8 new books to read in February

Born and raised in Sierra Leone, Aminata Conteh-Biger was brought up with impeccable manners and a father who felt girls and boys should have equal opportunities. Life was good until a civil war erupted and rebel soldiers carried out vicious acts of brutality, hacking off limbs and raping women. At 18, Aminata, along with other girls and children, were taken by the rebels and groomed to become soldiers. Aminata was repeatedly raped but, fortunately, in a remarkable exchange of food and supplies with government forces, she was released and fled to Guinea where she applied for asylum to Australia.

Living in Australia, Aminata faced racism at school, in the streets and at work but, in spite of this, became a model and started volunteering with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and has since established a registered Australian not-for-profit that empowers women in Sierra Leone and focuses on combatting infant and maternal mortality. A beautiful and inspiring read that shows goodness can come from adversity.

THIS IS NOT HOW IT ENDS, Jehan Casinader

Award-winning TV journalist Jehan Casinader chronicles
his four-year battle with depression. To get out of his mental distress, he tries everything from mindfulness to massage and Prozac to Pilates before realising that, instead of always telling other people’s stories, he could rewrite his past and reinvent his character.

Casinader challenges readers’ understanding of mental distress and uses his own story and well-known New Zealanders to get the message across that we are all responsible for our own stories.

The book includes a list of places where people can turn to for help and a story guide where Casinader asks questions and encourages the reader to keep a journal and possibly share the process with a trusted family member or counsellor.

IMPOSSIBLE: MY STORY, Stan Walker with Margie Thomson

Stan Walker, the Tauranga-born Aussie singer, bares his soul and writes about his childhood experience of domestic violence at the hands of his father and sexual abuse from the age of eight by an older cousin, through to his success as a songwriter and popstar, and his public battle with stomach cancer.

The memoir is blunt and there are moments where I needed to catch my breath with the things he went through, but it’s his ability to forgive, his faith, the importance of family and his heritage that ultimately shine through.

Bestselling author Dr Catherine Itsiopoulos has researched the efficacy of how following a Mediterranean diet can protect us from diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, cancer and dementia.

The diet is not quite a hunter-gatherer way of eating but it does have less processed food and includes loads of veggies, leafy greens, nuts, dried foods and venison.

Dr Itsiopolous spells out the key food proportions of this diet, and includes easy-to-follow meal plans as well as more than 80 recipes that reflect her Greek heritage. You’ll find all the usual yummy Greek favourites – many of them adapted to include more veggies and recipes for vegans – as well as a few pages dedicated to Greek sweet treats.

LOVE AMERICA, ON THE TRAIL OF WRITERS & ARTISTS IN NEW MEXICO, Jenny Robin Jones

For New Zealand writer Jenny Robin Jones, the United States has always been an enigma and so she decides to visit it and update her idea of what America is.

Her journey takes her to the spectacular desert lands of Taos and Santa Fe in New Mexico where she encounters not only the Pueblo people and their rich culture but also the intersecting lives of writers and artists such as D H Lawrence, Willa Cather, Georgia O’Keeffe, Dorothy Brett, Ansel Adams and Dennis Hopper who have made the same journey in the past.

Much of the content is from research done on her return to New Zealand where her insights are then woven into the story. The book is interesting but it would have gone further if there were photos to accompany it.

This New York Times bestseller explains how we each have a particular way of expressing ourselves through five love languages – words of affirmation, quality time, receiving gifts, acts of service and physical touch – and how learning the love language of your spouse, partner, sibling, friend or co-worker is key to understanding how they receive and express love. Understanding this, he says, can help improve relationships and communication.

According to the author, what wounds you the most gives you insight into the type of language you speak. For example, if you seek encouragement and assurance, and feel you don’t receive these, your primary love language is likely words of affirmation.

The book includes a Couple Profile Assessment to help you discover your love language and that of your loved one.

CHANNEL KINDNESS, Born This Way Foundation with Lady Gaga

This hard-cover uplifting and encouraging book is a collection of 51 stories from young people around the world inspiring positivity, resilience and kindness. The thought-provoking stories have been collected by Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation (founded by Lady Gaga and her mother Cynthia Germanotta), and include themes of bullying, isolation due to LGBTQI+ identification, and mental health issues, often written from the first-person perspective and, at times, quite raw.

The book would be ideal for teenagers to dip into as it’s full of ideas on how small, everyday acts of kindness might change someone’s day for the better.

HUMANS, Brandon Stanton

Brandon Stanton created the online photographic and storytelling sensation Humans of New York in 2010 and has since garnered millions of daily followers. His books have become #1 New York Times bestsellers, and, in Humans, Stanton broadens his scope by travelling to more than 40 countries where he conducted interviews and catalogued them into this beautiful, full-colour book.

Each story and photo is a reminder that you can never really understand the life behind the eyes of people you meet.