I’m taking a class called Networks where we took a survey, which asked, among other things, our favorite book genre. My favorite book genre is self-help, but of course I couldn’t admit that mainly because if I did I would look like a jackass, but also because I had just said that my power animal was a dragon-fly. (Only I, self-indulgently, think I’m a dragon-fly, everyone else thinks I’m a giraffe and or a flamingo, neither of which I find particularly flattering). The point is that I love self-help; I love learning about my flaws and then doing basically nothing, or occasionally a little bit, to fix them. Thanks to self-help books, I learned that I was emotionally unavailable. And thanks to self-help books I’m now emotionally-sometimes-available. I binge on self-help books like I used to binge on gummy bear vitamins. I lived in a sugar-free household, you see. The only reason I made friends as a child was because I liked Captain Crunch more than I disliked people.

As since it’s midterms week, the time when we most need self-help, here’s a list of my favorite self-help books:

1. The Art of Happiness by the Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler

2. The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown

3. Self-Compassion by Kristin Neff

4. Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain

5. The Untethered Soul by Michael A. Singer

6. The Pocket Pema Chodron by Pema Chodron