NPR

Feel The Fear — And Read It Anyway: 'Help Me!' Documents A Year Of Self-Help Books

Marianne Power decided to read one self-help book a month, for a year — and follow the advice in each, to the letter. She says it became a much more intense undertaking than she'd anticipated.
Marianne Power set out to live one year of her life according to the advice of self-help books. She tells the story in her new book <em>Help Me!</em>

I missed . Skipped . Not that I couldn't use the help! But because I was always a little skeptical — if these books work, why do we need so many of them? Couldn't we all just read one and be sorted? Marianne Power was similarly skeptical, but she also says she found herself, at age 36, convinced her life was in a rut and not quite sure how to climb out of it. So she embarked on a project: Read one self-help book a month, for one full year. Twelve books total. The. And she set herself some rules — for example, she couldn't just read each book, she had to follow the advice in it. To the letter.

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