTHONY BOURDAIN

Anthony Bourdain is my spirit animal! I LOVE all of his shows and I think he’s the coolest person on earth 😁 ( and he’s married to a badass Italian jiu jitsu fighter which makes him even cooler!) everyone who knows who he is deeply envy his job! Fangirl stuff aside, he’s a damn good writer. This is the book that changed his life and—at 44— turned him from chef to TV host traveling the world, eating amazing food and doing whatever the hell he wants on camera! The book talks about the raw and dirty side of the culinary industry.

 

 

LEARNING TO BREATH by ALISON WRIGHT

Alison Wright is a National Geographic Photographer. Her images are amazing but her story is even better. This woman is an all around Badass she traveled everywhere on her own on incredibly dangerous assignments and one day she had a horrific bus accident in Laos that she miraculously survived. This book is the story of her recovery.

 

 

 

 

EAT, PRAY, LOVE by ELIZABETH GILBERT

I can’t believe I waited so long to read this! I don’t know why but sometimes when something is very popular in a massive mainstream way I avoid it for non-conformity  sake (I waited 3 years before finally watching Titanic after it came out!). But man I was wrong about this one! I love Liz Gilbert, she’s not only a brilliant writer but an incredibly inspiring woman. I read ‘Big Magic’ a while back and totally fell in love with her work. ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ is a beautiful memoir that taught me many things I didn’t know about spirituality, travel and life.

 

 

 

THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE by NEAL GAIMAN

This guy is another hero of mine (don’t worry I’ll avoid fan-girling on him too!). This is a novel about a man that goes back to the town he lived in as a kid. When he gets to the Hempstock family’s farm he starts recalling events that happened when he was a child, these events involved ancient magic and primordial creatures. If you read between the lines you’ll notice the core of it all is about self identity and the relationship between our child self and our adult self…in perfect Gaiman style!

 

 

 

START WITH WHY by SIMON SNIEL

I watch Simon Sinek Ted Talk a few months ago and since his talk definitely sticked with me I picked up his book to deepen the topic of WHY.

The concept is basically that the secret in leading a successful company, business, life etc is in knowing and being able to explain your WHY. The WHY is what inspires us and others. WHY you do what you do is more important than WHAT you do or HOW you do it. He explain this in depth using as examples remarkable leaders and innovators like Martin Luther Kind Jr, the Wright brothers and Steve Jobs.

 

 

Any book suggestions for next month? write them in the comment if you know of anything cool I should read!

—S