Books transport us to other worlds. When looking for Christmas gift ideas, books are a kind and personal way to please a loved one. We introduce you 6 inspiring books about life, love and the journey to yourself.

lla Rubenstein is forty years old and unhappily married when she takes a job as a reader for a literary agent. Her first assignment is to read and report on&nbsp;Sweet Blasphemy, a novel written by a man named Aziz Zahara. Ella is mesmerized by his tale of Shams&#39;s search for Rumi and the dervish&#39;s role in transforming the successful but unhappy cleric into a committed mystic, passionate poet, and advocate of love. She is also taken with Shams&#39;s lessons, or rules, that offer insight into an ancient philosophy based on the unity of all people and religions, and the presence of love in each and every one of us. As she reads on, she realizes that Rumi&#39;s story mir&shy;rors her own and that Zahara&mdash;like Shams&mdash;has come to set her free.&nbsp;

Publisher: Kein &amp; Aber

Elif Shafak: The Forty Rules of Love

Is your phone the first thing you reach for when you wake up? And the last thing you see before you sleep? Do you find the hours slip away as you idly scroll through your social media timeline? In short, are you addicted to your phone? If so, How to Break Up with Your Phone is here to help. 
 
How to Break Up With Your Phone is a smart, practical and useful plan to help you conquer your mobile phone addiction in just 30 days - and take back your life in the process. 
 
Recent studies have shown that spending extended time on our phones affects our ability to form new memories, think deeply, focus and absorb information, and the hormones triggered every time we hear our phones buzz both add to our stress levels and are the hallmark signs of addiction. In How to Break Up with Your Phone, award-winning science journalist Catherine Price explores the effects that our constant connectivity is having on our brains, bodies, relationships, and society at large and asks, how much time do you really want to spend on your phone? 
 
Over the course of 30 days, Catherine will guide you through an easy-to-follow plan that enables you to identify your goals, priorities and bad habits, tidy your apps, prune your email, and take time away. Lastly, you will create a new, healthier relationship with your phone and establish habits and routines to ensure this new relationship sticks. 
You don&#39;t have to give up your phone forever; instead you will be more mindful not only of how you use your phone, but also about how you choose to spend the precious moments of your life.

Publisher: &lrm;Ten Speed Press

&nbsp;

Catherine Price: How to Break Up With Your Phone

It&#39;s December 23, 1971, and heavy weather is forecast for Chicago. Russ Hildebrandt, the associate pastor of a liberal suburban church, is on the brink of breaking free of a marriage he finds joyless-unless his wife, Marion, who has her own secret life, beats him to it. Their eldest child, Clem, is coming home from college on fire with moral absolutism, having taken an action that will shatter his father. Clem&#39;s sister, Becky, long the social queen of her high-school class, has sharply veered into the counterculture, while their brilliant younger brother Perry, who&#39;s been selling drugs to seventh grders, has resolved to be a better person. Each of the Hildebrandts seeks a freedom that each of the others threatens to complicate.

Jonathan Franzen&#39;s novels are celebrated for their unforgettably vivid characters and for their keen-eyed take on contemporary America. Now, in Crossroads, Franzen ventures back into the past and explores the history of two generations. With characteristic humor and complexity, and with even greater warmth, he conjures a world that resonates powerfully with our own. 
A tour de force of interwoven perspectives and sustained suspense, its action largely unfolding on a single winter day, Crossroads is the story of a Midwestern family at a pivotal moment of moral crisis. Jonathan Franzen&#39;s gift for melding the small picture and the big picture has never been more dazzlingly evident.

Publisher: Rowohlt Buchverlag

Jonathan Franzen: Crossroads

One day you are going to realize how important self-care and self-love are. And when that day comes, you will sincerely apologize to yourself for all the times you wasted on the people who made you feel unwanted. Who made you feel hard to love and even more confused about what you&#39;re thinking and feeling. One day, you will be forced to rebuild. Forced to grow. Forced to stop grieving over your past and walk away from the ghost who can&#39;t seem to leave. One day, you will realize this&hellip; how sometimes the most beautiful people rise from the fire and bloom softly from the hardest roads. One day you&#39;ll see. One day it&#39;ll all make sense.

This is an anthology of works written from author, Robert M. Drake. The Author has carefully selected his favorite works from previous releases.

Publisher: Independently published

Robert M. Drake: The Funny Thing About Healing and Self-love 

In the late sixties, Isabel is active in the women&#39;s movement. Surrounded by like-minded female journalists, she writes &quot;with a knife between her teeth&quot; and feels comfortable in her own skin for the first time. In three marriages, she experiences how to grow as a woman in relationships, how to fail and get back on your feet, and that you have to embrace your own sexual desires.

What does it mean to be a woman? Isabel Allende is an icon, a beloved writer worldwide, and the role model of many. In this passionate, provocative, and inspiring memoir, she reviews her life and writes about her most important subject - it is the moving appeal of a great feminist.

Publisher: Suhrkamp Verlag

Isabel Allende: The Soul of a Woman 

Nothing feels right in Alma&#39;s life right now. It&#39;s as if she&#39;s just going around in circles with her problems, even though she wants nothing more than to finally just be happy. But whatever she does, everything seems to be blocked - until one day a package is brought to her. Inside: a letter addressed to her and a notebook. It is the beginning of an inspiring encounter with a person who is both a stranger to her and yet so familiar, with a special elderly lady - and the prelude to a journey to herself.

SPIEGEL bestselling author and number one podcaster Laura Malina Seiler tells an inspiring and encouraging story about the great power we find within ourselves, about how we can live our truth.

Publisher: &lrm;Rowohlt Taschenbuch

Books for Christmas: Gifts we read with pleasure

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