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Happy Friday!Hope you're doing well and looking forward to the start of the festive season. I wanted to share a few items that might be of interest as we wind down for the holidays :)1. Bibliotherapy with Bijal Shah - Season 2 is out now!After a short break, the podcast is back with fresh content and bibliotherapy resources. To recap in this podcast, I share my knowledge and research on bibliotherapy, including the latest developments, science and book recommendations. We release two episodes a week:1. Voice Notes from Me, Your Resident Bibliotherapist.2. Ask the Bibliotherapist: Book Recommendations for What's On Your MindIf you'd...

Best Literary Fiction Book of 2024… Intermezzo (Literary Fiction) by Sally Rooney  Sally Rooney's Intermezzo is a poignant exploration of family, grief, and human connection, centered on two Irish brothers, Peter and Ivan Koubek. Following their father's death, the brothers grapple with their strained relationship, personal struggles, and the emotional weight of their past. Peter, a successful yet emotionally troubled lawyer, navigates his grief and complicated romantic entanglements with Naomi, a university student, and Sylvia, his first love. Meanwhile, Ivan, a socially awkward former chess prodigy, begins a passionate relationship with Margaret, an older woman working at a local art...

It's tennis season and today we're focusing on bibliotherapy and tennis. As an avid tennis fan who enjoys watching and playing the game, I am really looking forward to Wimbledon this year and plan to attend a couple of days. And as I look forward to this, I could not help but reflect on the subtle commonalities between the two, tennis and bibliotherapy – both in essence mirrors of life, one that holds literature as the mirror and the other, tennis, holds the court as the mirror. For how we approach tennis is how we approach life. Life is often a...

Hi everyone, It's Bijal here from Book Therapy. I am a bibliotherapist and the founder of Book Therapy (a bibliotherapy and literary curation practice). I'm also the author of the book, Bibliotherapy: The Healing Power of Reading.  I curate book prescriptions and provide online training in bibliotherapy, more detail of this can be found here on the Book Therapy website.  I run a bi-weekly podcast, Bibliotherapy with Bijal Shah where I share my knowledge and research on bibliotherapy, including the latest developments, science and book recommendations. Join me every week where we take a deep dive into Bibliotherapy. We release two episodes a week:1.  Voicenotes fom Me, Your Resident Bibliotherapist.2.  Ask the...

   Best Literary Fiction Books of 2023 so far… The Covenant of Water (Literary Fiction) by Abraham Verghese The Covenant of Water is a sweeping novel by talented novelist Abraham Verghese that spans three generations of a family in Kerala, India. The family is cursed with a strange affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning. The matriarch of the family, Big Ammachi, witnesses the effects of this curse firsthand as she watches her loved ones die. She also witnesses the changes that come to Kerala as the country modernizes. The novel is a moving story of love, faith,...