Change Your Thoughts And Change Your Life

It is the time of year when many people look to the past to determine what they want for the future. How can this year be better than last? How can I be better? What do I need to change?

Your thinking, maybe?

Want a better 2019? Look to 2018 and these ten titles that make our list of some of the most enlightening and impactful books to come out in the last year.

These are ten of the best books for providing perspective - often first-person - on social issues that we hear about daily in the news. The best at opening minds, offering differing views, and changing opinions on issues of poverty, mental health, emigration, the environment and much more.

Don’t be dissuaded by the target audience. While some books were written for children, adults can benefit equally. The overviews include a combination of excerpts, publisher notes, author and critic comments and reader feedback.

POVERTY SAFARI Darren McGarvey Winner of the 2018 Orwell Prize McGarvey's unflinching account of his life and the effects of deprivation and poverty is self-aware, brutally honest and more urgent than ever. It is heart-rending in its life story and its account of family breakdown and poverty. What distinguishes Poverty Safari from a ‘straight’ description of a working-class life is his searing examination of the narratives that surround poverty – and the way in which no individual, least of all him, can neatly be fitted into them

FLY AWAY HOME Eve Bunting A homeless boy who lives in an airport with his father, moving from terminal to terminal trying not to be noticed, is given hope when a trapped bird finally finds its freedom.

The text and images are incredibly powerful. From the opening, you get an honest view of a hard-working father and his son, striving to create a better life for themselves.