![]() But such books could now fill an entire Barnes & Noble shelf - and most of the authors strenuously try to keep out of the (perceived second-tier) self-help section. Authors as diverse as Benjamin Franklin and Helen Gurley Brown have already done it, brilliantly. Nobody is claiming to have braved captivity in the Colombian jungle.īlending autobiography with advice is not entirely new. Like us, the authors are just trying to find true love or raise good kids or enjoy life more. For the authors of these books, the selling point is not that their challenges are exceptional, but that they are common. ![]() We can’t or wouldn’t want to have all these experiences ourselves.īut it’s time to christen a new subgenre: the self-help memoir, a kind of long-form personal narrative fused with life coaching. A recent memoir cliché is the survivor’s tale of abuse or addiction, vying for maximum woe. Grant allows us to witness scenes from the Civil War Patti Smith invites us into her glamorously gritty 1970s New York. We often read autobiography to glimpse a life unlike our own. And, presumably, we close the book with a sense of how to do the same. “I want to reveal what I found,” she tells us, “so that you can improve your own dating profile.” (Spoiler alert: showing skin is a plus lengthy “About Me” sections are a turnoff.) We then follow Webb as she uses her discoveries to lure Mr. In frustration she begins an analysis involving scatter plots and word clouds to discern the laws of success in online dating. Up to this point, the author’s online hunt for a husband has yielded little but farcically bad dates. ![]() About halfway through her new memoir, “Data, a Love Story,” Amy Webb pauses to address the reader.
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