Saturday 7 December from 11.30 am to 1.30 pm at The Wanstead Tap

Meet Michael Rosen and buy signed copies of his books.
Free entry – just join the queue!
  • Newham Bookshop by Pete Fallan
    Newham Bookshop, Pete Fallan, March 2021.
  • We can send books by post, usually £3.20 in the UK.


Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman
Meditations for Mortals is published by The Bodley Head in hardback at £18.99.

Oliver Burkeman

Meditations for Mortals

Four weeks to embrace your limitations and make time for what counts

Meditations for Mortals takes us on a liberating journey towards a more meaningful life – one that begins not with fantasies of the ideal existence, but with the reality in which we actually find ourselves. Addressing the fundamental questions about how to live, it offers a powerful new way to take action on what counts: a guiding philosophy of life Oliver Burkeman calls ‘imperfectionism’. How can we embrace our non-negotiable limitations? Or make good decisions when there’s always too much to do? What if purposeful productivity were often about letting things happen, not making them happen? Reflecting on ideas drawn from philosophy, religion, literature, psychology, and self-help, Burkeman explores practical tools and shifts in perspective.

The result is a bracing challenge to much familiar advice, and a profound yet entertaining crash course in living more fully. To be read either as a four-week ‘retreat of the mind’ or devoured in one or two sittings, Meditations for Mortals will be a source of solace and inspiration, and an aid to a saner, freer, and more enchantment-filled life. In anxiety-inducing times, it is rich in truths we have never needed more.