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Writer's pictureBest Ever You

5 Best Books to Read This Fall



Autumn is a season for self-improvement, transformation, and development. There is no more opportune moment than now to delve into these five books! Discover these motivational reads that can help you succeed in any endeavor you choose.


Beyond Self-Care Potato Chips - Choosing Nourishing Self-Care in a Quick-Fix Culture




From a cognitive psychologist, a trusted voice among millennial women, a call to action for readers everywhere to enter their true self-care era that will nourish and sustain them.


Toxic self-care culture tells women that bubble baths and Botox are the route to happiness and fulfillment. Though these types of self-care can fill us up in the moment, they cannot provide long-lasting nourishment. They are empty calories—the potato chips of self-care. And from them, we can never get full. In the same way, we will not feel fulfilled by reaching for the empty calorie “self-care” trends that toxic, materialstic self-care culture sells us. To fill our exhausted bodies and weary minds, to live fully and authentically, we need the kind of self-care that nourishes.


Beyond Self-Care Potato Chips is a call to action for women everywhere to reach instead for nourishing self-care. Though this may sound easy in theory, many women struggle to carry it out. We struggle because we have forgotten how to reach. Our training as little girls taught us that it is polite to be grateful for what we get. To say thank you but I'm full when offered second helpings. To accept the potato chips we are given because there are people on this planet who have none, so how dare we ask for more?


Through the narrative voice of a psychologist who is also an exhausted millennial mom trying to keep it all together, Beyond Self-Care Potato Chips explores courageous self-care in the areas of marriage, motherhood, family dynamics, friendships, career life, and mental health. The author's personal stories range from the hilariously-yet-painfully relatable to the resonantly heart-rending. Each of these stories—the beautiful, the sparkling, the sad and the chaotic—teach women something about what it means to reach. What it means to stop settling for potato chips and to instead grasp for the things that truly fulfill. Beyond Self-Care Potato Chips is a mindset—a way of embracing and stepping into all of our divine, feminine power.


No Scrap Left Behind - My Life Without Food Waste



The story of a mother’s quest to end her family’s food wasteand all the blunders that came with it.


Teralyn Pilgrim had no idea the environmental and economic impact of food waste, or that she could save $100 a month by being waste free. But when a story of hungry children fills her with unbearable guilt, she decided to make a change to the way her family approached mealtime. Despite finicky kids and a skeptical husband, Pilgrim turned her feelings of guilt into action and created a zero-food waste kitchen.



Pilgrim began her journey by defining food waste with Rule #1: the Hungry Kid Test—would you throw something edible away with a hungry child watching? If the answer is yes, it can go in the compost. If the answer is no, then it’s time to get creative.


Narrating her trials and errors—emphasis on errors—Pilgrim invites readers to her table where leftover food is a personal challenge to reduce waste, save money, and guard against squandering natural resources. Things get tricky when she discovers a five-year-old fish in her freezer, accidentally buys the grossest fat-free cookies in the world, and finds her dog is as picky as the kids. Addressing myths about how being waste-free is too hard (it’s not) and whether expiration dates mean anything (they don’t), Pilgrim teaches readers clever ways to be resourceful while also offering a broader look at why food waste matters and the global effects of this massive problem.


Both a resource for families and a call for worldwide change, No Scrap Left Behind offers nine-step program and hundreds of food-related tips to help readers find their own way to sustainable living, trim the grocery bill, and effect change...starting in their own kitchens.


Love the Foods That Love the Planet features tantalizing low carbon dishes to help meet the urgent climate challenge.


Love the Planet - Recipes that Cool the Climate and Excite the Senses




What we eat and how we produce it matters. We know our world is careening toward warming tipping points beyond which recovery may not be possible. Shifting the food supply away from animals to plants as much as possible can drastically lower greenhouse gases and buy us the time we need to prevent irreversible harm and devastating outcomes. A plant-based diet also prolongs life, vitality, strengthens immunity, and gains protection from chronic illness and infectious disease. A healthy body and a healthy planet are linked.


We all have more agency than we think when it comes to climate change. Our food choices influence our social and family circles, which in turn collectively drive consumer demand and market response. For those who are concerned with the pressing climate crisis and who want to mitigate the growing threats of extreme weather, wildfires, loss of biodiversity, and food insecurity, Cathy Katin-Grazzini has carefully created and compiled a delicious medley of powerful plant-based recipes that help revitalize the health of our environment and our bodies.


Love the Foods That Love the Planet is loaded with recipes that are packed with climate challenge insights, featuring both creative and traditional cuisine from around the world, and accompanied by eye popping photography by Giordano Katin-Grazzini. These recipes range from simple and quick for weekday suppers to special and celebratory for weekends and entertaining and all of them help save the planet. For all who are environmentally conscious and want to bring a mindful approach to their diet but don’t want to skimp on taste, Love the Foods That Love the Planet provides an active solution for home cooks—from the newbie to the most experienced chef. Help is here, in this climate friendly cookbook.


Before Dementia - 20 Questions You Need to Ask About Preventing, Preparing, Coping






Structured around 20 questions you need to ask to help prevent, prepare, and cope, this book is a friendly, authoritative guide for anyone facing dementia and those who care for them. Exploring why disease is a social construct just as much as a biological construct, it helps us understand what it means to live with or care for someone with dementia.


How do I know if I have dementia, and how will I live with it if I do? Can people with dementia consent to sex? Can they choose euthanasia for their future selves? And can we prevent or push back its onset?


Chances are you know someone with dementia, but how well do you really understand the condition? Dementia is a complex interplay of biological, social, and psychological factors, and understanding it means understanding more about society and ourselves.


Approaching the topic through 20 insightful questions, geriatrician Dr. Kate Gregorevic explains the physical state of dementia, how to relate the diagnosis to real life, what questions to ask your doctor, strategies for preventing the condition, and how we can make our homes and society better for people with dementia.


While this book tackles some uncomfortable questions, its purpose is to help—to prevent, to prepare, to cope and to understand—and provide you with strategies for moving forward.


Your Roots Cast a Shadow - One Family's Search across History for Belonging




A narrative of cultural translation, identity, and belonging.


The thrill of a new place fades quickly for Caroline Topperman when she moves from Vancouver to Poland in 2013. As she delves into her family’s history, tracing their migration through pre-WWII Poland, Afghanistan, Soviet Russia and beyond, she discovers the layers of their complex experiences mirror some of what she felt as she adapted to life in a new country. How does one balance honoring both one’s origins and new surroundings?


Your Roots Cast a Shadow explores where personal history intersects with global events to shape a family’s identity. From the bustling markets of Baghdad to the quiet streets of Stockholm, Topperman navigates the murky waters of history as she toggles between present and past, investigating the relationship between migration, politics, identity, and home. Her family stories bring history into the present as her paternal grandmother becomes the first woman allowed to buy groceries at her local Afghan market while her husband is tasked with building the road from Kabul to Jalalabad. Topperman’s Jewish grandfather, a rising star in the Communist Party, flees Poland at the start of WWII one step ahead of the Nazis, returning later only to be rejected by the Party for his Jewish faith. Topperman herself struggles with new cultural expectations and reconciling with estranged relatives.


A study in social acceptance, Topperman contends with what one can learn about an adopted culture while trying to retain the familiar, the challenges of learning new languages and traditions even as she examines the responsibilities of migrants to their new culture, as well as that society’s responsibility to them.






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