Anyone else like self-help books?

Bad genre. If it was worth a damn, it would be regular old psychology, philosophy or liturature - not "self-help."

Self-help books are little book-casinos, selling people dreams for cash. There's more than enough wisdom in real liturature and philosophy to waste away hours reading some hack.

(No offense, of course. If you get something out reading them, more power to you.)

A Cookbook with a lot of interesting recipes. You will never find this in a psychology, philosophy or clasics. And it really helps alot in life.

But you can also go to a restaurant.

I bought a book called Feel the fear and do it anyway.
It made me look at things differently and put things into perspective but sadly didnt help as I am still in a dead end dull job.Grrrr.

In a general sense I do agree, as I said in my original post most are in fact trash, but even bad genre's have jewel's they just tend to be fewer and farther between. There is also overlap in the genre as the Carnegie book is really a general psychology book and the Obitz book is a cognitive behavioral psychology book.

Sorry to hear you are stuck in a dull job, but would you recommend the book? I do like the tittle. Thanks and I hope you find exciting work soon.

Self-help books? To me they're crap. As Nietzche argued, there's too much good literature to waste your time reading them.

Pony-its been a while since I read ut so cant remember exactly what steps it took to helping people but, yes, Id recomend it.I think it helped with things like prioritizing things and how to dedicate how much time to certain areas of your life.

I think it all depends on how much you can relate to to the subject matter.
Obviously there is a big difference between being interested in a good self help book, and being inspired by it.

For both of the above I really enjoyed The Kid by Kevin Lewis (I think thats the surname! It was a couple of years ago!)
The Loss by Wyatt Van Wendels and anything by Dave Peltzer

Self-help books I actually use are cook books and 'how-to' books that help me do better home repair or gardening or whatever. Any book which claims that reading it will make me more self-aware or improve my outlook or whatever, I find to be not worth reading. And they seem to come in waves; whatever is the current buzzword gets the 'self-help book' treatment. I'm surprised that Dale Carnegie's book is still in print. That was 1950s. Then came "I'm OK, You're OK" (assurance to those with self-doubts, I presume); "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarden" (written in a vocabulary and style easily accessible to six-year-olds); and all the "Getting in Touch With Your Inner Child" crap (I'd rather be in touch with the adult 'me'). The most recent buzzword I recall coming into vogue in the 1990s was "co-dependency." I don't know what book(s) covered that. It's unfortunate that so many people are so insecure that they need this kind of psychobabble to help them cope with the ordinary vicissitudes of life.

But, as Nietzche has already said, I don't disparage them for people who find them helpful. It's just that for myself, I find I'm prone to wanting to parody and lampoon these books.

[edited for typos]

Hmmm - I suspect self-help books that deal with anxiety using well-researched cognitive behavioural methods DO help a lot of people with mild to moderate anxiety.

Books that give solid information about things like anxiety, depression, and so forth are likely to be at least somewhat helpful, I think.


The frothy "I can make your life paradise in five steps" are likely to be trashy.

The "For Dummies" series has been very helpful to me.

Whoever started those really identified my ilk.

Ponytail-Yes I would recomend the book.It makes alot of sense and makes us really see things how they should be.
its very good if yuo stick to it.

Ahh, you Ilkies are all alike.

I read Wayne Dyer's "Pulling Your Own Strings" and "Your Erroneous Zones" in my early twenties and have practiced many of his strategies and manuevers throughout my adult life and "How to Survive the Loss of a Love", which I've recommeneded many times on these threads, helped me immeasurably through my first big heartbreak and all of the others. These 3 books helped to make me the person that I am today.

I've always thought the ultimate self-help book title would be "How to Avoid Spending Money on Empty Promises." I'm generally very distrustful of them, but have slowly come around to not hating them in principle. E.G. likes 'em, read the Carnegie when he was like 13, suggested "The Dance of Anger" when I was going through especially difficult times with my dad, it was actually somewhat helpful. Now he's reading a Julie Morgenstern (sp?) book called something like "Organizing Your Time From Within" (that's not quite it). He's physically very organized, everything in its place; time-wise he's hopeless. I read the first couple of chapters, have to admit there are some good ideas.

Galling, isn't it?

'Tis!

I also read Wayne Dyer in my early twenties. I read his book "The Sacred Self" and actually enjoyed it. Sometimes I pick it up and re-read certain parts (especially the parts dealing with anger ). I have recommended it to certain people.

As far as other self-help books go; I am generally wary but have given some a try. Books I often read as self-help aren't actually considered that usually -
I will read things like Survival Manuals etc. to remind me of the basics of life.

One book I read, called "The Urban Survivalist" was great. It was funny, informative and generally a great read. It was about surviving in an urban landscape.

cheers

The Holy Bible is a great Self Help Book.