When my son was young, he struggled in school. He had (still has ) ADD. A book called Driven to Distraction was recommended to me. As I read the book, much of what I was reading mirrored what we were dealing with with my son, and what he was going through.

I took what I could from the book, though obviously not everything applied, or would work for him/us, and I was glad that I had read the book and shared it with other parents over the years.

Recently I saw a book title that I might relate to, as the subject matter was for those who tend to worry, that's me.

I looked the book up on Amazon, read the posted reviews, but have yet to spend the few bucks for a paperback, I'm not sure how much I'd get out of it, as I think it might be mostly what I'd call new age or psycho babble.

So, without telling us things that are too personal, do you or have you read this type of self help book, and did you get something out of what you have read, or did you toss it in the trash before you finished reading it?

 

You really do have the "worry" thing down to an art form huh?

I don't read them as I've never believed in the "one size fits all" approach that most of these authors seem to favor.

And oh - btw - Dr. Phil needs to STFU.

 

I have and sometimes found them to be helpful.

 

Maybe I will edit that sentence.

 

Edited.

 

I said "Yes". But then I consider the Helm Honda S2000 2000-2003 Service Manual a self-help book.

I say that with a smile but the fact is, there are books out there that can provide useful practical information, fill in the gaps in our knowledge, and in the end help us deal with life's challanges more effectively. I mostly rely on the Internet for answers to specific questions related to life issues. But a good book will not only provide such answers, it will help you look at important questions that you never would have thought of on your own.

The problem is separating the good from the bad before you plunk down your hard earned money.

 

who me?
I'm still perfekt

 

Let me run that one by Barb.

 

I've been reading at least one a month for the past ten years.

1. Charles Jones "You are the same today that you are going to be in five years from now except for two things: the people with whom you associate and the books you read."

2. Franz Kafka "A book should be as an axe, to break the frozen sea within us."

3. Robert Southey (1774-1843) "It is with words as with sunbeams, the more they are condensed, the deeper they burn."

4. Italo Calvino "A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say."

5. Italo Calvino "It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear."

6. W. H. Auden A real book is not one that's read, but one that reads us.

7. Harry Golden Books do not make life easier or more simple, but harder and more interesting.

8. Thomas Jefferson I cannot live without books.

9. Edmund Wilson No two people read the same book.

10. James Russell Lowell The opening of a free, public library... is a most important event in the history of any town.

11. William Shakespeare, The Tempest My library / Was dukedom large enough.

12. A. Bronson Alcott That is a good book which is opened with expectation, and closed with profit.

13. Holbrook Jackson Education begins by teaching children to read and ends by making most of them hate reading.

14. Carl Sagan One of the greatest gifts adults can give--to their offspring and to their society--is to read to children.

15. Abraham Lincoln My best friend is a person who will give me a book I have not read.

16. Louis A. Safian You can't tell a book by its movie.

17. Lee Glickstein I've been in love three hundred times in my life, and all but five were with books.

18. Louis L'Amour For one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived.

19. Claude Simon If the reader find pleasure, let him continue. If not, let him throw the book away. The only criterion in the end is pleasure; all the other arguments are worthless.

20. Henry Miller We should read to give our souls a chance to luxuriate.

21. Mark van Doren The art of reading is among other things the art of adopting the pace the author has set. Some books are fast and some are slow, but no book can be understood if it is taken at the wrong speed.

22. Franz Kafka A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul.

23. Jorge Luis Borges I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library.

24. Inscription at the Los Angeles Public Library Books invite all; they constrain none.

25. Groucho Marx Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.

26. Laura Bush, First Lady, 2002 Libraries allow children to ask questions about the world and find the answers. And the wonderful thing is that once a child learns to use a library, the doors to learning are always open.

27. Peg Kehret Books are the holes in the fences of life.

28. George Elliott Clarke, "Whylah Falls" I imagine that books are pools wherein meaning sinks beneath the words rippling on the surface. That's why no two readings are alike. Every breath of being that passes over a page disturbs the surface text and distorts the meaning beneath.

29. J R R Tolkien "All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.." Gandalf

30. Ralph Waldo Emerson "'Tis the good reader that makes the good book."

31. Clifton Fadiman "When you read a classic you do not see in the book more than you did before. You see more in you than there was before."

32. Kathleen Norris "Just the knowledge that a good book is awaiting one at the end of a long day makes that day happier."

33. Gertrude Stein "You should only read what is truly good or what is frankly bad."

34. Anatole France "Never lend books--nobody ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are those which people have lent me."

35. Ralph Waldo Emerson 'Tis the good reader that makes the good book.

36. Henry Ward Beecher Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?

37. Marcel Proust There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we believe we left without ever having lived them; those we spent with a favorite book.

38. Chinese proverb. A book is like a garden carried in the pocket.

39. Aldous Huxley Words form the thread on which we string our experiences.

40. Cicero A room without books is like a body without soul.

41. Michel de Montaigne I quote others in order to better express myself.

42. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle A man should keep his little brain attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use, and the rest he can put away in the lumber-room of his library, where he can get it if he wants it.

43. Groucho Marx From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.

44. Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.

45. Ernest Hemingway All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.

46. The Prince and the Pauper When I am king, they shall not have bread and shelter only, but also teachings out of books, for a full belly is little worth where the mind is starved.

47. A blessed companion is a book, a book that fitly chosen is a life-long friend.

48. Winnie the Pooh Poetry and Hums aren't things which you get, they're things which get you. And all you can do is to go where they can find you.

49. Robert Chambers "Books are the blessed chloroform of the mind."

50. Elbert Hubbard "This will never be a civilized country until we expend more money for books than we do for chewing gum."

51. John Kieran "I am a part of everything that I have read."

52. Samuel Paterson "Books, like friends, should be few and well chosen."

53. William Styron "A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted. You should live several lives while reading it."

54. Bert Williams "Books had instant replay long before televised sports."

55. Joseph Addison (1672-1719) "Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn."

56. Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626) "Some books are to be tasted, others swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested."

57. Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC) "A room without books is like a body without a soul."

58. Northrup Frye "The most technologically efficient machine that man has ever invented is the book."

59. Jane Hamilton "It is books that are a key to the wide world; if you can't do anything else, read all that you can."

60. Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878-1969) "Life is a library owned by an author. It has a few books which he wrote himself, but most of them were written for him."

61. Helen Hayes "From your parents you learn love and laughter and how to put one foot before the other. But when books are opened you discover that you have wings."

62. Adlai Stevenson Man does not live by words alone, despite the fact that he sometimes has to eat them.

63. Robert Wilensky (1997) We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.

64. Attributed to Jean Cocteau The greatest masterpiece in literature is only a dictionary out of order.

65. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl So please, oh please, we beg we pray,
Go throw your TV set away,
And in its place you can install
A lovely bookshelf on the wall.

66. Andy D Books are like fish,we have to find the kind we like.

67. Anonymous books are the doors that lead to imagination.

68. Ray Bradbury Without metaphor we cannot understand, we cannot comprehend, we cannot know ourselves, or others.

69. Ray Bradbury I am the greatest lover of other writers, old or new, who ever lived. I have never been jealous of any writer, I only wanted to write and dream like them.

70. Ray Bradbury With computers, kids can connect and search libraries and the Encyclopedia Britannica. But if you don't teach them to read in the first place, they're not going to.

71. Ray Bradbury Science fiction is read by climbers, reachers, wanderers - the most popular fiction in America today, especially among young adults and adults not yet ready to admit they have hit forty.

72. Ray Bradbury Go to the edge of the cliff and jump off. Build your wings on the way down.

73. Ray Bradbury Jules Verne was my father. H.G. Wells was my wise uncle. Poe was the batwinged cousin we kept in the attic. Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers were my brothers. And Mary Shelley was my mother. There you have my ancestry."

74. Dr. Samuel Johnson "The two most engaging powers of an author are, to make new things familiar, and familiar things new."

75. Henry David Thoreau "Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them all."

76. Dr. Seuss "The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go."

77. Joseph Sterling "Books are both the good, and the bad of mankind."

78. Louis L'Amour For one who reads, there is no limit to the number of lives that may be lived.

79. Lemony Snicket "You have undoubtedly picked up this book by mistake, so please put it down."

80. Caroline Lucy Fu With a little imagination, a book can take you anywhere.

81. Charles Scribner, Jr. Reading is a means of thinking with another person

 

Nope. I wanted to, but couldn't find any on the shelves. The lady at the book store said she would love to assist me in finding them, but that would be defeating the purpose.