Science | Ann Arbor District Library

The new year often brings new year’s resolutions with it. Whatever your specific goals and aspirations may be for 2016, some of the newest non-fiction at the AADL offers tips and tricks for sticking to new habits, channeling creativity and keeping your life clutter-free, resolutions that I know many of us share!:

In Better Than Before, Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project, explores our habits and presents readers with an analytical and scientific framework for understanding them and, if desired, changing them for good. Rubin offers up dozens of strategies that she herself employs over the course of the book, and tests out on others. The emphasis of the book is on knowing ourselves and our habit tendencies so that we can pursue new habits in ways that truly work for us and build a foundation of good habits that can last a lifetime.

Elizabeth Gilbert’s new book Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear explores the nature of inspiration. Many readers drew personal inspiration and empowerment from Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love, and this new book asks readers to embrace natural curiosity and offers tools for facing down fears and insecurities. Gilbert discusses the attitudes and approaches that allowed her to live the creative life she had long dreamed of, and encourages readers in a pleasant and pragmatic manner to do the same to pursue the lives that they also dream of, whether one wants to write a book, address new challenges at work, move to a new city or simply lead each day with a greater sense of mindfulness.

The popularity of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, by Marie Kondo, has swept across the entire world (the book was first written in Japanese and the first English publication was in Great Britain). The simple, slim book presents readers with the Japanese art of decluttering and organizing your space, also known as the KonMari Method. Kondo walks readers through the method step-by-step, which not only offers solutions for organizing, but also for getting rid of possessions one no longer needs and for better storing the possessions that one has. Although some aspects of the KonMari method may seem unusual, particularly to American readers, Kondo explains the rationale for each. For those whose goal in 2016 is to become better organized, this book is a must read.

Browse our catalog for these and other great books to help you stick to your new year’s resolutions this year!

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