Messy? Unproductive? Need to dismantle your privilege? There’s a guided journal for that
From tough love titles to budgeting manuals, guided journals are no longer the domain of niche and self help publishers. Jenny Valentish puts some to the test
The big idea: should we eat like our ancestors?
Are eating plans like the paleo diet really healthier - or more ethical - than the way we eat now?
We often fail to keep resolutions – but writing in a notebook brings great rewards
Scribbling down our thoughts is a great way to make sense of things, says Cathy Rentzenbrink
100 ways to slightly improve your life without really trying
Whether it’s taking fruit to work (and to the bedroom!), being polite to rude strangers or taking up skinny-dipping, here’s a century of ways to make life better, with little effort involved …
Top 10 books about self-improvement
In time for new year resolutions, a cultural historian chooses some of the best guides to making a better life, dating back to some of our earliest literature
Healing myself the Pagan way: how witchcraft cast a spell on me
Witchcraft and its deep connection with nature restored my mental health
Nonfiction to look out for in 2022
From studies of grief to memoirs from Melvyn Bragg and Jarvis Cocker, along with Norman Scott’s account of a very English scandal, here are the titles coming your way next year
The book I got for Christmas: ‘An emotional bootcamp of sorts’
Continuing our series of Guardian writers revealing their most memorable gift books, Rebecca Liu recalls being given a stack of dating guides as an 18-year-old whose ‘lessons’ were hard to unlearn
Most people flee the suburbs, but nowhere land is the perfect backdrop for my novels
Suburbia is neither glamorous nor picturesque. But this is precisely what makes it rich terrain for my books
The Sweet Spot by Paul Bloom review – the pleasure of pain
An intriguing scientific investigation into why suffering, from mountaineering to BDSM, so often leads to satisfaction