By Gabriela Afanador
Monday 24, August 2026
This year I have become increasingly aware of something that sounds simple but takes a while to actually internalize: the more you expose yourself to different topics, different disciplines, and different ways of thinking, the sharper your critical thinking becomes, the less biased your perspective is, and the more creative you get. Think Again by Adam Grant was one of the books that opened my eyes most to this, specifically to the idea that the people who think they know the most about something are often the ones with the least room left to actually learn. That realization changed how I approach reading entirely, and it is the reason my current reading list looks the way it does. These five books cover ground that might seem unrelated at first, neuroscience, spirituality, gut health, relationships, design philosophy, but that is exactly the point. I still have a couple of books left in my current queue before I get to these, but I wanted to share what is coming because I have a feeling more than one of them will end up being the kind of read that quietly shifts something in how you see things.
The Nervous System Reset by Jessica Maguire
This one has been on my list for a while and I keep coming back to it. I have read a lot about stoicism and slowing down your everyday life, about mindset and presence and the philosophy of how we move through the world. But what I keep hearing about this book is that it goes somewhere most of those do not, into the actual physiology of the nervous system itself, specifically the vagus nerve and its role in healing trauma, resolving chronic pain, and regulating emotional responses at a biological level rather than a philosophical one. Maguire is a physiotherapist with a background in neuroscience, and the premise of the book is that most of what we experience as anxiety, chronic stress, and emotional dysregulation is not a mindset problem but a nervous system problem, and that the body has the capacity to heal itself when given the right tools. The vagus nerve runs from the brainstem through the heart and the lungs and into the digestive system, and Maguire argues that learning to activate it deliberately, through specific breathing patterns, movement, and somatic practices, is one of the most powerful interventions available for longterm wellbeing. Given how much I have been learning about the nervous system this year, this feels like the next logical and necessary step.
The Mind-Gut Connection by Emeran Mayer, MD
We are living in a moment where everyone has an opinion about what you should and should not eat, and the contradictions are genuinely overwhelming. One day vegetables are everything, the next someone is telling you they are destroying your gut lining. One month it is all about protein, the next it is fermented foods, or seed cycling, or elimination diets. I have been wanting to step back from all of that noise and actually understand what is happening inside the body at a level that goes beyond social media advice, and this book feels like the place to start. Emeran Mayer is a gastroenterologist and neuroscientist at UCLA who has spent decades studying the communication between the gut and the brain, what he describes as a hidden conversation happening inside us constantly that influences our mood, our decisions, and our overall health in ways most of us are entirely unaware of. The gut-brain axis is a real and well-documented physiological pathway, and the research emerging around it is changing how medicine thinks about everything from depression to autoimmune conditions. I am so excited for this read and I hope it is the first of many related to this topic, because I have a feeling once you start understanding the science of the body at this level, you cannot unknow it.
Kundalini: A Journey to Spiritual Awakening by Gopi Krishna
This one might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I have been reading a series of books this year related to spirituality and the nature of consciousness, and at some point my Pinterest feed suggested it to me. Kundalini, in the yogic tradition, refers to a dormant energy understood to reside at the base of the spine, coiled like a serpent, that when awakened through sustained spiritual practice rises through the body’s energy centers and produces states of expanded consciousness, heightened perception, and what practitioners describe as a direct encounter with the nature of reality. It centers on Krishna’s account of his own spontaneous Kundalini awakening, which happened during a meditation practice in 1937 and which he spent the following decades studying and writing about. It is considered one of the most detailed and scientifically curious first-person accounts in the literature.
How to Be an Adult in Relationships by David Richo
I am not someone who reaches for relationship books often, because I genuinely believe that how we love and relate to other people is so specific to the individuals involved that general advice rarely touches what is actually happening between two real people. But what I have heard about this book is different enough from the standard self-help relationship framework that it made the list anyway. Richo builds the book around five core qualities he calls the five A’s, attention, acceptance, appreciation, affection, and allowing, and argues that the capacity to both give and receive these qualities fully and without conditions is what separates a conscious adult relationship from one that is still being run by childhood wounds and unmet needs. It is less a book about romantic love specifically and more a book about how we show up in all of our relationships, including the one with ourselves, which is the kind of scope that I find genuinely useful rather than narrowly prescriptive. I never know when something I read will change a perspective I have been carrying for years, and becoming one percent better every day has been one of my personal commitments this year, what the Japanese call kaizen. You never know which page is the one that does it.
Do Design: Why Beauty Is Key to Everything by Alan Moore
As someone who loves design, art, and creativity, this book felt like it was written directly for me and I almost did not add it to the list for that reason. There is a version of reading only what confirms what you already believe, and I try to avoid that. But Moore’s argument is bigger than aesthetics, which is what convinced me, because he is not writing about design as a profession or as a visual discipline but as a philosophy, a way of approaching the world that prioritizes intentionality, beauty, and meaning in everything from the objects we make to the systems we build to the lives we live. The book has been described as a manifesto for doing things that matter and doing them with care, which resonates with me deeply both in my professional life and in how I think about everything I put into the world. There is also something I have come to believe more strongly the more I read, which is that the things you think you already know are often the things you know least about. Adam Grant wrote about this brilliantly in Think Again, the idea that confidence in your own expertise is frequently the biggest obstacle to actually understanding something, and I carry that with me into every book I open, including this one. Sometimes the most familiar territory is where you have the most still to discover.
If there is one thing I have learned from reading across such different topics this year, it is that the books you least expect to connect end up speaking to each other in the most interesting ways. A book about the nervous system and a book about design philosophy have more in common than you would think, both are ultimately asking the same question about how we experience the world and what happens when we pay closer attention to it. I will be sharing my thoughts on each of these as I get to them, and I hope at least one of them ends up on your list too. There is always something worth knowing that you have not found yet.