Help Yourself

It's January--time to read some good self-help or how-to books. On my shelf are

The Mayo Clinic Plan: 10 Essential Steps to a Better Body & Healthier Life
The Food-Mood-Body Connection by Gary Null
The Magic Land: Designing Your Own Enchanted Garden by Julie Moir Messervy
Suze Orman's Financial Guidebook
The New Moosewood Cookbook by Mollie Katzen
Mother Knows Best: The Natural Way to Train Your Dog by Carol Lea Benjamin

The best self-help book is one that gets read, and the ones that get read are the ones that tell you to do something you already want to do. If your self-help books are in two piles, one for the books you've read and one for the books you haven't finished, or even started, it may tell you something about yourself. This, like a tank top, is revealing, but not always flattering. In my "haven't read, or "haven't finished" pile are the exercise, finance and dog training books. My "have-read" pile consists entirely of cook books and books about reading. Hmph!

I just finished Steve Leveen's book The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life. Leveen is the founder of the Levenger company that sells "tools for serious readers"--paper, cool pens, bookshelves, etc. I got a couple of good ideas from his book--both techniques to help you remember more of what you read. One is to take notes. He writes about the Cornell method which is to divide the page into three sections. Write notes in the left margin, key words and questions in the right and a summary at the bottom of the page. I tried this with Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Greeks, which I've been reading for some time. I ended up just making summaries in the right margins, so I guess it wasn't really the Cornell method, but even that small effort helped me avoid the "wait, what did I just read?" experience.

The other useful thing he talks about is to review the book soon after finishing it. He suggests keeping a "Bookography". I'd never come across the word "bookography" before. It turns out it isn't in the dictionary. I don't know why he can't just say "bibliography" which means a list of books, but the point is to keep a journal of all the books you read with a review or some notes that you write after you've finished the book. I've done this in the past, and I like to go back and read it to remember the books I've read. Evidently the Levenger company sells special notebooks for this purpose, but I just use my regular journal. I also keep a commonplace book where I write quotes and passages that I want to remember.

Leveen's book smacks of marketing, but I found it engaging and useful enough to make it into my "have read" pile.