In the past, I was sort of aware that the library had programmes but I never really bothered about them. That changed after reading Briana’s post about how libraries market their programmes. Her discussion post prompted me to check out the event portal for the NLB, which is how I found this event: A Librarian’s World – In Defence of Self-Help. Since I’m generally against judging of certain genres and have blogged about Singaporeans and self-help before, this piqued my interest and I managed to convince a friend to register and go with me.
Obviously, the reason I’m writing this post is because the talk was extremely interesting and I learnt some stuff that I want to share. I’ll be breaking this post into three parts: a recap of the talk, my thoughts (which are going to reference that previous post I wrote because I needed to rethink/clarify some points) and a few of the books that were recommended during the talk.
In Defence of Self-Help: A Recap
The talk starts by exploring how the negative stereotypes of self-helped came to be by exploring the history of self-help. Did you know that the first self-help book was ‘Self Help’ by Samuel Smiles (1859)? That was much further back than I thought.
But as we looked at prominent self-help books from the past, it was obvious that they had a few themes:
- Grandiose promises aka “this book will CHANGE YOUR LIFE” (How to Win Friends and Influence People is one of the influential books that sparked a wave of similar self-help titles)
- The Cult of Positive Thinking (think books Think and Grow Rich and The Secret)
- No scientific verification despite claiming that many prominent scientists and other smart people believe it (The Power of Positive Thinking was brought up as an example here)
- Out for money
And all these tropes led to valid criticisms of the genre as being predatory (preying on people’s hopes) and using positive thinking as a method of avoidance. But Heng Shi Lei, the librarian giving the talk, reminded us that self-help advice tends to reflect the beliefs and priorities of the era that spawns it.
After going through the history of self-help books, we then turned to look at modern self-help titles and ask: are the stereotypes still valid?
The title is basically a spoiler because Heng Shi Lei argues no, they’re not. She argues that there are two big changes in the self-help genre that have changed things:
- The emergence of research-based hybrid self-help books. As a result, you’ll see that authors are more credentialed.
- Instead of changing your lives, self-help books nowadays are more likely to focus on improving one aspect of your life aka making small changes for incremental gains.
Since the point about self-help books reflecting the anxieties of the age was brought up earlier, we also looked at the trends in self-help today to see what our current anxieties are:
- Happiness (scientifically). There’s also a trend of cultural studies (think of Hygge). Japan is also apparently a new topic of interest but having lived there, I’m not sure if we really want to model the Japanese way of living, at least not wholesale.
- Minimalism: stuffocation and the age of excess
- Digital minimalism
- Mindfulness: a reaction to the attention economy and the age of distraction
- #Adulting: Self-help for Millenials
In conclusion: negative stereotypes of self-help books are rooted in the past, while the self-help books of today are very different.
Thoughts
The first thing I thought of was – Oh, looks like self-help books may be best-sellers in Singapore after all. With the blurring of genre lines now that self-help is getting more scientific, many books that I put under business/leadership may be counted as self-help now. But, I believe my point still stands because I believe Kishore was thinking of the negative-traits associated with self-help books of yesteryear when he penned the article.
The second thing that sparked my attention was the fact that adulting was a genre. Despite the fact that I quite like self-help book and probably read quite a few (and I’m even doing a form of digital minimalism now), I’ve never really read an adulting book. I’ve tried to read one, but I’ve given up. I am definitely going to explore this area a little bit, especially since the National Reader’s Survey says that millenials are the biggest consumers of self-help.
I really liked how this talk was rooted in the history of the genre. I was definitely aware of the negative tropes of self-help books, but I always thought that it was a subset of the genre, not a past feature. It makes sense why these stereotypes exist, but I also believe that as the genre changes, our impressions and thoughts towards the books and people who read them have to change as well.
Another point I really liked was about how the topics being published reflect the anxieties of the times we live in. The point about digital and actual minimalism makes a lot of sense – there is so much stuff nowadays it’s hard to figure out what to do about it. The topic
Recommended Books
These are some of the books that appeared in the talk. It’s not an exhaustive list – just those that I’ve already read or would be interested in reading:
- Very Good Lives by J.K. Rowling
- Art Matters by Neil Gaiman
- Deep Work by Cal Newport
- Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport
- The Year of Less by Cait Flanders
- This is Water by David Foster Wallace
- The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin – interestingly, this is both a book on happiness and belongs to a subset called ‘Self-help memoirs’.
- How to Break Up with Your Phone by Catherine Price
Nice post!
I think it’s also important to note that there are some really really good clinical self-help books out there for people with mental health difficulties (vs “the worries well”) — which are essentially psychotherapy in book form. (I often use the “Treatments That Work!” series – which are all research-based!) These workbooks can be useful for people with more mild mental health difficulties … And are used to structure treatment for people with more moderate to severe symptoms.
I didn’t know about that! Thank you for pointing it out – I agree that these types of books are super useful and not at all like the stereotypes
Most people don’t 😁 I suppose we keep them a secret! … plus they often don’t have the same grandiose claims as the stereotypic self-help book. (“Manage your symptoms!” isn’t nearly as fun as “Be perfectly happy and solve all your problems!”)