The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #187: Evan James
“The way it turned out is a total surprise to me.”
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Posts Tagged: self-help
What to Read When You Are Ready to Start Over
Melissa Radke shares a list of books to celebrate her memoir, Eat Cake. Be Brave.
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It’s Never That Easy: Talking with Deb Olin Unferth
Deb Olin Unferth discusses Wait Till You See Me Dance and I, Parrot, her work with prisoners, and how she ended up with a pet dog.
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A Desi Win: Trust No Aunty by Maria Qamar
What started off as a coping mechanism to deal with the widening generational gap within immigrant families, Qamar has shaped into a new philosophy for cultural in-betweeners.
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Going Off-Script: A Conversation with Mandy Len Catron
Mandy Len Catron discusses How to Fall in Love with Anyone: A Memoir in Essays, what makes for a thoughtful love story, and the politics of love.
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It’s All Finger-Pointing at the Moon: A Conversation with Carolyn Zaikowski
Carolyn Zaikowski discusses her most recent book, In a Dream, I Dance by Myself, and I Collapse, the psychology of repetition, and honoring the power of language.
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Scripting New Narratives: Mandy Len Catron’s How to Fall in Love with Anyone
I can’t help but wonder what if, in detangling love stories and our relationships to them, Catron is building yet another narrative—an anti-narrative, perhaps—of love.
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #90: Erika Carter
Erika Carter’s debut novel Lucky You tells the story of three young women in their early twenties who leave their waitressing jobs in an Arkansas college town to embark on a year off grid in the Ozark Mountains. In a remote house, without a washing machine or cell phone reception, Ellie, Chloe, and Rachel grapple […]
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The Storming Bohemian Punks the Muse #18: Keeping Our Balance in a Time of Turkeys
Yesterday, walking home along the wet pavement twinkling under the sunshine, I spied a flock of no fewer than twenty-four wild turkeys parading down the street, mostly chicks. I don’t see them today, as the rain has returned, and all is gray. I live on a hill where I can look out the window to […]
...moreSelf-Help
Self-help books, like diet books, are ever-popular. But, according to Louis Menand at the New Yorker, they aren’t necessarily making us better human beings—just workers who better fit current business practices: It’s not surprising that every era has a different human model to suit a different theory of productivity, but it is mildly disheartening to realize […]
...moreBooks for the New Year
Always a work in progress. Always dancing. Looking for an inspiring read for the new year? The New York Times‘s Sunday Book Review offers a glowing critique of two of the year’s most popular self-help books: Amy Cuddy’s Presence and Shonda Rhimes’s Year of Yes.
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The Rumpus Interview with Aliza Licht
Aliza Licht, former SVP of Communications for Donna Karan International, talks about her debut career guide, what she wishes she knew when she was starting out, and how to build an audience on Twitter.
...moreLove Illuminated: Exploring Life’s Most Mystifying Subject (with the Help of 50,000 Strangers), by Daniel Jones
The man I love and share my life with is an incredibly kind person who usually makes me a healthy, delicious smoothie in the morning and leaves it in the fridge for me for when I wake up, usually an hour or two later than he does. Once I’m up, I tend to stand in […]
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The Rumpus Mini-Interview Project #45: Chloe Caldwell in Conversation with Sarah Kilborne
I interviewed author, Sarah Kilborne, who lives in the same town as I do, Hudson, New York, and takes banjo lessons downstairs in my father’s music store that I live above. We had dinner a few months ago, where I picked her brain about the writing life, and we both overate pasta. It struck me […]
...morePlayer One
The latest novel from Douglas Coupland critiques contemporary culture, but lacks fresh perspectives.
...moreThe Tao of Keith
A collection of wisdom, witticisms, hypothetical scenarios, and recipes (really!) lays out the principles of “Keithism”
...moreWaste Time Better: Random Alternative Self-Help Links by Ainsley Drew
Read The Secret online? Subscribe to daily affirmations and meditate for fifteen minutes a day? Or pay $90 for The Sedona Method? You’re nuts to think that stuff like that could possibly help you. Here are a few links that may or may not keep you an adequate number of cards to be considered a […]
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