Continuing our celebration of Mental Health Awareness Month episode, Joe is joined by Jananie K. Velu to share some of their favorite books that center mental health, healing, growth, and emotional honesty.

Together, they talk about the stories that stay with us, the comfort books can provide during difficult seasons and the powerful role reading can play in helping people feel understood and less alone. The conversation also explores Jananie’s Anti-Brain Rot reading challenge, the idea of mindful reading, and the challenge of staying intentional with our habits, goals, and attention spans in a world full of distractions.

This episode is packed with recommendations, from emotional contemporary stories to hopeful, comforting reads, and the full episode description includes an even bigger list of titles that didn’t make it into the conversation.

Looking for the video version of our show? Check out the Libby App YouTube channel!

Link to our full book list:

Find all the books mentioned in Season 3 on Libby Life!

Book recommendations:

(Includes picks not mentioned but picked for this episode)

Jananie’s Picks:

Cleo Dang Would Rather Be Dead - Mai Nguyen

An Academy for Liars - Alexis Henderson

Alone With You in the Ether - Olivie Blake

Haldol and Hyacinths - Melody Moezzi

An Unquiet Mind - Kay Redfield Jamison

How to Keep House While Drowning – KC Davis

Challenger Deep - Neal Shusterman

Darius the Great is Not Okay – Adib Khorram
My Year of Rest and Relaxation – Ottessa Moshfegh

Turtles All the Way Down - John Green

What My Bones Know – Stephanie Foo

Evil Eye - Etaf Rum

The Secret World of Briar Rose - Cindy Pham

Between Friends and Lovers - Shirlene Obuobi

Before I Let Go - Kennedy Ryan

Cleopatra and Frankenstein - Coco Mellors

Big Swiss - Jen Beagin

Joe’s Picks:

Puzzled – Pan Cooke

What’s Wrong? - Erin Williams

Anxietyland – Gemma Correll

Past Tense – Sacha Mardou

Dear Scarlet – Teresa Wong

In. - Will McPhail

Everything is OK – Debbie Tung

Verona Comics – Jennifer Dugan

Sunflowers – Keezy Young

Who’s in this episode:

Jananie K. Velu - Links

Time stamps:
00:00:00 Title
00:00:23 Intro
00:00:52 Catching up with Jananie & Mental Health Awareness Month
00:01:10 What role does reading play in your mental health journey?
00:02:15 Anti-Brain Rot Reading Challenge and Mindful Reading
00:04:48 When you’re going through it mentally, it’s hard to stick to goals and plans
00:07:36 Mental Health Awareness Month Reading Recs
01:07:27 Outro

Readers can sample and borrow the titles mentioned in today’s episode in Libby. Library friends can add these titles to their digital collections for free in OverDrive Marketplace and Kanopy. Check out our Cumulative List for the whole season, or this list for today’s episode!

Looking for more bookish content? Check out the Libby Life Blog!

We hope you enjoy this episode of Book Lounge by Libby. Be sure to rate, review and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen! You can watch the video version of our show on the Libby App YouTube channel. Keep up with us on social media by following the Libby App on Instagram!

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