Help yourself to these self-help titles
By Susanna Brandon
USA Today
It's the end of March already, and it's a good time to — wait, don't waddle away — take a long, hard look at yourself. If your resolve to transform your life has grown as thin as you projected yourself to be by this date back on Jan. 1, perhaps the fault lies not in you, but in the starry promises made by those self-help books now gathering dust. Well, shove them back under the bed. Here's an informal guide to some self-help books worth reading:
Get rich, age gracefully
• "The 21 Success Secrets of Self-made Millionaires" (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, hardcover, $19.95). This really should be called "The 22 Success Secrets," the 22nd being that no self-respecting self-made millionaire would pay $19.95 for a title like that. Granted, reading a self-help book probably will not make you rich. But this unlikely gem by Brian Tracy sums up why some people are going places and others are not. (Important hint: Read this before the wedding.) And at 95 cents a success secret, it's not a bad investment, particularly if you pick up a good habit or two. For instance, Success Secret 18, taking care of your physical self: "There is a five-word formula for weight loss and physical fitness: 'Eat less, and exercise more."'
• How "do" you become a millionaire? You could own a forest, then denude it to publish books that advise people to give up the daily trip to Starbucks and pay off those credit cards. Oh, but you already knew that, being a smart person. So why aren't you rich? Gary Belsky and Thomas Gilovich will tell you why in "Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes and How to Correct Them" (Simon and Schuster, paperback, $12). Recommended for anyone who uses money.
• "The Yankee Way to Simplify Your Life" (Quill, paperback). Start by throwing away books that promise to simplify your life in 30 days. Jay Heinrichs offers advice that has withstood the test of time, much as a hand-hewn oak bench has and a particleboard entertainment center won't. You also will get priceless perspective on treating your finite time on Earth with that same abiding respect, straightforwardness and economy.
• Which bring us to Roger Rosenblatt's "Rules for Aging" (Harcourt Trade Publishers, hardback, $18). Why isn't this book on all the best-seller lists? It is short, smart, funny, on the money and infinitely better than the undeserving "Deep Thoughts by Anna Quindlen" (a.k.a. "A Short Guide to a Happy Life") (Random House, hardcover, $12.95). Rosenblatt, with great humor and insight, offers 56 rules to help us "resist normal impulses, live longer, attain perfection." Rule No. 1: "It doesn't matter." Rule No. 2: "Nobody is thinking about you. They are thinking about themselves — just like you." Rule No. 38: "Push the wheel forward." Because you have no idea what No. 38 is alluding to, go out and buy this book right now, in droves, so we can get it on the best-seller lists where it belongs.
How not to waste time
• Avoid authors who have no readily apparent means of support, yet encourage you to quit your job and follow your dreams. Harriet Rubin, author of the rambling "Soloing: Realizing Your Life's Ambition," (HarperCollins, hardcover, $23) comes to mind, as do Paul and Sarah Edwards, who used to be respectably employed writing books about working from home.
All three apparently now spend their days looking out the window and thinking about how terrific they are. I pored over the Edwardses' "Practical Dreamer's Handbook: Finding the Time, Money, and Energy to Live the Life You Want to Live" (Putnam Publishing, hardcover, $21.95), totally mystified as to how this couple earns a living. As near as I can tell, when they are not thinking about how terrific they are, they are earnestly asking other self-centered but tragically dissatisfied baby boomers, "What are you 'really' afraid of?"
If you really want to know what it is like to let go of your day job and do something interesting and scary, read Rebecca Matthias' "Mothers Work" (Doubleday, hardcover, $24.95), a riveting tale of how a young woman launched a multimillion-dollar business.
• Avoid any book by any author who knows he has a franchise. John Gray is a prime example of someone who had a mildly interesting idea, then proceeded to club us over the head with it. The unreasonably prolific author of "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus" is now out with "Children Are From Heaven" (HarperCollins, paperback, $14), which doesn't put him squarely in any cosmos I'm aware of.
• Avoid any book that exhorts you to get in touch with Your Inner Anything. Or as Bill Murray observed as he resisted Sigourney Weaver's possessed temptress in "Ghostbusters": "It could get a little crowded." Like a science experiment gone horribly wrong, the Inner Child has been replicating out of control, populating the self-help world with everything from Inner Goddesses to Inner Mothers to Inner Bitches — everyone, it seems, but Inner Editors.
Now, if I were to write a self-help book, it would be called "Everything I Needed to Know About Life I Learned as a Kid on the Farm," and it would be exactly one paragraph long: Never stand around with your hands in your pockets when someone is doing chores, and always latch a gate behind you.
Oh, and rein in that ego. You're upsetting the cows.
E-mail sbrandon@usatoday.com
