The Slice: Lucy Pearson
book recs from down under + mindfully reading
Happy Friday, all! Here in Berlin, it finally feels like springtime, and I’m so happy to be reading outside in the sunshine. I hope you’re also headed into the weekend with a good read or maybe an audiobook to keep you company.
For The Slice this week, I had a lot of fun chatting with Lucy Pearson, an Australia-based writer behind
newsletter. Lucy has been a book blogger for more than a decade, and every week, she profiles a different author’s dream lineup to take to the sandy shores of a desert island. Her newsletter has gobs of recommendations, and I love her work about mindfulness and intentional reading. She is also leading a book retreat in Wales in August. Sounds like my dream vacay!
I love your desert island book series. What would be your go-to choice?
This is a question I’ve always grappled with — but as the guests on my Desert Island Books series are allowed to take eight books, I hope that means I can too! If so, they would be: A Little Life, Giovanni’s Room, The Shell Seekers, A Prayer for Owen Meany, Places I Stopped on the Way Home, Gone with the Wind and Crime & Punishment— making for a nice mix of genres and authors. If I had to narrow it down to just one… Probably A Little Life—but if you asked me tomorrow, the entire list might have changed!
I first saw you quoted in The Atlantic article “When Is It OK to Not Finish a Book?”. How do you know when it’s time to call it quits?
If you find yourself cleaning just to avoid reading your current book, it’s a sure sign it’s time to move on. I believe in giving a book 50 pages— or a solid hour of reading —and if it’s not vibing, let it go. Life’s way too short for bad books.
I have never heard of bibliotherapy before! Can you explain to our readers what this is and how you got into it?
Bibliotherapy is basically book matchmaking for the soul. It’s all about finding the right book at the right time—whether you need a good cry, a dose of inspiration, or just an escape from reality. Books have an incredible way of helping us make sense of life, and bibliotherapy taps into that by using literature to support well-being and personal growth.
I got into bibliotherapy the way I get into most things—by reading! I’ve always been obsessed with books, and over the years, I naturally started recommending them to friends going through breakups, career changes, or just feeling stuck. That led me to formally train in bibliotherapy, and now I work with clients around the world on everything from making more time to read to diversifying their bookshelves.
Alongside my bibliotherapy sessions, I offer four different types of book prescriptions—ranging from a reading reset for those wanting to dip their toes in bibliotherapy, to a fully guided year of reading for those looking for a deeper literary journey.
What is your go-to book recommendation right now?
Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Sandwich by Catherine Newman. I read Sandwich twice last year and still can’t stop thinking about it—and I just finished Dream Count, which was well worth the twelve-year wait!
Is there a book or author that best captures your part of the world?
Madeleine Gray’s debut novel, Green Dot, is one of my favorite reads in recent years. After ten pages, I was hooked—I wolfed it down in less than four hours. By the time I finished, I was bereft. Obsessed. I couldn’t stop thinking about Hera, her dog, her dad, Arthur. The green dot. I was consumed by the ideas of morality, affairs, and the nuance of being human.
What’s a good tip for reading more in every day life?
If you want to make more time for reading, the simplest (and hardest) first step is to disconnect. Put your phone on airplane mode, stash it in a drawer in another room, and forget about it entirely. Easier said than done, I know. But the more you practice, the easier it gets—and you’d be surprised how much extra time appears when you’re not mindlessly scrolling through endless videos of an influencer in Idaho perfecting heatless curls.
Stephen King once said, 'The trick is to teach yourself to read in small sips as well as long swallows.' So don’t wait until you have an uninterrupted hour or two—read whenever you can, in the small pockets of free time throughout your day.
️🔥️🔥️🔥 Rapid fire! A book for…
Getting out of a rut: The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari by Robyn Sharma
A good laugh: This is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay
Deep feelings of romance: Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
A new parent: The Hungover Games by Sophie Heawood
Huge thanks to Lucy! Be sure to follow the
for more ✨Do you have a book lover I should interview? Send me an email and I’ll be in touch! 💌
📚 On my shelf
I finished Birnam Wood and liked it a lot more than I thought I would! I don’t usually vibe with ecoterrorism/environmental thrillers, but Eleanor Catton has such a strong voice and writes such eccentric characters (full of flaws, but also sympathy-arousing), that by the end, I was hooked. And the final quarter is insane!! Dwight Garner put it well in his review.
For Fulbright research, I read The Rest Is Memory by Lily Tuck. The book recreates the life of a 14-year-old Polish Catholic girl who perished in Auschwitz. Definitely a heavy read, but I appreciated how the author pieced together the sober history in an unusual, and illuminating, way.
Obsessed with White Fur by Jardine Libaire so far!
📚 Links and things
I’m loving
’s new “bedroom diaries” series. Their first dispatch, from a new mom struggling with her job/sex life/body image, is riveting.Earlier this week, I watched Flow, the Oscar-winning animated film about a group of animals during a catastrophic flood, and was absolutely hooked. Such a gorgeous (and surprisingly moving) film about what it means to be alive and look after a found family. It’s streaming on Max, so go watch!! 🐈⬛
So cool that Mikey Madison (newly minted Oscar winner!) is totally off all social media. I aspire to that one day!
I love this series from the New York Times about “reading your way through” different cities, and the New Orleans edition really sparkles 🎺
Happy reading! 💛
XOX
Alli