Booklist – January 2024
It’s the start of a new year! For many this means setting goals, cleaning out the house, and forming new habits. For others it just means time for reflection and self-improvement. However you choose to celebrate in January, it is always a chance for a fresh start. So, whether you would like a nudge to help you get organized, you want to set goals and improve yourself this year, or you just like a good story of someone starting over, here are some great books to kick off your new year.
Nonfiction
The Home Edit by Clea Shearer and Joanna Teplin
Two Instagram-famous home organizers provide a room-by-room guide to establishing order in the home. Bestseller in 2019.
Free to Focus: A Total Productivity System to Achieve More by Doing Less by Michael Hyatt
Guide to increasing your productivity through identifying your goals, cutting back on tasks that do not achieve those goals, and prioritizing.
Atomic Habits by James Clear
An expert on habit formation reveals practical strategies for creating good habits, breaking bad ones, and mastering the tiny behavioral changes that lead to positive results through inspiring true stories while drawing on ideas from biology, psychology, and neuroscience. (Some strong language)
How to Win Friends and Influence People in the Digital Age by Brent Cole
This update to How to Win Friends and Influence People offered seventy-five years after the original was published, incorporates successful use of social media in business and personal life.
Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know by Adam Grant
An organizational psychologist examines the critical art of rethinking: learning to question your opinions and open other people’s minds, which can position you for excellence at work and wisdom in life.
Fiction
The New Year’s Quilt by Jennifer Chiaverini
The 11th book in a series of 21 novels, master quilter Sylvia Compson is newly married and uses a quilt and memories of New Year’s gone by to mend her relationship with her new daughter-in-law.
The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery
Valancy, never married at age 29, is ready to break free from her overbearing mother, and when she receives a fateful letter from her doctor, she makes choices that change her life for the better.
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas
This classic and epic historical adventure focuses on a young French sailor wrongfully imprisoned by his closest friends and upon his escape he assumes a new identity and seeks revenge.
Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson
In this mystery two children receive a confusing inheritance from their mother, a traditional black cake made from a family recipe with a long history, the siblings get a new start on their relationship as the secrets of their mother’s past emerge. (Contains strong language)
Image Description: A tight focus on white paper in a typewriter with the typed boxed letters “New Year” on top with “Chapter One” typed below.