Daily Mail, Thursday, March 5, 2020^ Page 55T
he bookcase in my
living room appears
to reflect a well-read
woman with a broad
taste in classic and
modern literature.
The shelves advertise the intelligence
of their owner, with Dickens, Orwell
and Austen proudly sitting alongside
Booker Prize winners.
But I have a confession: the books
sit under a layer of undisturbed dust,
their spines largely unbroken.
The reason? In another, less public
room sits my secret bookcase, and it
isn’t literary at all. It is packed, wall
to wall, with self-help books.
The Power Of Now by eckhart Tolle
is there with Men Are From Mars,
Women Are From Venus, and Marie
Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic Of
Tidying Up.
Love, Care, Trust & Respect
demands my attention next to last
year’s must-read Indistractable,Susanna Reid
From red carpet to real life... Reid all about it
MY RECIPE FOR
susanItIsER
which provides tips for getting
off your mobile phone.
I must have almost 50 of these
life manuals, with a few more on
my Kindle e-reader. Inside each
well-loved tome, pages are folded
over so I can find my way back to
key sections, and I’m not afraid
to scribble notes in the margins.
For any problem that crops up,
I have a book that provides the
solution. except that, instead of
fixing my problems, these have
created another one — I’m
addicted to self-help books.
Intellectual snobs like to sneer
at them, but I don’t care. They
provide truths I find soothing,
and techniques that have been
genuinely helpful in both my
career and my personal life.
I’ve had only one proper failure,
and that’s Marie Kondo. I read
her decluttering book cover to
cover, but it hasn’t transformed
my messy house — I gave up when
I couldn’t get my head round her
T-shirt folding method.
Yet I’ll still grab a copy of the
next instalment of life-affirming
domestic self-help — housekeeping
guru Mrs hinch’s The Little Book
Of Lists. She uses cleaning to
control her anxiety (and make her
home picture-perfect) and I can’t
wait to wallow in her advice.
Is it any wonder her book hasracked up double the pre-orders
of The Mirror & The Light, the
long-awaited final novel in Booker
Prize winner hilary Mantel’s
Thomas Cromwell trilogy? I’ll buy
both for my shelves, but there’s
no prizes for guessing which is
more likely to gather dust.
Last year, sales of the self-help
genre rose 20 per cent, probably
because we are all looking for
reassurance in turbulent times.
My interest in self-help began
when I was a child in the Seventies.
My mum had a book she would
consult regularly: Passages by
Gail Sheehy, which deals with the
challenging stages of growing up.Susan Jeffers’s Feel The Fear And
Do It Anyway stood me in great
stead when I applied to be the
first female editor of the student
n e w s p a p e r a t u n i v e r s i t y —
something I may not have had the
guts to do without it.D
R S TeVe PeTeRS’S
The Chimp Paradox
helped me through
t o u g h t i m e s o n
Strictly. There was a tricky week
where I messed up a dance and
Dr Steve’s advice of not listening
to my own self-criticism kept me
on track.
Five years ago, reading Year Of
Yes by Shonda Rhimes made me
think twice about saying no too
quickly, and resulted in me taking
on extra work and even going to
more parties, while Ten To Zen
by Owen O’Kane taught me how
to control my reactions when I’m
on live television.
I really do love them all. Needless
to say, I don’t agree with new
research that suggests I’m looking
at the wrong bookcase.
Professor Philip Davis says that
— gasp — self-help books are not
effective. his findings suggest thechallenging language of writers
such as Dickens sends rocket
boosters to the brain, which
improves our mental health.
‘Great’ literature shifts our
thinking into a higher gear,
relieving depression, chronic pain
and even dementia. hmm.
I did recently read a ‘great’ novel
because my son is studying it for
his GCSe exams: Strange Case
Of Dr Jekyll And Mr hyde.
I was amazed by how much I
enjoyed cracking the complexity
of the language.
To be honest, I felt a bit sorry
for the teenagers who have to
wade through it, accustomed as
they are to the short captions of
Snapchat and Instagram.
After an hour of reading, I
genuinely felt I had nourished
parts of my brain that hadn’t
been activated for a while.
But I’ll still turn to my secret
shelf for reassurance when things
go wrong — the knowledge in
there has helped millions of
people to control their stress,
f i n d l o v e , b o o s t t h e i r s e l f-
confidence, give up smoking,
get a promotion and get off
their phones.
You won’t convince me Robert
Louis Stevenson can do all that.Picture: LezLi + Rose
/ Hair and make-up:
ian Mc inTosH / styling:
DinaH van TuLL ekenfemail opinion
Can you believe one in ten parents
admits to having a favourite child?
are they mad?
Imagine if the survey had been
done the other way round and you
discovered your children had a
favourite parent and it wasn’t you.
More than half of those surveyed
picked the youngest, a quarter the
eldest, and the poor middle child
was only the favourite with 18 per
cent of the parents.
The number of mums and dads
who have a favourite could be even
higher, because many are too
embarrassed to confess to it. There’s
also the astonishing fact thatdaughters are more likely to be
picked as favourites than sons — that
is never going to be a issue with me
as I only have boys.
My problem at home is quite
different: I struggle to say the right
names for each of my boys and
regularly use each interchangea-
bly, much to their annoyance.
I once asked a memory expert
why that is, and he told me it’s
because I love them all equally, so
there’s nothing in my instant recall
to tell them apart.
Excellent scientific evidence to let
me off the hook — and prove there
are no favourites in my house.addicted: My secret shelf
EMMa T hoMpson and her
husband, Greg Wise, have
become citizens of Venice.
I’m not sure whether it’s
just laziness, or fear of one
of life’s most stressful
events — moving house —
but you won’t budge me
from south London.
Born in Croydon, I’ve
always stuck to my roots
(apart from a brief foray
into the exotic north of
Crouch End).
I’ve lived in my house
for 20 years and, while I
love to travel, I don’t
dream of moving abroad.
Give me home comfortsand shops, schools and
fr i e n d s ’ w e l c o m i n g
kitchens within walking
distance any day. Venice
is gorgeous, but you
couldn’t drag me much
further than streatham.Forget Venice, I’ll stick
with streatham, Emma
Forget Hilary
Mantel... I’m
hooked on
self-help books
WheN a GP recently told
me that hand sanitiser is
effective against the new
coronavirus, COVID -19,
only if it is at least 60 per
cent alcohol, I joked that I
might as well wash my
hands with vodka.
Well, a Twitter user then
sent me a recipe for DIY
vodka sanitiser that a
bright spark at GMB
made up overnight as
‘Susanitiser’ (right).
It requires 2 tbsp vodka
(60 per cent to 70 per
cent ABV), 3 tbsp aloe
vera gel and 15 drops of
essential oils.
I have no idea if it works,
but it smells lovely and,
in my teetotal days, uses
up unwanted booze.Name my favourite child? I can’t
even tell my three boys apart!