From internet forums to self-help books, we are awash with advice. Enter a number of compulsive reads with a fresh perspective on the role advice plays in our lives.
In Asking for a Friend: Three Centuries of Advice on Life, Love, Money, and Other Burning Questions from A Nation Obsessed, Jessica Weisberg mines the American love affair with advice. The book analyzes why American culture has tended to view so many problems through the lens of self-help. It also delivers a colourful history of the big names in the industry. Many -for example, Sylvia Porter, overseer of guide books, columns, and newsletters, making her a forerunner of Oprah - are now all but forgotten despite once being integral to daily life.
Jennifer Traig’sAct Natural: A Cultural History of Misadventures in Parenting dives into weird parenting practices through the ages. It’s a hilarious read and especially relevant for exhausted parents. Traig packs in everything from John Locke’s wisdom on diet (steer children away from fruit and give them plenty of beer) to cages that were mounted outside early-twentieth-century apartment windows so that infants could get enough fresh air.
On the topic of parenting fails, there’s Guy Delisle’s Handbook to Lazy Parenting, the latest in his series of self-deprecating illustrated collections. Heather O’Neill’s warmly humorous Wisdom in Nonsense: Invaluable Lessons from My Father catalogues the questionable advice passed onto her as a child by her single father, which adds up to more than the sum of its parts.
In a more serious vein, The Eating Instinct: Food Culture, Body Image, and Guilt in America by Virginia Sole-Smith takes a sober look at the information environment around diet. This hidden gem, drawing on personal experience and interviews with dieticians and parents, is critical but humane in its examination of the cumulative effect of diet advice.
For more suggestions visit the library in person, email us at [email protected] or call us at 604-527-4666.
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