Showing results by narrator "Catherine Gray" in All Categories

'Snortingly funny and entertainingly researched via an impressive suite of scientists' - The Times Smartphones, ultra-processed food, online shopping, people-pleasing, gambling, dating... most of us can identify a little addiction we don't need to quit but certainly do a little too much of. In...

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'Gray's tale of going sober is uplifting and inspiring' - The Evening Standard 'An icon of the Quit Lit movement' - Condé Nast Traveller 'Fascinating' - Bryony Gordon 'Not remotely preachy' - The Times 'Jaunty, shrewd and convincing' - Sunday Telegraph 'Admirably...

The Unexpected Joy of the Ordinary theorises that the solution is rediscovering the joy in the ordinary that we so often now forget to feel. Because we now expect the pleasure of a croissant, a hot shower, a yoga class, someone delivering our shopping to our door, we no longer feel its buzz. The joy of it whips through us like a bullet train, without pause. Catherine Gray was a grandmaster in the art of eye-rolling the ordinary and skilled in everlasting reaching. Until the black dog of depression forced her to rethink everything.

Retired wreckhead Catherine Gray, author of surprise best seller The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober, is now in her ninth sober year and has learnt a damn sight more. This hotly anticipated sequel enlists the help of experts and case studies, turning a curious, playful gaze onto provocative questions. Is alcohol a parenting aid? Why are booze and cocaine such a horse and carriage? Once an addict, always an addict? How do you feel safe—from alcohol, others and yourself—in sobriety?

Society, films, song lyrics and our parents are adamant that a happy ending has to be couple-shaped. Catherine Gray took a whole year off dating to find single satisfaction. She lifted the lid on the reasons behind the global single revolution, explored the bizarre ways cultures single-shame, detached from 'all the good ones are gone!' panic and debunked the myth that married people are much happier.

Gray has written for many major publications, such as The Guardian, The Telegraph, Grazia, BBC Earth and Marie Claire. During her 20s, Gray worked for Glamour and Cosmopolitan. As you might have read in her debut book, The Unexpected Joy of Being Sober, Gray battled addiction to alcohol during her 20s and early 30s but managed to keep holding down her job. We spoke to Catherine Gray about what counts as ‘fun gratitude’, what the significance is of the Hedonic Treadmill and why ordinary things are so great.

A searing portrait of a mother’s body—a resurrection and reclamation of pleasure after abuse, a study of intergenerational trauma, and a love letter to the bodies of women: as alive and unbound as the teeming Mississippi wilds that bear witness Four months postpartum with her second child...