BOOK OF THE WEEK

Make Someone Happy and Find Your Own Happiness Along the Way

by Emily Coxhead, Vermilion, €12.99

If you’re single, you may feel a tad wistful on Valentine’s Day. I spent years alone before I found the man I truly wanted to marry. (I was 60, so it’s never too late.) Looking happy and spreading happiness is the most attractive feature in anyone, so I want to highlight this engaging new book.

A few years ago the book’s author Emily, a designer and illustrator, was feeling ‘a little bit sad and decided to do something about it – for myself more than anybody else’. So, in 2015, she launched The Happy Newspaper to celebrate all that’s good in the world. It brought her ‘heaps of happiness, hope and love’ and many others told her it had the same effect on them, ‘even some who had been cracked and glued together far too many times’.

The essence of Emily’s philosophy is simply to help people. She suggests doing ‘tiny things – smiling, helping somebody with heavy luggage, or asking a homeless person if they want some food’.

The book is designed as a ‘creative kindness journal’ so there are pages to write, for instance, three favourite things about someone you know, which you then tell them.

Or cut out tiny notes with comforting words such as, ‘You mean the whole world to SO many people’ and leave them in a library book or a café menu.

In a world that often seems hard and unloving, creating such bubbles of kindness is priceless.