I Came, I Saw, I Suffered Immensely
Yesterday, the travel blogging fundraiser Passports with Purpose met its target of $80,000 – and then kept going. Last I heard, they’d overshot by $8,000. And so for everyone who asked me to curry them (keep an eye on your post-Christmas mail, guys) and everyone who donated so generously…
Thank you. 
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Here is Mike, sat at a table.
Mike is a bespectacled, somewhat vague and dishevelled looking man of indeterminate age . He’s in front of his laptop – and frankly, they both look like they’ve seen better years.
From the half-open doorway comes a shout.
“This thing is amazing.” (more…)
It’s true what they say. We’re beyond all help – living the wrong lives, governed by the wrong rules and surrounded by the wrong people. All our achievements are meaningless because they got us here, mired up to the neck in the sucking dreadfulness of modern life. Life? Don’t talk to me about life. Life is a string of dillusionments and we’re tangled tighter than iPod headphones fished out a deep pocket. Ever day is the same as the last one – or worse than it. It’s all broken. We’re broken.
And on and on, they whine at us.
I’m so very sick of bad self-help literature making our lives miserable.
There’s way too many people out there claiming to be lifestyle experts (rather like the “SEO guru” infestation on Twitter. Come on – they can’t all be experts). And why the glut? Because demand is sky-high. We’re convinced that our lives need fixing. In fact, we’re more worried than ever. Can it be that all the previous self-help bestsellers, the Anthony Robbinses, the Dale Carnegies, that Tim Ferriss book…they’ve all failed? So should we keep buying their books? When a mechanic consistently fails to repair your car, should you keep going back to him?
But maybe it’s not the lifestyle coaches that are failing. Maybe it’s us.
Now hold up a second. This is what unscrupulous self-helpists hope we’ll believe. It gets them off the hook. When their methods prove ineffectual, it’s because we did something wrong. We deviated from the tried-and-tested one true path, and now we have to pay – preferably by buying their follow-up bestseller Here’s What You Did Wrong, Stupid.
Meanwhile, we suck. Again. And the circle of non-life turns and turns, and nothing really changes except the price of the books we feel compelled to buy. We’re trapped by a dependency on self-help books. We need saving from help itself.
(Talk about screwed).
But maybe it is us. Maybe it’s the way we’re reacting to all this self-improvement advice. Maybe that’s where we’re broken.
So what’s the answer? For just $0.00 plus ten simple, affordable payments of $0, I’m going to show you how – with my 3-step plan to Help Yourself Self-Help. (more…)
If you were traversing Terminal 5 at London’s Heathrow last August, you may have seen a writerly-looking chap sat tapping on a computer, his words being displayed on a large plasma screen over his head. This was the temporary Writer In Residence, Alain de Botton, and he was writing a book about what airports really are.
It’s recently struck me that Reader’s Digest, one of the most popular magazines in the world, is a paper-based blog.
Staunchly populist – and conservative and anti-communist, depending on the era – the magazine has been publishing condensed news stories and adverts in a visually arresting fashion since 1922. It’s uncluttered, breezy and the kind of thing you’d read when you’re waiting to do (or putting off) something important. There are lots of adverts. The reader’s comments are important. It’s distinctly bloggy.
(As a 15 year old budding writer, it made me want to write in. I submitted a few pieces to their Laughter Is The Best Medicine column, hoping to win some pocketmoney. And…nothing. Evidently I’m not funny – or I am funny but wholly useless in conveying it).
But this post isn’t about the magazine – it’s about the books.
My gran had groaning shelves of Reader’s Digest Condensed Reads. While the family caught up on familial gossip downstairs over tea & biscuits, I’d work my way through the bookcases, looking for anything violent or racy. I was entranced. 4 books in one book! It was like something by M. C. Escher. But then came the terrible, bleak day when I discovered the full meaning of the word “condensed”, and realised that these books had bits taken out (probably the violent and racy bits). It was worse than when I set my wind-up Evel Knieval on fire for the full-bore stunt spectacle – and discovered I couldn’t put him out. It was bad.
But there are the other books.
I’m reading one right now. It’s part of the People and Places series, and it’s called In Search Of Australia And The South Pacific. And I’m enjoying it immensely. The writing is superb and the photos magnificent. It’s the kind of coffee-table book that has you poring over it for hours, leading to awkward situations when it’s not your coffee table.
The thing is, most Reader’s Digest books are this good. It’s curious. You’d expect them to be plainly-written regurgitations of facts you’re wearily over-familiar with already. In my experience, that’s not the case. (Flaw in this argument: maybe I’m ignorant. Remedy: disregard entire blog post. Kthx). They’re usually high-quality overview reference books, the kind to bring your children up with. The good ones are well worth hunting down – particularly the atlases.
And the great things is that hunting them down is easy. As anyone knows who has received Reader’s Digest promotional material through their letterbox, or put differently, ‘As everyone knows’ – there are approximately 500 of these books written and published every second. Fact. And this has been going on for decades, so there are at least…oh, you work it out, I’m too busy thinking up my next ludicrous exaggeration for artistic effect.
There are so damn many of these usually damn fine books in circulation that all second-hand bookshops and charity shops in the West are stuffed with them. Amazon has barrowloads. They’re everywhere. Close your eyes and walk ten paces with your arms outstretched: chances are, you’ll bump into one on the way. Another fact.
And they’re all like reading really good blogs. (The useful kind, not like my kind of blog).
So next time you’re browsing the shelves of your local tome-vendor, pull out the Reader’s Digest books and have a look. You might be pleasantly surprised.
This post was sponsored by….no, not really.
Images: thenoodleator, avern, phalinn.
To think: 600,000 words in the English language, and I need a new one.
The word that almost defines what I need it to mean, but falls unacceptably short, is “heartwarming“. That’s a word that belongs with other artistic damnations such as “family viewing” and “A Michael Bay film”. If something is “heartwarming”, it’s so heavily sugared that your teeth will explode in your mouth. It’ll be like every episode of House On The Prairie put in a pan and left to simmer until it’s as thick as Vegemite, then spooned down your cake-chute until you’re gagging in horror. It’ll make you more likely to embrace violence in your everyday life. It’s how serial killers are made.
That’s why I’d like to describe Gilmore Girls as “heartwarming”, but can’t, because it’s actually really good. It’s nice, yes (another word that needs workmen and scaffolding around it), but in a cheeky, witty, honest sort of way. There’s lots of sarcasm, which to me is a sign that a drama is nailing real life. It’s good-natured without being cloying, and it’s sweet without being, well, sweet. In short, it’s top-notch telly.
If you’re from the UK and you’ve never heard of it – yup. I saw the title, I thought “Ah, like Golden Girls, then”. I bet I’m not the only one.
I’ve had a very [word that literally means heartwarming but without the shitty cultural baggage] day. And for that, I’d like to thank:
