The Book of Hygge

The Danish Art of Contentment, Comfort, and Connection

By: Louisa Thomsen Brits

Narrated by: Kim Mai Guest

“One of the best guides to creating a more socially connected and rewarding life.”—Shelf Awareness

Whether you’re seeking mindfulness gifts, meditation gifts, or are looking for a way to bring calm and comfort into your home, hygge is the solution. Hygge (hoo-gah) is a Danish word for a feeling of being warm, safe, comforted, and sheltered—an experience of belonging to the moment and to each other. When life gets hectic, work grows stressful, and the days fly by, unplug and tune in. This definitive guide to hygge deserves a place on your coffee table—and in your heart.

Hygge anchors us, reminding us to slow down, to connect with place and with one another, to dwell and savor rather than rush and spend.

When you curl up by the fire with a blanket, or have a simple meal with friends, that is hygge. When you acknowledge the sacred in the secular, or focus on people rather than things, or when you express love through small gestures, that is hygge.

The Book of Hygge is an invitation to welcome abundance and contentment into your life. It is a call to live more fully by focusing on what moves you.

This beautiful gift book is packed with full-color photographs and instructive meditations on relishing the everyday. It is your essential guide to cultivating the coziness that has made Danes the happiest people in the world. A perfect gift, The Book of Hygge is designed with an unjacketed, textured cover and crisp, clean interiors.

As seen in the The New Yorker.

Critic reviews

“The most poetic of the [hygge books]; I found myself repeatedly returning to its list-like incantation of hyggeligt habits.”
—Louisa Kamps, ELLE

“Casts hygge as a state of mindfulness: how to make essential and mundane tasks dignified, joyful, and beautiful, how to live a life connected with loved ones. [The Book of Hygge] focusses on the concept’s philosophical and spiritual underpinnings rather than its quirky objects.”
—The New Yorker

“The Book of Hygge is likely to be one of the best guides to creating a more socially connected and rewarding life…A pretty book, soothing to look at, but it also offers a genuine challenge to develop oases of tolerance and peace at home and in the workplace, to balance the alienation, overstimulation and anxious striving of everyday life.”
—Sara Catterall, Shelf Awareness (starred review)

“Best [book] for the philosophy of hygge.”
—Irish Daily Mail, You magazine

“A philosophy for mindful living.”
—The Guardian

“A thing of beauty.”
—Irish Examiner

“Inviting. In increasingly fast-paced and competitive America, hygge has considerable appeal; readers may very well find reading Brits’ compact and enjoyable book the literary version of the practice.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Filled with thought-provoking learnings, the evolution of hygge in its many forms.”
—Interiors & Living

I’ve listened to this over and over! Love!

Such a beautiful picture of what it means to hygge. I love the book and the performance. So comforting and cozy!

Great Book Well Read

A Nordic version of mindfulness meditation, except with warm coffee and friends. This book provokes images of warm comfort and peacefulness.

I felt like I was listening to a dictionary entry.

Aside from the fact that the Danes seem to be, "practically perfect in every way," according to the author, I really felt that the book was crazily repetitive. I wish I would have started counting the times she wrote about a hot cup of coffee or tea or the lighting of a candle. I understand those are features of the ideology, but I really felt she did not have enough to say to fill a book.