By Tonia Kelly
Way back in the 1950s, Norman Vincent Peale wrote a book called The Power of Positive Thinking. It contained such chapter headings as “How To Get People To Like You,” and “Prescription for Heartache.” According to its flyleaf, Peale’s self-help book helped millions of men and women to achieve fulfilment in their lives.
Television has come a long way from its black and white infancy of the 50s, and in our age of “infotainment”, authors of self-help books compete with pop culture heroes like Dr. Phil and Oprah. This pushes modern authors to choose edgier titles which are difficult to resist – even for the most casual browser! Take this title as an example: How To Avoid Marrying a Jerk: The Foolproof Way to Follow Your Heart Without Losing Your Mind or Why Men Love Bitches: From Doormat to Dreamgirl, or even Doing The Right Thing: Taking Care of Your Elderly Parents Even If They Didn’t Take Care of You.
For traditionalists, chicken soup is still prescribed as a cure for the troubled soul, as well as for the romantic, grandparents, working women, cat lovers, expectant mothers, teenagers, and the “unsinkable” soul.
The problems raised in these books are timeless: loneliness, anxiety, loss, grief, and self-destructive habits. Only the package has changed over time.
But in an age of nugget news and fast-paced tidbits of celebrity gossip, books seem to risk losing their place as our attention span decreases. It seems reasonable to ask if books are holding their own against so much competition.
Absolutely, says Trish Marincak, a manager at one of the Chapters bookstores. A lot of people are on a computer all day long, they want to go home and just read with no computer hum, she says. They just want to lose themselves. Reading is a different experience.
So, who buys self-help books and why?
It’s a fairly even mix of men and women who buy them, says Marincak. They’re facing a problem, or want to avoid problems when they’re getting married.
And a lot of people will by them for a friend in crisis, or for themselves, but don’t want to admit it.
While many of these books offer coping skills for specific challenges, such as caring for aging parents, raising a gifted child, or an autistic child, others offer advice on leading an “ordinary” life in the twenty-first century. Take, for instance, books like Crazy Busy: Overstretched, Overbooked and About To Snap – Strategies for Coping in a World Gone Mad, or Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety.
Savvy bookstore owners have made their stores places of refuge with couches and chairs and coffee shops on premises. Browsing is encouraged, toddlers and parents enjoy a quiet read, and there are more intriguing categories and titles than one could read in a lifetime.
“Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.” These words are from a meditative poem entitled “Desiderata.”
Six years into a new millennium and overtaken by sparkling electronic wizardry, reading brings respite from the noise and haste of modern life to a place of silence, a stillness that means so much more than just the absence of noise.