Little Book of Awakening is a handy pocket-size book of weekly reflections excerpted from Nepo’s earlier book The Book of Awakening, published in 2000. I haven’t read the original book, so I can’t speak to the comparison, but the portable nature of this version appealed to me. As much as I often enjoy books that invite me to immerse myself in its pages, for something like this, I feel like bite-size tidbits work better for reading over my morning cup of tea.

The book is set up into weekly reflections. Each week features a quote or pithy statement, followed by a brief reflection by the author, and guiding prompts and questions for our own reflections. His reflections are sometimes about a story from his own life, other times about a story he’s read somewhere. Week 2 for example talks about salmon, and how their powerful way of swimming can teach us about facing situations without fear.

I haven’t read through the full book yet; I want to space it out over a year. But I did flip through it for interesting tidbits for review, and I really like what I found in Week 43: “Birds don’t need ornithologists to fly.” The reflection that follows is about how much we long to be seen and understood by others, but not necessarily recognize the greatness that already exists in ourselves even without that external affirmation. Definitely food for thought!

I would consider the book secular, in that it’s definitely not a devotional, nor does it focus on philosophies or stories from any particular religion, but there are religious elements to it. From my quick flip through, Nepo does make some references to God and the story of Nicodemus from the Bible. So this may not be a good fit for readers who prefer more fully secular reflections, nor for readers who would prefer for fully religious content.

Overall, this seems like a handy little book. I don’t particularly love Nepo’s writing style, meaning I don’t really see myself looking for more of his books. But I do like some of the reflections he provides, and some of the prompts he suggests. These prompts may also be good for journaling; they don’t particularly inspire me to journal about them, but that’s just a personal response to the prompts I’ve seen and the way I respond to Nepo’s style. Other readers may feel differently, and honestly, if this was set up with some space for writing, I may have tried a bit of journaling.

Still, I do see myself using this before starting work on Monday mornings. It’s a nice bit of quiet and thoughtfulness before launching into the work week, and perhaps a nice complement to the mindfulness practice I’d like to re-start.

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Thank you to Firefly Distributed Lines for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.