could it be both a verb and a noun?
I found this book at Savers. The tag said it was $2.99 but I don't know if Savers charges that much for non-hardcover books so maybe it was cheaper.
I bought it in in lieu of some other tempting titles including: "Beyond Parsley"; "Inside Steve's Brain", and "Freeing yourself from Environmental Illness."
On Amazon one of the hardcovers of "Inside Steve's Brain" is quite pricey at $99...at least today...Don't worry the Savers version was paperback. This version is less than $15. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0044KY0YY/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B0044KY0YY&linkCode=as2&tag=crifoyo-20
You can snag "Beyond Parsley" which got good reviews on Amazon for $.01 or $7.51. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0960707611/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0960707611&linkCode=as2&tag=crifoyo-20
I couldn't find "Freeing Yourself from Environmental Illness" on Amazon. I wish I had gotten that one too.
So, now to the winner of my book search at Savers "Life is a Verb" by Patti Digh.
On Amazon you can get it for $3.99 new or $.24 used...or you can check out Savers and get it for $2.99...you might save on shipping if you get it at Savers, unless you have Amazon Prime.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1599212951/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1599212951&linkCode=as2&tag=crifoyo-20
This book started out as a blog:
http://www.37days.com
She writes about the 37 days between her step-father's diagnosis of cancer and his death. She encourages others via writing activities and inspirational quotes to live life to the fullest.
I have mixed feelings about self-help books. I think that part of me thinks I should be above self-help books because as a professional self-help-er I should know all the skills to fix mua-self. The other part of me sees self-help books as a bunch of the same stuff hashed up and re-arranged differently, so what's the point of reading the same book in a million different nuances a million different times.
I was curious to see how much I am exaggerating with the amount of self-help books so I did some sleuthing. Amazon has 20 pages of 16 each which equals 320. Google has 44 pages of 9 each which equals 396. So this is a tad shy of a million but still...
My curiosity was not gratified. I Googled "How many self-help books are there in the world". It brought up the same results as Suri which was the Wikipedia history of self-help books: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-help.
So, until I can prove there are at least a million self-help books in the world I will accept temporary exaggeration-defeat...for now. But, 400 self-help books is still a lot of books.
Something was still not right. Another virtual trip to Amazon resulted in 100 pages of 12 each, which equals 1200 (don't worry I did that one in my head) of mystery books. My theory that self-help books being rehashed a million times is starting to develop some cracks. Is the self-help genre really second fiddle to Fiction...Fiction meaning fake. At least self-help is non-fake. Yes, I seem to be defending my once scorned genre...this is why blogging is so helpful.
Google Books has 100 pages of romance novels. Novel, meaning fake as well. What's with people and their obsession with fake. Something to think about.
In the meantime my curiosity is piqued to read the whole Wikipedia history of self-help books, because my first skimming (used as a noun) proved very interesting.
In my opinion memoirs should be a sub-category of self-help because learning from others' experiences can be very self-helping. We learn what to do, what not to do. I'm sure that if we read "Inside Steve's Brain" we would learn how to be self-motivated, creative, and a risk-taker. Or, we could go read a self-help book on the above.
Google Books has 1000 memoirs. So that makes our self-help tally (assuming memoirs are a sub-category of self-help) 1396; can we just round up to 1400? 1400 self-help books; now we've overtaken romance and mystery, thank goodness! This is approaching my million mark but I think if we assume that history, religious writings, biography, and autobiography also have strong ties to the self-help milieu then a million is not such as stretch.
Wow, what a tangent. I definitely need a book on, "The need to be right."
Anyway, what I was saying is that I used to not think very highly of the self-help genre, where's my thesaurus; the self-help species. However, through blogging I've learned that in light of my apparent opinions on the fake classifications, self-help doesn't come out so badly.
Self-help books are definitely cheaper than therapy. They can "Change your life". I had to put that in quotes because it seems like the self-help category pretty much owns that one.
Self-help books are full of statistics and interesting facts and psuedo-facts; a fascinating mixture of hard and soft science. Whereas in the past reading a self-help book may have been perceived as "You're weird"; now it's perceived more like "You're normal; good for you and good job saving money on overpriced therapy".
They are also much easier to skim, in fact I'm sure that after I read the Wikipedia history I will learn that writing them for skimming purposes is a must for getting your self-help book published and on the New York Times Best Seller list. "Go crazy on the bullet points" a self-help book for aspiring self-help writers would say. You won't have to worry about losing yourself in a self-help book, like you might in a more fake genus, like romance or mystery. Unlike those readers you are more balanced, more flexible. Your book is not a new, temporary appendage. You don't take it to the bathroom like...(well I'll stop comparing that doesn't become someone so enlightened). But let's just say... You, my self-help reader, are AWESOME, STRONG AND AMAZING!! Thank you, thank you.
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