The School of Life Bookshop

We organise our books in an unusual way at The School of Life - not by genre but by concern. We know how frustrating it can be to wander through miles of bookshelves labelled "history" or "economics" or "mind, body, spirit", with no indication about which ones are actually worth reading. You'll find no more than six books on any of our shelves - and we're pretty confident you'll enjoy every one of them. After all our faculty have read their way through thousands more to bring you such a carefully edited selection.

For January 2009, we've organised our books on the following shelves:

How to turn over a new leaf
How to know you’re in love
How to make love last
How to be green on the cheap
How to be more creative
How to enjoy your own company
How to make the world a better place
How to find pleasure in everyday things
How to understand your childhood
How to survive melancholy
How to find a job you love
How to think deeply about life
How to get on with other people
How to make the journey inside your head

There’s also a shelf of books recommended by our bibliotherapists. To find out more about the bibliotherpay service click here. 

Visit us between 12 -7 on any weekday or ring if you'd like to order books by post.

If you want some more specific recommendations, here are a few of our current favourites:

Mel Gooding and Julian Rothenstein (editors) Dr Clock’s Handbook
I confess that we love pretty much everything Redstone press publish but we love this even more than the rest. In Dr Clock's absurd world, things are not always what they seem. Logic leads to surprise, paradox reigns with looking-glass rules, things slide quickly from the sublime to the ridiculous. It's a world turned upside down and back to front. And it all makes perfect sense.

Adam Phillips Side Effects
Everyday life is all about the unexpected reactions we don’t expect but determine everything we do. Adam Phillips takes us on a fascinating journey between psychoanalysis, literature and the everyday.An essential look at the overlooked.

Richard Mabey The Nature Cure
One of the bestselling books on our shelf ‘for those who want to get out of the city’ is Mabey’s brave account of how turning to the outside world helped him overcome severe depression. It opens your eyes and ears to the natural world and offers a remedy for all our spirits.

John Armstrong Conditions of Love
Though he lives in Sydney, John helped write The School of Life’s Love course and this book draws on ideas about romance from Plato to Freud in a style that is personal, philosophical and highly readable.

Katharine Harmon You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination
From maps of life and love, to maps of sitcoms and novels, this book gathers together essays, quotations, and musings that relate to many of the questions we’re interested in at The School of Life.

Charles Fernyhough The Baby in the Mirror
Charles helped develop our Family course. This book about his daughter Athena combines his expertise as a developmental psychologist with his personal experiences as a new dad and is written with the style that has bought him such success as a novelist. Charles will be teaching at The School of Life in the autumn and is also our expert on childhood.

Studs Terkel Working
Terkel, who died in October 2008 was one of the great chroniclers of everyday life. This book, subtitled People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do, arose from interview with hundreds of working Americans. It’s unconventional and essential history which has so much to teach us about motivation, emotion and human instincts.

Plato The Symposium
Discover the myth of your other half or how love can be thought of as a search for immortality. We think The Symposium is still the greatest text on love and makes a great romantic gift. We are selling the beautifully designed edition from Penguin’s Great Ideas series.

George Orwell Books vs Cigarettes
Why spend money on books when you could spend it on fags? Orwell asked people exactly that question and came up with fascinating results. Another gem from the aptly named Penguin Great Ideas series.

Alain de Botton Status Anxiety
Wise thoughts for tough economic times. De Botton explores the psychology behind the way we decide what is enough and explores how we might reject the overwhelming assumption that money and happiness must always be bound up together.