There Is Something Truly Magical about a Beautifully Illustrated Books
The vibrant colors, intricate details, and captivating images can transport you to another world, sparking your imagination and igniting a sense of wonder with these Beautifully Illustrated Books!
The Power of Visual Storytelling Is Undeniable
As you turn the pages of a beautifully illustrated book, you can feel yourself being drawn into the story in a way that words alone cannot achieve. The illustrations bring the characters and settings to life, allowing you to see the world through the eyes of the artist. Each brushstroke and line conveys emotion and depth, adding layers of meaning to the text and enhancing your overall reading experience.
From whimsical illustrations that make you smile to hauntingly beautiful images that give you chills, there is a wide range of styles and techniques to explore in the world of illustrated books. Whether you’re a seasoned reader or just starting to discover the joy of visual storytelling, there is something for everyone to enjoy.
So next time you’re looking for a new book to read, consider picking up one of these beautifully illustrated books. Let yourself be swept away by the artistry and creativity of the illustrations, and immerse yourself in a world where words and images come together to create something truly special.
A Book That Loves You: An Adventure in Self-Compassion
by Irene Smit – Astrid Van Der Huls
Slow down, celebrate the flaws, own the good stuff, and focus on learning to love and appreciate yourself. These themes of self-compassion and self-care are hugely popular, and Flow(R) has a unique and creative take on them. Now, following A Book That Takes Its Time, with 205,000 copies in print, A Book That Loves You offers a message that will resonate in its simplicity: Be sweet to yourself, no matter what kind of day you’re having. (In fact, the challenging days are the days you’ll most want to pick up the book.)
Discover the comforting effects of a daily ritual, like drinking tea. Why it’s okay–and even beautiful–to stumble now and again. Embrace the art of being alone. Release the reins on your schedule. And learn to love yourself with all your imperfections–including your over-productive mind. The book combines Flow‘s signature scrapbook-like look and feel, focus on mindfulness, and high production standards. Sprinkled throughout the essays, illustrations, and sayings are paper “goodies,” designed to help readers put what they read into action: A “slow down” sticker puzzle, a pullout “My Own User Manual” map, a DIY flower to assemble and enjoy.
Broken Places & Outer Spaces: Finding Creativity in the Unexpected
by Nnedi Okorafor
Nnedi Okorafor was never supposed to be paralyzed. A college track star and budding entomologist, Nnedi’s lifelong battle with scoliosis was just a bump in her plan–something a simple operation would easily correct. But when Nnedi wakes from the surgery to find she can’t move her legs, her entire sense of self begins to waver. Confined to a hospital bed for months, unusual things begin to happen. Psychedelic bugs crawl her hospital walls; strange dreams visit her nightly. Nnedi begins to put these experiences into writing, conjuring up strange, fantastical stories. What Nnedi discovers during her confinement would prove to be the key to her life as a successful science fiction author: In science fiction, when something breaks, something greater often emerges from the cracks.
In Broken Places & Outer Spaces, Nnedi takes the reader on a journey from her hospital bed deep into her memories, from her painful first experiences with racism as a child in Chicago to her powerful visits to her parents’ hometown in Nigeria. From Frida Kahlo to Mary Shelly, she examines great artists and writers who have pushed through their limitations, using hardship to fuel their work. Through these compelling stories and her own, Nnedi reveals a universal truth: What we perceive as limitations have the potential to become our greatest strengths–far greater than when we were unbroken.
Ex Libris: 100+ Books to Read and Reread
by Michiko Kakutani
Readers will discover novels and memoirs by some of the most gifted writers working today; favorite classics worth reading or rereading; and nonfiction works, both old and new, that illuminate our social and political landscape and some of today’s most pressing issues, from climate change to medicine to the consequences of digital innovation.
There are essential works in American history (The Federalist Papers, The Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr.); books that address timely cultural dynamics (Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction, Daniel J. Boorstin’s The Image, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale); classics of children’s literature (the Harry Potter novels, Where the Wild Things Are); and novels by acclaimed contemporary writers like Don DeLillo, William Gibson, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Ian McEwan.
A Garden a Day
by Ruth Chivers
Our love of nature finds its most obvious expression in our gardens.
Through the ages and across the globe, civilizations and cultures have felt compelled to create an outside space of our own to connect with nature. In this fascinating visual collection, garden writer and gardener Ruth Chivers explores garden history, design, horticulture, literary inspiration, folklore, and poetry in 365 daily entries.
A Garden a Day covers everything from Sissinghurst to Japanese gardens, from a poem, “Garden by the Sea,” to the latest horticultural details of a rewilded garden, from imaginary gardens from literature to the real garden that inspired Matisse. Planting plans, botanical details, famous gardens, future garden ideas, and secret gardens are all included.
Visually stunning, the book has beautiful paintings of gardens, historic plans, botanical painting, and the best garden photography there is. It is a fascinating and essential book for any gardener who brings home the wonder of these spaces to all of us.
It’s Not You, It’s Everything: What Our Pain Reveals about the Anxious Pursuit of the Good Life
by Eric Minton
If we can agree on anything, it’s that we are not okay. Our culture is reeling from the ravages of a global pandemic, a precipitous rise in depression and anxiety, suffocating debt, white supremacy, hypercapitalism, and a virulent political animus–to name a few.
But what if it’s not us? What if it’s . . . well, everything? What if trying to conform to a sick culture is actually making us sick?
It’s Not You, It’s Everything is a timely and incisive inquiry into the anxious pursuit of happiness at all costs. Psychotherapist and former pastor Eric Minton claims that the pernicious melding. Of capitalism and Christianity means a world of competition, perfection, and scarcity. Disguised as self-help and self-care. Rather than shaming, silencing, or medicating away our disappointment at not having obtained the happiness. We were promised, however, Minton posits a radical alternative. In an impertinent, droll, yet pastoral voice, Minton suggests that our “”not-okayness”” will require rethinking everything we thought we knew about God, depression, the economy, culture, education, technology, and happiness.
Less
by Andrew Sean Greer
Who says you can’t run away from your problems? You are a failed novelist about to turn fifty. A wedding invitation arrives in the mail: your boyfriend of the past nine years is engaged to someone else. You can’t say yes–it would be too awkward–and you can’t say no–it would look like defeat. On your desk are a series of invitations to half-baked literary events around the world.
What would possibly go wrong? Arthur Less will almost fall in love in Paris, almost fall to his death in Berlin. Barely escape to a Moroccan ski chalet from a Saharan sandstorm, accidentally book himself. As the (only) writer-in-residence at a Christian Retreat Center in Southern India, and encounter. On a desert island in the Arabian Sea, the last person on Earth he wants to face. Somewhere in there: he will turn fifty. Through it all, there is his first love. And there is his last.
Because, despite all these mishaps, missteps, misunderstandings and mistakes, Less is, above all, a love story.
A scintillating satire of the American abroad, a rumination on time and the human heart. A bittersweet romance of chances lost, by an author The New York Times. Has hailed as “inspired, lyrical,” “elegiac,” “ingenious,” as well as “too sappy by half,”. Less shows a writer at the peak of his talents raising the curtain on our shared human comedy.
The Map of Good Memories
by Fran Nuño – Zuzanna Celej – Jon Brokenbrow
Zoe had lived in the city since she was born. She knew every building, every park, every corner of the city. When the war broke out, Zoe, like many others, had to say goodbye to her home. And leave without knowing when she might return. Zoe has so many good memories of her city. There was her grandparents’ house, which was a shelter full of dreams and games. Her old school where she met her friends and loved learning new
things. And of course, the downtown park, where she’d spent many Sunday mornings there. Playing on the swings, listening to people playing music, and riding her bike.
Just before her and her family leave, Zoe spreads the map of the city on a table. And marks all the places where she was truly happy, with the certainty that they will always accompany her.
The Unwritten Book: An Investigation
by Samantha Hunt
A genre-bending work of nonfiction. Samantha Hunt’s The Unwritten Book explores ghosts, ghost stories, and haunting, in the broadest sense of each. What is it to be haunted, to be a ghost, to die, to live, to read? Books are ghosts; reading is communion with the dead. Alcohol is a way of communing, too, as well as a way of dying.
Each chapter gathers subjects that haunt: dead people, the forest, the towering library of all those books we’ll never have time to read or write. Hunt, like a mad crossword puzzler, looks for patterns and clues. Through literary criticism, history, family history, and memoir, inspired by W. G. Sebald, James Joyce, Ali Smith, Toni Morrison, William Faulkner, and many others, Hunt explores motherhood, hoarding, legacies of addiction, grief. How we insulate ourselves from the past, how we misinterpret the world. Nestled within her inquiry is a very special ghost book. An incomplete manuscript about people who can fly without wings, written by her father. Found in his desk just days after he died. What secret messages might his work reveal? What wisdom might she distill from its unfinished pages?
Wild Grace: Poems
by Chelan Harkin
“Wild Grace is Chelan Harkin’s most moving collection of poetry yet… These poems are deeply nourishing. It’s impossible to read them without feeling something long dormant stir inside you.” -Eric Weiner New York Times Best-selling author of The Geography of Bliss
“There’s a Vedic saying: ‘Thy gifts, my Lord, I surrender to Thee.’ Chelan has indeed received a Divine gift. I don’t think ordinary human intelligence could express such depth in words..” –Rick Archer, host of podcast Buddha at the Gas Pump: Conversations with “Ordinary” Spiritually Awakening People
In Wild Grace, Chelan Harkin uses ecstatic poetry to redefine our relationship with the divine. She targets a tipping point happening in the souls of many that shifts a conceptual relationship with God. Into a genuine, direct, and satisfying experience. These are visions of the present, speaking into the future. They are openings of the heart and awe-filled possibilities for a life of honesty and joy.
The Wonder of Small Things: Poems of Peace and Renewal
by James Crews – Nikita Gill
James Crews, editor of two best-selling poetry anthologies, How to Love the World and The Path to Kindness. Presents an all-new collection of highly accessible poems on the theme of celebrating moments of wonder and peace in everyday life. Wonder opens our senses and helps us stay in touch with a humbling sense of our own human smallness. In the face of unexpected beauty and the delicious mysteries of life on this planet.”
The anthology features a foreword by Nikita Gill and a carefully curated selection of poems from a diverse range of authors. Including Native American poets Joy Harjo, Linda Hogan, Kimberly Blaeser, and Joseph Bruchac, and BIPOC writers Ross Gay, Julia Alvarez, and Toi Derricotte. Crews features new poems from popular writers such as Natalie Goldberg, Mark Nepo, Ted Kooser, Naomi Shihab Nye, Jane Hirshfield, and Jacqueline Suskin, along with selections from emerging poets. Readers are guided in exploring the meaning and essence of the poems through a series of reflective pauses scattered through the pages and reading group questions in the back. This anthology offers the perfect intersection for the growing number of readers interested in mindful living and bringing poetry into their everyday lives.
From love poems to explorations of modern culture, discover the harmony of classic prose and a new generation’s best poetry voices. Explore and connect with fellow lovers of poetry here.
