Half a book is better than none. | Helping Me Help Myself: One Skeptic, Ten Self-Help Gurus, and a Year on...

Fun, smart, laugh-out-loud read | Helping Me Help Myself: One Skeptic, Ten Self-Help Gurus, and a Year on the Brink of the Comfort Zone | Beth Lisick

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	• Helping Me Help Myself: One Skeptic, Ten Self-Help Gurus, and a Year on the Brink of the Comfort Zone Beth Lisick William Morrow, 2008 - 288 pages average customer review:based on 77 reviews view larger image
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One of the better books I've read in a while

Irreverent, caustic, witty, original. I loved the premise of this book and laughed out loud at many parts - something that never happens for me. Beth is a great writer, and had some very illuminating serious thoughts in here as well as some wonderfully detailed funny human observations. I have to get the other book and find out if it's just as good!

Half a book is better than none.

The premise was an interesting one -- best-selling author Beth Lisick would tackle one "personality flaw" per month for a year, enlisting the help of experts in the appropriate field. She had me at "Hello!"

However, though I loved Lisick's shoot-from-the-hip style and ease with words, something was seriously lacking. I never felt that she was giving it her "all," seriously attempting to make changes. The whole thing seemed sort of half-hearted. 30 days (sometimes less) is hardly enough time to make lasting life changes. And she never tells us what the actual results were. Whether we're talking about financial independence (Suze Orman) or exercising more (Richard Simmons), the reader is left hanging -- did Lisick improve her financial situation? Did she get more fit? Is her closet still organized???

I felt like I read the first half of a book that wasn't completed. And while it was quite enjoyable, I still feel like I got ripped off.

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Fun, smart, laugh-out-loud read

I thoroughly enjoyed & highly recommend this book. Beth is the kind of person I'd like to take out to lunch - a good heart, keen eye & irreverent wit.

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Quite readable and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny

Beth Lisick spent 2006 improving herself. Or at least working her way through the bestselling advice of ten renowned self-help gurus. Her book is divided into twelve chapters, one per month, including two nominal, page-long chapters for July and August, during which she essentially took a vacation from the project. In most cases Lisick read a book of advice by her current month's guru: Jack Canfield of the Chicken Soup series, John Gray's Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. In many cases, though, Lisick supplemented her reading by attending one of that author's seminars--events conducted by the spiritualist Sylvia Browne and by Deepak Chopra, for example; she has a two-hour phone consultation with an expert on organizing who is somehow associated with Julie Morgenstern, author of Organizing from the Inside Out.

Lisick's book is a light, fast, reasonably enjoyable read. It's the sort of book that one is apt to like or not depending on how much you enjoy the author's personality, because it's not just about the self-help: Lisick weaves anecdotes from her own life (which is happy enough but rather disorganized) into the narrative. I laughed aloud a few times while reading the book, twice during Lisick's chapter on organizing. Here she is describing her initial conversation with an organizing consultant:

"She listens in a way I imagine a top-notch therapist would, not even perceptibly cringing when I say that Eli parks his bike in the living room or that we need a place to store mustaches and wigs."

And during another conversation:

"When we get to the closet, I make a confession. Something I have never told anyone.

"'Our shoes are in a wine rack.' I say it breathlessly. Confessing, yes, but also hoping she'll ignore it.

"'I'm sorry. Your what?'

"'We keep most of our shoes in this wire wine rack thing that we got at a garage sale.'

"'Oh.' She sounds amused. 'And is that working for you?'

"'Well, no.'

"'Okay...'

"I feel reflective.

"'I think it's because a shoe and a bottle of wine are not really the same shape.'

"'Good.'"

But my favorite chapter is about Lisick's experiences on a Richard Simmons Carnival Cruise, which is absolutely fascinating.

"And then I see him. Actually, it's that voice I hear first. One flight below us, amid the rather pasty, confused mob, he absolutely glows. His skin doesn't look as orange in person, not as sprayed on. He simply exudes a healthy and natural-seeming bronzeness and is wearing his signature red-and-white-striped shorts with a red crystal-studded tank top. The best word for his hair is probably 'round.'

"We make eye contact. I see him spot our 'Cruise to Lose' name tags and then he rushes up the stairs. He's coming right for us. Thank God I pinned that thing on! He bounds straight to Jan, wrapping his arms around her, and plants a kiss on her cheek."

The experience is what you'd expect in a way--a mix of schmaltz and tears and preternatural pep and funny, but you come away from it thinking that Richard Simmons is simply a genius at what he does.

If Helping Me Help Myself sounds familiar, you may be thinking of a very similar title that was published not long before Lisick's, Jennifer Niesslein'sPractically Perfect in Every Way (see my review). I can't imagine that either author was very happy at the coincidence, but sometimes ideas are just in the air. Of the two, Niesslein's is probably more informative, and I think she made more of an attempt to adopt the programs she was writing about, while Lisick's interest was often only half-hearted. But both books are quite readable. I wouldn't steer readers away from either.

-- Debra Hamel

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beth lisick rocks!

this is a laugh out loud book. I know because I read it and I laughed out loud. But it also has a lot on its mind, and it has a great big heart. ms. lisick has a fantastic, page turning style which keeps you coming back for more. It's like she's the greatest houseguest ever who keeps telling you these amazing stories, and who you hope will never leave. And if you ever get the chance to see her perform, do yourself a favor, go.

Grappling with her lifelong phobia of anything slick, cheesy, or remotely claiming to provide self-empowerment, Beth Lisick wakes up on New Year's Day 2006 with an unprecedented feeling. She is finally able to admit to herself that she's grown tired of embracing the same old set of nagging problems year after year. She has no savings account. Her house feels unorganized and chaotic. She and her husband never hang out together. The last time she exercised regularly was as a member of her high school track team almost twenty years ago.

Instead of turning to advice from the abundant pool of local life coaches, therapists, and healers readily available on her home turf of northern California, Beth confronts her fears head-on. She consults the multimillion-dollar-earning pros and national experts, not only reading their bestselling books but also attending their seminars and classes. In Chicago, she gets proactive with The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. In Atlanta, she tries to get a handle on exactly why "women are from Venus," and in a highly comedic bout on the high seas of the Caribbean, she gamely sweats to the oldies on a weeklong Cruise to Lose with Richard Simmons.

Throughout this yearlong experiment, Beth tries extremely hard to maintain her wry sense of humor and easygoing nature, even as she starts to fall prey to some of the experts' ideas, ideas she thought she'd spent her whole life rejecting. Beth doesn't think of herself as the typical self-help victim. But is she?

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