Word: self-help
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...Lowdown: The new year is upon us. Break out the optimism, the resolutions and the thinly-veiled self-help books. There are some, like Henry Alford's How To Live that hide their chicken-soup soul within the well-structured tale of a fruitful personal journey. Then there are those such as Rich Like Them, whose vigorous attempts to shake off the label ("It's not what you think of as a traditional self-help book...I chose instead to look at the context of these lives, to tell people's stories"), just end up making the author sound slightly...
...will the book actually help you talk to girls? Not really. But it makes for a good gag gift. Have a permanently single male friend? Want to creep out strangers by reading it alone at a bar? Self-help books written by 9-year-olds provide endless opportunities for awkward, uncomfortable amusement. Besides, nothing in the book is incorrect. We girls (and women) are not as elusive as we may seem. We like gifts and attention and people who make us laugh. We dislike hyperactive, clingy boys (and boys who wear sweatpants). If you want to talk to us, sometimes...
...sprawling on a cheetah-print chaise longue for impromptu therapy sessions, others buying books shelved in categories like "For Those Who Have Fallen Profoundly and Unexpectedly in Love" and "For Those Whose Jobs Are Too Small For Their Spirit." It sounds hopelessly self-indulgent, but for anyone confronting existential angst, a dose of high-brow self-help can go a long way. "We start from the perspective that most lives are quite chaotic and turbulent," says faculty member Alain de Botton, author of How Proust Can Change Your Life. "The school is a guide rail to hang...
...kill that man's wife and kids with that bomb, you've got to remember that. He had limits ... You can watch it for fun, to get off on his big guns and 'Say hello to my little friend' ... But you can also use it the way businessmen use self-help books...
...Dongguan's numerous self-help seminars, where factory girls pay to learn how to improve themselves and find better jobs: "It was the strangest jumble of ideas I had ever encountered, combining the primacy of the individual with rules that were at once New Age and rigid...the message was modern - express yourself, be confident - but it came with traditional assumptions: You will lift up your whole family....I noticed something: the students did not fall asleep. They did not look bored. No one ever left to use the bathroom during the two-hour class; they were afraid they might...