However, I don't think it's odd that women buy the vast majority of self-help books because, quite simply, they buy the vast majority of books. When I worked in book publishing we always considered how women in the office felt about a book cover because we knew they were more likely to go to the store and buy it. In fact, women not only buy their own books but they buy most of the books the men in their lives read.

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I don't think I've ever read an actual self-help book, but I don't have a problem with them. He's just not that into you actually helped a few people I know. I've always thought that someone should write a good, non-touchy feely dating manual for guys- I think there is a market for it.

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sometimes we have relationship issues and yes, we want to read stuff that either validates us or points out things we might not have considered. personally my favorites was "Why Men Love Bitches" because basically it said, Get Your Unique Individual Life First! Then you won't be worrying about whether or not he's into you."

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At any rate, I feel like people constantly misunderstand why other people read self-help books. Sure, there are some people out there that read them for the wisdom contained therein--but for the majority of us who have made it through at least 25 years of life with a few good friends and maybe a little therapy, there's no particularly novel advice or ideas that will be contained in these books. What self-help books do, though, is remind you that you're not alone--that no matter how tough or heart-wrenching your current problem seems right now, there are people out there who have gone through the same thing or worse, and made it through just fine. Enough people, in fact, that publishers thought it was worth it to publish an entire book on the subject and market it to millions of people.

The helpful part of self-help isn't that it provides you with some magical solutions to your problem. It's that it makes you feel less alone, gives you concrete examples of people who have already done what feels impossible to you, and it pushes you through the tough parts.

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All this information is simply available. Take what you can out of it, and leave behind the rest. That's what any great reader does. Process the information, filters it through, then applies it to their own life, or not, whatever the case may be.

Personally, I loathe the repetitiveness of the self-help genre. They are the hardest to design, simply because they are soooo derivative of one another. The concepts, to me, are rather interchangeable and bland, it's mostly a matter of new lingo or packaging.

But whatevs.

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So, wait, cross your legs while you masturbate? Think about playing football as you politely place your silverware at the 5 o'clock position?

Yes, I know those are stereotypes too, but I guess that shows that most things aimed towards helping one gender or another is bound to be stereotypical because they're going for whatever they think that a mass amount of people in that gender will be. So how about we just stop writing them? I think self-help books aimed at more important things, like, say, fiscal responsibility or being healthy, are much more useful than the usually gender-aimed 'BE A BETTER WOMAN' or 'BE A BALLSIER GUY.'

I'm also offended (not obscenely so, but a little rustled, you could say) that one should think like a man? Granted, I haven't seen the book, but the title gives off the sense that it can't be much better. I will go look it up, though.

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