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Continuing our celebration of Mental Health Awareness Month episode, Joe is joined by Jananie K. Velu to share some of their favorite books that center mental health, healing, growth, and emotional honesty.
Together, they talk about the stories that stay with us, the comfort books can provide during difficult seasons and the powerful role reading can play in helping people feel understood and less alone. The conversation also explores Jananie’s Anti-Brain Rot reading challenge, the idea of mindful reading, and the challenge of staying intentional with our habits, goals, and attention spans in a world full of distractions.
This episode is packed with recommendations, from emotional contemporary stories to hopeful, comforting reads, and the full episode description includes an even bigger list of titles that didn’t make it into the conversation.
Looking for the video version of our show? Check out the Libby App YouTube channel!
Link to our full book list:
Find all the books mentioned in Season 3 on Libby Life!
Book recommendations:
(Includes picks not mentioned but picked for this episode)
Jananie’s Picks:
Cleo Dang Would Rather Be Dead - Mai Nguyen
An Academy for Liars - Alexis Henderson
Alone With You in the Ether - Olivie Blake
Haldol and Hyacinths - Melody Moezzi
An Unquiet Mind - Kay Redfield Jamison
How to Keep House While Drowning – KC Davis
Challenger Deep - Neal Shusterman
Darius the Great is Not Okay – Adib Khorram My Year of Rest and Relaxation – Ottessa Moshfegh
Turtles All the Way Down - John Green
What My Bones Know – Stephanie Foo
Evil Eye - Etaf Rum
The Secret World of Briar Rose - Cindy Pham
Between Friends and Lovers - Shirlene Obuobi
Before I Let Go - Kennedy Ryan
Cleopatra and Frankenstein - Coco Mellors
Big Swiss - Jen Beagin
Joe’s Picks:
Puzzled – Pan Cooke
What’s Wrong? - Erin Williams
Anxietyland – Gemma Correll
Past Tense – Sacha Mardou
Dear Scarlet – Teresa Wong
In. - Will McPhail
Everything is OK – Debbie Tung
Verona Comics – Jennifer Dugan
Sunflowers – Keezy Young
Who’s in this episode:
Jananie K. Velu - Links
Time stamps: 00:00:00 Title 00:00:23 Intro 00:00:52 Catching up with Jananie & Mental Health Awareness Month 00:01:10 What role does reading play in your mental health journey? 00:02:15 Anti-Brain Rot Reading Challenge and Mindful Reading 00:04:48 When you’re going through it mentally, it’s hard to stick to goals and plans 00:07:36 Mental Health Awareness Month Reading Recs 01:07:27 Outro
Readers can sample and borrow the titles mentioned in today’s episode in Libby. Library friends can add these titles to their digital collections for free in OverDrive Marketplace and Kanopy. Check out our Cumulative List for the whole season, or this list for today’s episode!
Looking for more bookish content? Check out the Libby Life Blog!
We hope you enjoy this episode of Book Lounge by Libby. Be sure to rate, review and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen! You can watch the video version of our show on the Libby App YouTube channel. Keep up with us on social media by following the Libby App on Instagram!
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