I read about a book in The Sunday Times yesterday, The Yellow World, and I thought it was definitely one for me.  Those of you that know me, know that I love the arena of positive psychology, of moving towards joy, happiness, enlightenment… of maximising the strengths within us rather than focusing on improving the ‘weaknesses’ (too much corporate nonsense in the latter for me, know your weaknesses, yes, but I’m not all about trying to ‘fix’ them…. perhaps food for another blog).  I think this book could be a real gem….

The synopsis:

Albert Espinosa never wanted to write a book about surviving cancer, so he didn’t. He wrote a book instead about the Yellow World. What is the yellow world? The yellow world is a world that’s within everyone’s reach, a world the colour of the sun. It is the name of a way of living, of seeing life, of nourishing yourself with the lessons that you learn from good moments as well as bad ones. It is the world that makes you happy, the world you like living in. The yellow world has no rules; it is made of discoveries.

In these 23 Discoveries Albert shows us how to connect daily reality with our most distant dreams. He tells us that ‘losses are positive’, ‘the word “pain” doesn’t exist’, and ‘what you hide the most reveals the most about you’.

Espinosa sounds like he’s had one hell of a battle, but his message sounds so uplifting.  Kate Spicer (the ST journalist) says that “if Eat Pray Love was for the Sex in the City generations, then the Yellow World speaks to the generation embodied in Girls”.  I think that’s got to be worth following up.  No doubt it will be not very well regarded by the critics, but they don’t always understand what the public actually reads.  The Celestine Prohecy (referred to the other day in Big and Small Coincidences), sold 20m copies, and was described by Publisher’s Weekly as “incredibly vacuous” but by readers as “life-changing”.  I’m all for a bit of the latter…. now where’s my credit card?!