January invites a new kind of resolve. One that’s built with intention. Your January Reading List is less about reinvention and more about refinement: turning inward, paying attention, and choosing growth. Choosing yourself. It asks for honesty. A chance to take stock of where you are, what you’ve outgrown, and what you want to carry forward.
These memoirs and self-improvement guides; The Mountain Is You by Brianna Wiest, Becoming by Michelle Obama, Atomic Habits by James Clear, and Untamed by Glennon Doyle; offer steady companionship for the season ahead - for becoming more honest, more disciplined, and more at ease in your own direction. They’re books to read with a pen nearby, to let shape the way you move through the year. This is a reading list for becoming your best self.
1. Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones by James Clear
About the Book: No matter your goals, Atomic Habits offers a proven framework for improving every day. James Clear, one of the world's leading experts on habit formation, reveals practical strategies that will teach you exactly how to form good habits, break bad ones, and master the tiny behaviors that lead to remarkable results.
From its Pages: “The problem is your system. Bad habits repeat themselves again and again not because you don't want to change, but because you have the wrong system for change. You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.” - James Clear, Atomic Habits
2. Becoming by Michelle Obama
About the Book: Becoming traces Obama's journey from Chicago’s South Side to the White House with honesty, warmth, and wit. Sharing both triumphs and disappointments, she tells her story on her own terms, offering an intimate portrait of a woman who has defied expectations and continues to inspire.
From its Pages: “Failure is a feeling long before it becomes an actual result. It’s vulnerability that breeds with self-doubt and then is escalated, often deliberately, by fear.” - Michelle Obama, Becoming
3. The Mountain is You: Transforming Self-Sabotage Into Self-Mastery by Brianna Wiest
About the Book: This book explores why we self-sabotage and how to stop. By understanding our habits, emotions, and past experiences, it shows how real change comes from internal work - building resilience, shifting behavior, and ultimately learning to master ourselves, not the obstacles we face.
From its Pages: “We are programmed to seek what we’ve known. Even though we think we’re after happiness, we’re actually trying to find whatever we’re most used to.” - Brianna Wiest, The Mountain is You
4. The Let Them Theory: A Life-Changing Tool That Millions of People Can't Stop Talking About by Mel Robbins
About the Book: If you’ve ever felt stuck or overwhelmed, the issue isn’t you, it’s the power you give others. The Let Them Theory shows how releasing others’ opinions and drama can help you reclaim control and create a life you love. This book teaches you how to stop wasting energy on what you can't control and start focusing on what truly matters: YOU. Your happiness. Your goals. Your life.
From its Pages: “Fact: People’s behavior tells you exactly how they feel about you. Your job isn’t to interpret it or second-guess it. Your job is to let people reveal who they are and how they truly feel about you and accept it.” - Mel Robbins, The Let Them Theory
5. Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May
About the Book: Wintering explores how unexpected hardship can upend a life, and how periods of retreat can become transformative. Through personal reflection and insights from nature, literature, and myth, Katherine May shows the power of rest, acceptance, and embracing life’s cyclical seasons.
From its Pages: “Nobody had ever said to me before, "You need to live a life that you can cope with, not the one that other people want. Start saying no. Just do one thing a day. No more than two social events in a week." I owe my life to him.” - Katherine May, Wintering
6. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life by Mark Manson
About the Book: Manson challenges the obsession with positivity, arguing that growth comes from accepting reality, limits, and discomfort. With sharp humor and honesty, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**k encourages readers to choose what truly matters and let go of the rest.
From its Pages: “When most people envision giving no fucks whatsoever, they imagine a kind of serene indifference to everything, a calm that weathers all storms… Not giving a fuck does not mean being indifferent, it means being comfortable with being different” - Mark Manson, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck
7. Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert
About the Book: Gilbert explores creativity with warmth and insight, offering guidance on embracing curiosity, overcoming fear, and living more creatively. Big Magic invites readers to uncover the inspiration and joy already within them.
From its Pages: “Do whatever brings you to life, then. Follow your own fascinations, obsessions, and compulsions. Trust them. Create whatever causes a revolution in your heart.” - Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic
8. Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived Joyful Life by Bill Burnet and Dave Evans
About the Book: This book explores how design thinking, the same process used to create products and spaces, can be applied to building a meaningful life. Burnett and Evans show how approaching your career and choices with curiosity, creativity, and problem-solving can lead to a more fulfilling, flexible, and intentional life.
From its Pages: “For most people, passion comes after they try something, discover they like it, and develop mastery - not before. To put it more succinctly: passion is the result of a good life design, not the cause.” - Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, Designing Your Life
9. Grit: The Power and Passion of Perseverance by Angela Duckworth
About the Book: In Grit, Angela Duckworth explores the power of passion and perseverance, drawing on research, history, and stories of cadets, teachers, and high achievers like Jamie Dimon and Pete Carroll. She shows that effort counts, grit can be learned, and mindset, not talent or luck, determines success.
From its Pages: “When you keep searching for ways to change your situation for the better, you stand a chance of finding them. When you stop searching, assuming they can’t be found, you guarantee they won” - Angela Duckworth, Grit
10. Untamed by Glennon Doyle
About the Book: Untamed explores the inner voice of longing every woman carries: a desire to be fully alive beyond the pressures to be a “good” partner, mother, daughter, or friend. After years of denying her own discontent, Doyle experienced a moment of clarity that awakened her true self. She learned to abandon the world’s expectations, quit people-pleasing, and stop trying to be “good,” choosing instead to listen to her own voice and live authentically.
From its Pages: “You are here to decide if your life, relationships and world are true and beautiful enough for you. And if they are not and you dare to admit they are not, you must decide if you have the guts, the right - perhaps even the duty - to burn to the ground that which is not true and beautiful enough and get started building what is.” - Glennon Doyle, Untamed
11. Women Who Run With Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by Clarissa Pinkola Estes
About the Book: In Women Who Run with the Wolves, Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés uses myths, fairy tales, and folk stories to help women reconnect with their instinctual, creative, and powerful inner selves, the Wild Woman. The book guides readers in reclaiming this lost, life-giving energy and understanding the deeper wisdom of the female psyche.
From its Pages: “I've seen women insist on cleaning everything in the house before they could sit down to write... and you know it's a funny thing about housecleaning... it never comes to an end. Perfect way to stop a woman. A woman must be careful to not allow over-responsibility (or over-respectability) to steal her necessary creative rests, riffs, and raptures. She simply must put her foot down and say no to half of what she believes she "should" be doing. Art is not meant to be created in stolen moments only.” - Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run With Wolves
12. Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everyhing by BJ Fogg
About the Book: Fogg reveals how small, positive changes can transform your life. Drawing on decades of research, he shows how to build lasting habits by celebrating successes, not punishing failures, making it easier to improve health, productivity, and wellbeing, one tiny step at a time.
From its Pages: “When you are designing a new habit, you are really designing for consistency. And for that result, you’ll find that simplicity is the key. Or as I like to teach my students: Simplicity changes behavior.” - BJ Fogg, Tiny Habits
13. Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life by Susan David
About the Book: Emotional Agility teaches how to navigate thoughts and emotions with self-awareness and flexibility. Susan David shows that success and well-being come not from avoiding difficult feelings, but from facing them, adapting, and taking actions aligned with your values.
From its Pages: “Emotional agility is about loosening up, calming down, and living with more intention. It’s about choosing how you’ll respond to your emotional warning system.” - Susan David, Emotional Agility
14. The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World by Melinda Gates
About the Book: Gates shares lessons from her work around the world, showing how empowering women transforms societies. Blending stories, data, and personal reflection, she highlights urgent issues, from child marriage to workplace inequality, and inspires action to create lasting change.
From its Pages: “Poverty is not being able to protect your family. Poverty is not being able to save your children when mothers with more money could. And because the strongest instinct of a mother is to protect her children, poverty is the most disempowering force on earth.” - Melinda Gates, The Moment of Lift
15. The Year of Yes: How to Dance it Out, Stand in the Sun and Be Your Own Person by Shonda Rhimes
About the Book: Rhimes recounts how saying yes to everything for a year transformed her life, helping her break out of introversion and embrace boldness. Hailed as honest, raw, and fun, this expanded anniversary edition adds new candid chapters showing how Rhimes achieved her own version of Shondaland badassery, and how readers can do the same.
From its Pages: “Dreams are lovely. But they are just dreams. Fleeting, ephemeral. Pretty. But dreams do not come true just because you dream them. It’s hard work that makes things happen. It’s hard work that creates change.” - Shonda Rhimes, The Year of Yes
As the year unfolds, let these books be a touchstone rather than a checklist. Becoming your best self in 2026 isn’t about perfection - it’s about attention: to your habits, your values, and the life you’re building for yourself day by day. Return to these pages when you need perspective, when motivation dips, or when you’re ready to take the next step forward. Growth doesn’t happen all at once; it’s shaped by the small choices you make when no one is watching. Let this be a year of becoming.
If you want to dive even deeper, join our book club, the Banned Literary Dept., where we read all kinds of books, but often spotlight titles that have been banned, challenged or tackle bold and thought-provoking topics. Join us and become part of our community of readers. Your next favorite book is waiting.
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