Participate in BookClub: Self-help books

[Koalapupu]

Heya!

Read any good self-help books lately that you want to share with others?

If not, then now might be the time to try them out! If you do not have a particular title in mind (see the suggestions thread for, well, suggestions), just go to your nearest library/second hand store and grab an interesting title from the shelf, read it and come tell us how it was!

Of course, if you have lately read something from this genre you are more than welcome to share that experience as well!

You can post about your book in this thread, but also creating your own thread for the book is more than welcome. Whichever is more suitable for you

Get reading! (I myself have probably not read a single self-help book in my life, so it's high time, right?)

[Koalapupu]

Lo and behold: I have read a self-help book! Although I'm not quite sure if it meets with the standards as our library does not have a general self-help section... But that's another ramble altogether!

What I read was in English, Astonish Yourself: 101 Experiments in the Philosophy of Everyday Life by Roger-Pol Drot. (In Finnish: Kuori Omena Päässäsi). Basically it is a book with 101 tasks to do that help you realize various things about the world. The book is extremely silly and fun, and I can't wait to get to try the experiments. Some of my favorites are:

Pretend you are a forest: go jog in a forest at a steady pace. Once you have reached a good, automatic running pace (or quick walk, why not) start to think that the forest you see moving around you is actually a reflection of your inner world: what does that twisted tree mean? What kind of a memory is that? And so on. In the end you might get paranoid about never being able to leave your inner world, but that's just a short side-effect.

Get Really Angry, but do it alone. You should have no reason for it, just start to growl "why that bastard... oh great, that should happen too! Here we go again! They always do this!" Speak all the cliches, think of this as your great performance as the Angry Person. Make as many growls as possible, shake your fist in anger, do deep heaving sighs, slam some doors--but don't let yourself get angry for real. Then suddenly stop it, drink a glass of cool water and open a window and realize that real expressions of anger are exactly what you just performed.

Be a Saint and an Executioner for a Day. In this exercise, you should after a day at work/at school/at home settle down to think what you have done. Instead of just thinking of all the events, think of how your actions were actually good--what good could have every action you did cause during the day. Even if you feel like the act itself was negative, think of what good it could have caused. When you have finished, do it the opposite way: think of what bad all those actions could have caused in your or anyone else's life. I love the little end note with this that goes something like: <i>If you did this exercise properly, good luck with trying to believe in the usefulness of self-reflection in the future</i>. Basically, if we already think that we are bad people, we consider all our acts bad, and so on. To put it in very simple terms.

Jogging at a cemetary, in which you firstly do something that might be considered rude and inappropriate but which finally should, if done right, connect you with the dead bodies.

Calling yourself: in a room, start calling your name. Do it in various ways for minutes and minutes until you start to feel paranoid that someone is actually calling you. This is because we are not used to calling ourselves by our names. It is a weird experiment, but if you get rid of the weird feeling you can then reply "I'm coming" and end the experiment there.


The book has some oddly sexist overtones (women are often "used" in the experiments as the objects of fantasies, or they have lovers, or they are news casters who show a lot of leg, etc...), but I still found it really entertaining to read. And these exercises are so simple to do, but a lot of them deal with embarrasment: I don't dare to pretend to be an animal--what if someone sees me? I can't smile at strangers, they think I'm nuts! I can't jog at a cemetary, it's just too weird! I think one of the object of the book is to say that reasons for embarrasments are also often arbitrary, and we should try to live without the fear of embarrasment.

I will definitely try out the running bits.

[Natasha~]

^ Oooh, that looks like a good book, Jenni.
I just went to the library and after a session with my therapist, I decided I'm going to beat my illnesses (caused by stress) with natural medicine. But with a Dummies approach. I'm reading The Complete Idiots Guide to Alternative Medicine.
I'm tired of being sick, so this is my self-help book.
xo

[Aims]

Omg I'm so sorry, I haven't gotten round to reading anything on topic yet... I'm still getting through Two Towers!! Since I started back at work I've been crawling through it like a snail... gonna try and finish it this weekend, and get started on ROTK.

[Koalapupu]

Nattie, I did not know that there was such a Complete Idiot's Guide.... They sure have expanded their topics! That sounds pretty cool.

Aims, no hurry! I don't think we should have any kind of deadlines for these--less stressful reading for all, hehe. I'm glad to hear that LOTR has swept you away

(LOTR confession sidetrack: I used to be MADLY in love with Legolas, to the point where, if he had been absent from the story a bit and I turned a page and his name was there again, my heart started beating wildly! I'm such a nerd! )

[Natasha~]

^ Bhahahahha I am secretly in love with Boromir like that.
xo

[Aims]

LOL Jenni that is so cute

And Nattie, in the movie version I say ditto on Boromir (had trouble when they described him as darkhaired in the book after being so used to the movie version). Oh yeah I love how in the book they just set the boat off downstream and didn't set fire to it like in the movie, so that then the boat found it's way back to Boromir's home to be found by Foromir awww...
The wax figure of Boromir in the boat was maybe my favourite part of the LOTR exhibit.. he looked so real! I wish we'd been allowed to take photos.

[Natasha~]

^They don't set the boat on fire in the movie either, silly. Not in the versions I've seen. I've seen extended and regular several times. Faramir finds Boromir's boat in the movie too, I don't think in the regular edition, but definately in the extended. LotR is my favorite "I'm sad and need encouragement" movie. I've watched it A LOT lately.
Ooh, you went to a LotR exhibit?! How was it?
xo

[Aims]

ROFL !! What the fuck am I thinking of then?!! Holy shit.
Oh well, that's great to hear? lol

I don't think I've watched the extended version of Two Towers (I've actually only watched that one a couple of times - have seen the other two way more than that.. I get a bit bored during battle scenes and yeah... lol) - my sister and I have been meaning to watch all three extended versions back to back one day but still haven't gotten round to it.

Yeah they had an exhibit down in Wellington last year. My best friend lives down there now so I went for a visit and we went to the exhibit together. We had photos taken of ourselves as Hobbits!!

(that's me as the hobbit, Amy and her daughter Raven as normal people.. lol)

Shit I'm totally hijacking this thread now. Sorry!!

(btw, this is really going to bother me now, not knowing which movie I was thinking of where they burn the boat!!?!?!!)

[Natasha~]

^ That picture is classic! I wish I could get one taken, too cool how they did that trick.
xo

[Aims]

Yeah. It was two halves of a bench, quite far apart. Mine was massive, Amy's was normal size. Then they take the photo (or in the movies, film it) from two cameras, and just stick it together.

I saw some people posing in front of the big model of Gondor, and taking pictures on their cellphones.. I wish we'd done that. Could've pretended we were texting somebody and sneakily taken photos. But we were big chickenshits. hehe