The life-changing magic of not reading certain books.
Beware the bookstore, casual browser! For within its inviting doors lie the Shelves of Shame, the section where the titles chum the waters of human insecurities with some version of this underlying message—shame on you for not being a better you!
Self-help is the beguiling label attached to the Shelves of Shame. Here, the dust jackets tease us with promises of self-improvement, of personal achievement, of more fulfillment, of greater happiness. Everything you need for the most special DIY project of all—you!—lies in the pages of these works. No wonder that we have a compulsion for self-help books. No wonder this industry category rakes in $10 billion a year.
To glance at a Shelves of Shame title is to invite self-doubt—aka self-assured’s negative cousin—to stick its size-14 shoe in the door of your well-being. It’s happened to me countless times. Well, all right, my bookshelves and I know the number. And Brené Brown, author of the bestseller The Power of Vulnerability, would have me admit it to you. But, I don’t want to over share. Let’s just say I fit the buyer profile in my need for acquiring knowledge. Myers-Briggs has me pegged. The Enneagram does, too. (Enneagram? See The Enneagram Made Easy: Discover the Nine Types of People.)
Our susceptibility to chasing perfection makes us ripe for some author’s prescriptive tome. Are most self-help books evidence-based? Hardly. In a 2000 article in the journal Psychotherapy, self-help scholar John C. Norcross, Ph.D., wrote that 95 percent of self-help books lack quantifiable evidence supporting their prescriptions. And, his research also showed zero relationship between how well a book sold and how effective its advice was in
practice. If you’re a publisher, though, a book proposal that has “bestseller” written all over it can mean a book that goes into reprint.
What are the chances a self-help book will change your life? Depends on the book; depends on you. For me, the odds are between slim and anorexic. The pristine intellectual realm of reading is one thing, the messy reality of life minus an index is another.
Take that bestseller The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by the self-help guru Steven R. Covey. You read it, too, didn’t you? Quick, name the seven habits. After “sharpening the saw,” my memory dulls. I suppose I remain among the somewhat effective.
While the best self-help titles offer timeless advice and remain bestsellers, some titles in the genre inevitably lose their luster. Gail Sheehy’s 1976 bestseller Passages posited that life unfolds in a predictable linear pattern. Bruce Feiler’s 2021 Life Is In The Transitions:
Mastering Change at Any Age rings truer today. His take: life is a herky-jerky line due to sudden changes that rock us like earthquakes. “Life-quakes,” he calls them. You can borrow my copy.
Now, You Are a Badass by the very sincere Jen Sincero did resonate with me. I listened to the audiobook. I recall enjoying it—and nothing else. Ditto for Cal Newport’s bestseller, Deep Work. Cal, shallow work still sort of works for many of us. As for The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, I applaud Marie Kondo’s call to declutter my life but I refuse to fold my socks like woolen sushi rolls. A bunch of self-help books even employ a certain four-letter word in their titles. Fun reads? No idea. But they caught my eye.
Let’s say that, despite my plea to jettison self-help for self-acceptance, you want to gorge yourself on these books. Sad to say, it’s doable. The Headway app condenses popular self-help titles into 15-minute reads. Read one a day for micro-learning at its best. That’s insanity, I say. Unless you’ve been diagnosed with a Cluster B personality disorder, you probably don’t need to be a better you. Or to read I’m OK, You’re OK for reassurance. Classic of the genre, sure, but so what? There’s power in letting go of books that essentially regurgitate the ideas of every other self-help book in history. And I didn’t have to read The Power of Letting Go to come to that conclusion.
In Ray Bradbury’s dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451, all books have been declared illegal and firemen have a different job: they set books ablaze with flamethrowers. What a horrifying thought to this book lover. And yet, vis-à-vis one category of preachy books, I could look for a box of matches. Bring your self-help books to add to mine. I’ll play the Fahrenheit 451 fireman.
This article originally appeared in the August 2024 issue.
