Read Yourself Happy

Read Yourself Happy / Daisy Buchanan
DK Red, c2025.
288 p.

After the book about reading poetry to enhance your life that I shared yesterday, I thought I'd also talk about a couple of books I have read that are all about how reading can help in facing life issues. This is called Bibliotherapy, and it's something I have always been interested in! 

This book is a collection of short essays about the author's life and her struggle with Generalized Anxiety Disorder - and how reading has helped. It shares recommended reads at the end of each section, and this is both helpful and not, as the suggestions are based entirely on her own tastes and experiences. This is the small downfall of books like this; in active bibliotherapy, the person making the suggestions is listening heavily to what the person looking for reading is asking for, both in content and in genre, style, and vibe overall. 

I found this a good read at the beginning - lots about her mental health and how reading is/was helpful. There are good takeaways, and it was interesting to see the development of her writing. However, there begin to be interviews with her writer pals, talk about writing as well as reading, and so many mentions of her podcast. So many. I felt that the energy and drive at the beginning began to peter out by half or 3/4 of the way through. 

So I did like parts of this book, and found some of the suggested reads interesting, especially when I wasn't already familiar with them. New titles to investigate! But it didn't hang together strongly enough for me, with the focus feeling a bit scattered. Maybe if it had been more heavily edited and/or condensed it would have been a stronger read. But the concept is great, and parts of the book were effective. Plus reading recs, which I'll never turn down!