This month’s recommendation comes courtesy of Colette Bonar, a member of the Hygge Nook, who showed this book off on the Nook a few weeks ago and sent me off on a dash to find it…

Go Be Kind by Leon Logothetis

It’s a lovely, chunky hardback book, with black and white hand drawn pages throughout. The author, Leon Logothetis, made the series The Kindness Diaries which is available on Netflix and currently sitting on my watch list waiting for the chance to watch it. The book is a journal style, designed to be read, used, coloured and written all over. I’m working my way through it for July and August, since it’s a series of 28 actions designed to help spread kindness and happiness around the world.

Some of them are small, fast and will just take you a moment. Some of them are quite deep and will need you to think, step out of your comfort zone and be brave. Number 12: Go Be a Hero instructs you to go out there and find someone you’ve hurt, contact them and explain why you did what you did. I’m telling you now, if you can do that then you are not just a hero, you’re a superhero, because that takes guts.

The tasks cost nothing, in that they take time or effort rather than require a Thing to do them, but they do cost you in giving of yourself. Don’t worry… you’re not giving away a kidney or anything big like that, but you are being asked to approach strangers (always do this safely) or to share things about yourself that might make you feel self-conscious (does anybody else have a really embarrassing favourite piece of music that always makes them smile? Mine is Morecambe and Wise). It costs your brain and heart, rather than your bank balance.

The book is designed for you to write in it, but the paper quality is probably not strong enough for a really powerful ink pen or gel pen. I’m definitely going to colour it in, but only using my Christmas present coloured pencils, so no risk of bleed through.

Pages like the one above are made for cutting out and giving away: I’m so unable to ruin books, usually, so I can see I’ll have to find a different way of doing the task that day. There are 28 actions (the 1/2 is to write to the author) so I’m thinking between now and September I’ll have a go at doing as many as I can and spread some peri-covid happiness!!! (peri-covid here meaning during covid)

It’s always a small world! I think that’s one of the best lessons that The Hygge Nook teaches me every day… that no matter where you live or who you are, very often it’s the small things that make you happy, the small word of kindness that makes yuou smile and the stranger paying for a cup of chai latte by paypal that makes buying another book to review possible….. (joke, honest)

I’ll be sharing as many of the tasks as I can on The Hygge Nook, so pop over and join us if you want to keep up regularly, although I will post on here as I go along as well. The only thing missing from the book is a tick off chart to mark progress. I might grab an hour at work and make one, actually….

I’m still not sharing out and out adverts for my books, yet, but if anyone would like to support me, then the details you need are on my If You’d Like to Support Me page. Most of my money goes on books like this one…..