This content contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
As I’ve been perusing publisher catalogs for the upcoming year, I’ve noticed a few common threads in self-help and lifestyle books. Grab that gift card you got as a holiday gift and pre-order some reading for your 2025 glow-up.
Bibliotherapy
In this economy, we will take mental health support from any and all available sources, and you’re reading this, so you already know that books can be a vital tool for helping us understand ourselves and the world. Bibliotherapy looks to be a big trend for 2025, starting with this trio of upcoming releases that explore how books can contribute to both individual and collective healing.
From Bijal Shah, founder of Book Therapy, there’s Bibliotherapy: The Healing Power of Reading (February 4), about the history and evolution of bibliotherapy going all the way back to the Stoics. Emely Rumble’s Bibliotherapy in the Bronx (April 29) presents “the healing power of literature in the lives of marginalized communities,” informed by the author’s work as a psychotherapist incorporating books into clinical practice. In Bibliotherapy: Books to Guide You Through Every Chapter of Life (January 14)—note to authors: please come up with a new way to title these books—Molly Masters and the crew at Aphra Book Club offer reading recommendations for every stage of life, from first love to heartbreak and painful losses to new beginnings.
Art Therapy
Okay, these books aren’t about actual art therapy, but there are a whole lot of new releases with the make-something-beautiful-and-make-yourself-feel-better vibe. Suleika Jaouad’s The Book of Alchemy (April 22) presents journaling as “a creative practice for an inspired life.” Try Hard: Creative Work in Progress by Max Kerman (April 22) provides a curiosity-driven framework for anyone who wants to incorporate more creativity into their life. Poet Maggie Smith offers “pep talks and practical advice for the creative life” in Dear Writer (April 1). And Deb Dana’s Glimmers Journal (March 4) gives you space to reflect on and celebrate the experiences that bring you joy so you can cultivate more of them. What’s more artful than that?
Think Different
Books about how to change your perspective in order to live a happier and more fulfilling life are the bread and butter of the self-help/lifestyle genre. In 2025, they’re going meta with ideas about how to change your perspective on self-improvement in order to…improve yourself.
In Me, But Better (March 11), Olga Khazan recounts a year-long experiment in using science-backed techniques to try to change her personality and get happier. In The Ideological Brain (March 25), Leor Zmigrod combines her work in political psychology and neuroscience to help us understand the structures in our brains that contribute to our political and social beliefs and how we can become more open-minded. Jay Heinrichs teaches us how to use the rhetoric of persuasion—with assists from famous philosophers, Taylor Swift, and Shakespeare, among others—to change our own minds in Aristotle’s Guide to Self-Persuasion (April 15). In Change the Recipe, chef and humanitarian activist José Andrés translates wisdom from his experiences in high-end kitchens and disaster relief tends to actionable steps we can all take to use food and the power of human connection to change the world. And in Good Friends (April 8), Priya Vulchi encourages us to think more expansively about love, relationships, community, and family, arguing that “friendship, in the right hands, is a brilliant act of love and resistance.” Cheers to that.
Etc.
Astrology was a staple of lifestyle nonfiction decades before Costar gave us viral memes. If reading the stars is your jam, don’t miss Julia Topaz’s Astrolographs (April 8), which presents 112 charts and graphs that explain how the zodiac signs behave, and I Don’t Believe in Astrology by Debra Silverman (April 8), a psychotherapist who incorporates astrological concepts into her practice.
Women’s health, particularly perimenopause and menopause, are having a real moment in the media, and that will continue into 2025. While Dr. Jen Gunter’s Menopause Manifesto is the most sacred text for the Change of Life, celebrities are getting in on the act, too. Naomi Watts will release Dare I Say It: Everything I Wish I’d Known About Menopause on January 21, and journalist Tamsen Fadal’s How to Menopause hits shelves on March 25.
Last but not least, continue realigning your relationship to work with Kate Williams’s How to Stop Trying: An Overachiever’s Guide to Self-Acceptance, Letting Go, and Other Impossible Things (February 25). Take your leadership game to the next level with Sabina Nawaz’s You’re the Boss (March 4) and Vanessa Priya Daniel’s Unrig the Game: What Women of Color Can Teach Everyone About Winning (March 4).
The comments section is moderated according to our community guidelines. Please check them out so we can maintain a safe and supportive community of readers!
