The Paperhouse Review’s Top 10 Self-Help Books

As we review our favourite self-help books, we are not taking a survey of those glitzy volumes that crowd the so-called psychology sections of bookshops, with their trite philosophies and shallow epigrams, their pseudo-science and convoluted logic. Our self-help books are a selection of volumes, both fiction and non-fiction, that have taught us how to live. They are, in no particular order and without exhausting the list:

Jean-Honoré Frangonard, The Reader (Lesende Frau), oil on canvas. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.


1. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. This is the coming-of-age story that defined all others. Holden Caulfield taught us in equal doses how to live and how not to live.
2. The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. Written by the sociologist as a guide to myth, it tells us plenty about the human condition.
3. the poems of Emily Dickinson. Simple and pretty, these verse whittle life away to its fundamentals.
4. Passage to India by E.M. Forster – and all the works of the Moderns for that matter. Plagued by a vague sense of existential unease, the Moderns resisted throwing out the baby with the bath water as we Post-moderns have done. The result is subtly chilling, and inspiring.
5. the works of Friedrich Nietzsche. Using logic, the philosopher pulled apart the foundations of our world so that we could build it up from scratch again.
6. The Diary of Anne Frank. Anne Frank, in her quiet way, teaches us courage and gratitude. All the tears shed on her behalf, by people of different races, religions and nationalities, testify to the need for tolerance and understanding. We are more alike than we are different, when it comes down to it, and it took this book, translated into almost every language imaginable, to show us that.
7. The Paper House by Carlos Maria Dominguez. Although we’ve already explained why we chose to name this blog after the petite illustrated work, the quote below should seal the deal. Any true bibliophile will see themselves reflected between its pages.
8. the agreements and disagreements of Freud and Jung. Take an excerpt from The Four Archetypes, tack it to a page from Interpreting Dreams, stir it in with A Case of Hysteria and a dose of Modern Man in Search of a Soul, and you may not come out any wiser but you will certainly be more aware of the intricacies and contradictions of the human mind.
9. your high school history textbook. To appropriate a well-worn idea, you cannot know who you are without knowing where you come from.
10. and, of course, the oeuvre of Shakespeare. As many before us have pointed out, the Bard reveals a wealth about human nature and our emotions, whether through a comedy, tragedy or historical play. We could not possibly pick one as our favourite.

"I have often asked myself why I keep books that could only ever be of any use in a distant future, titles remote from my usual concerns, those that I have read once and will not open again for many years, if ever! But how could I throw away The Call of the Wind, for example, without destroying one of the building blocks of my childhood, or Zorba the Greek, which brought my adolescence to a tear-stained end... We prefer to lose a ring, a watch, our umbrella, rather than a book whose pages we will never read again, but which retains, just in the sound of its title, a remote and perhaps long-lost emotion." (The Paper House, p.12–3)

To store or to display?

Judging a book by its cover has become an ambiguous term in our day and age, where the cover design of a book as a means of branding its author (through the use of certain fonts, for instance) has become an integral part of publishing and book buying. We do not necessarily think of books as aesthetic objects, but the lines are becoming more and more blurred as books also become functional, not only because of their contents, but because of how we use them within our dwellings. It seems that they bring as much pleasure to the eyes as they do to our ever-inquiring minds. So whether you decide to store or display your treasured reads, here is some helpful inspiration via some of our favourite websites and books (of course).


This beautiful arrangement will make it difficult to get to that elusive book at the bottom, but makes for a great feature wall in this San Fransico home as seen on ApartmentTherapy.


For more ideas on how to make your living spaces come alive and how to inject a bit of your soul into a room, I strongly recommend Alan Power's Living with Books which has over the years become a neverending source of inspiration.
Publisher: Mitchell Beazley represented by Penguin Books
ISBN: 9781845331818
Publication date: April 2006
Retail Price: R230


For storage solutions with a aesthetic twist, we found this detailed bookshelf by San Francisco Architects Aiden Darling on Remodelista.



A new book that caught our eye with practical storage solutions for books and other every day items that may clutter your living space is Storage: Get organized by Terence Conran.
Publisher: Conran Octopus represented by Penguin Books
ISBN: 9781840914344
Publication date: March 2008
Retail price: R320

A blooming shame

It seems that the blurb of each new book published locally, whether fiction or non-fiction, claims to represent the state of South Africa today in stark, unprecedented honesty. And more often than not it is a country depicted either as shackled to its past or with the key to its manacles in its bloodied fingers. Black Petals by Bryan Rostron is another such novel, one which understands the past as a tangle of secrets that only recede further as one approaches, and the present as just as illusory.

Black Petals by Bryan Rostron
Publisher: Jacana / ISBN: 9781770096486 / Price: R165.00

The premise of Black Petals is an ambitious one. An archivist and former activist is working on a top-secret project when he discovers his own apartheid security files among the piles to be catalogued. Intrigued enough to abandon protocol and his own sense of self-preservation by stealing and examining first one file and then a second, Macaulay Vogel is shaken by the unfamiliar self (denoted as CCR10/32 and branded a traitor) who emerges from between the lime green folders.

Vogel’s journey through the haunted woods of identity is complicated by the agendas of an assortment of damaged, angry, shady and sincere comrades who all seem to demand the same thing from him: information. From Susan Sarkissian, his best friend’s wife, to union leader Marc Hendricks, to confidants Zecharia and Mary Xaba. And then of course there is the mysterious figure of Marda, made tangible only through the bouquets of flowers that Vogel buys in her memory.

All this soul searching is set to the score of marches and bombs, overset with the ringing the motto of "files have a life of their own". "They won’t stay buried," says Vogel ominously. "It’s like the bones, you see. One day, they’ll just work their own way to the surface." And just like Rostron’s persistent and often jarring metaphors about petals, to which everything is compared, including the weather.

Black Petals, although a sincere attempt at creating a detective novel that traverses the legacy of the past, is best summarised in this series of failed metaphors.

Our intrepid author becomes lost on his journey, never quite nearing his plotted destination. The novel is dogged by a feeling of familiarity, as it traces plots and themes extracted from other novels and short stories, yet never extends them, and confines its characters to the roles cast for them by the South African media. And in the end, existential questions so subtly raised in the promising first chapter are never answered, leaving the reader with the sense, not that we are being asked to recognise that there can be no definitive answers, but only that perhaps the author himself doesn’t know what they are.

Compared with the crop of good South African crime fiction (most of which, for some reason, is set against the slopes of Table Mountain) being released by the likes of Mike Nicol, Deon Meyer and Margie Orford, which manages to satisfy the requirements of a good thriller while still raising pertinent questions about South Africa past and present, Black Petals merely wanders listlessly through old, abandoned territory. It is, in short, a blooming shame.

If you enjoyed this book, you should read: Bryan Rostron’s first novel, My Shadow, which was commended for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (Africa), and his non-fiction work, Till Babylon Falls.

The Hong Kong Bookshop Part II

After finding PAGEONE, I felt unsatisfied and was still searching for something less commercial. On my way to the Hong Kong Central Library, I stumbled upon a shop called, as Murphy would have it, the Commercial Press. The entrance was too timid and, if I hadn’t seen a poster of a book, I wouldn’t even have noticed that it was indeed a bookshop.

Walking up the staircase, I found what seemed to be a version of Van Schaik, an academic bookshop back home. I ruffled through the English section and came upon a wonderful series of the most beautiful covers including Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler and Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, which had definitely been selected by a well-read person. They were on special: take two, get the third one free.

I was thinking that the extra suitcase I wanted to buy to accommodate my shopping is in the end going to be filled only with books, and no clothes. But, when I looked around for a chair to sit in and go through my selection, I couldn’t find one. As I was pressed for time, I made up my mind to return to purchase my threesome. A week later, I am sad to report, they are not there anymore. I doubt that they were all sold and suspect they have been hidden or returned.


Next I found the Bookbuddy, an overstocked children’s bookshop that is everything a bookshop should not be. Only the spines of books face you from wall-to-wall shelves, overwhelming you with choice and leaving you uninspired. The shop evokes no passion for books and the pleasure of reading them - it might as well have been a section of Toys’R’us, judging by the selection of Disney titles and toys.
I almost ran, in spite of my blistered feet, towards the exit of the mall, in desperate need of fresh air and a fresh perspective on books.

In the TST region of Kowloon I found Swindon Books. As I walked towards it, I could see a group of people filling the sidewalk in front of the shop and thought for a second that I had found some students or book groupies congregated in front of their favorite book spot. Unfortunately my fantasy was short-lived as they were only the construction workers from the site across the bookshop taking a break.

Swindon also has a very academic interior, but contains many more general English books then academic titles. The shop is well stocked, with a great bargain section and the best travel section I have seen yet. Although it lacks atmosphere, which could be remedied with background music, I found one elusive chair where I sat and, as I stared at a V.S. Naipul to my right, felt comfortably at home in the bustling city.

I have come to realise that, as a book lover visiting Hong Kong, you will indeed be satisfied by what is on offer. However, as a bookshop lover, I am left wanting. But during the next few months that remain of my stay here, I will be on the lookout for the best places to read, while scouting for secondhand bookshops and everything else book-related that Hong Kong has on offer.

New in the pile

There are days when being a reader seems like an overwhelming affliction – there is simply too much to read and too little time in which to do it. It’s almost enough to make me want to abandon the exercise entirely sometimes, leaving it for some other dutiful reader to tackle. Almost. Here are some of the newest releases which have made it onto the tops of our ‘To Read’ lists.

Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon grasped the imaginations of the authors of this blog firmly between its talons with its combination of detective mystery and literary ramble. Ruiz’s latest novel, The Angel’s Game, was released on the first of July. It sports a blue cover that, while it is consistent with the previous cover, may not grab the attentions of readers not familiar with the previous work.

Zafon says of the two novels, "if Shadow of the Wind is the nice, good girl in the family, The Angel’s Game would be the wicked gothic stepsister." Set again in Barcelona and described by some as a prequel to its predecessor, The Angel’s Game follows successful writer David Martin as he is made the offer of a lifetime: to write a book unlike any other in exchange for a handsome fortune.

But before I dip my literary toes into The Angel’s Game, I look forward to reading A.S. Byatt’s newest, The Children’s Book, which beat Ruiz to the honorary top of the pile by being released first. It has been described by those in the know as her best work since Possession (which in turn is arguably one of the best novels ever written) and ‘the most moving book I have read in thirty years’. This one is also about a writer, named Olive Wellwood, and is too a mystery of sorts.

And there is South African Alexandra Fuller’s The Legend of Colton H. Bryant, about which much has been written in the local press. Like her previous books (which have also been much praised and beg for their own readings), The Legend of Colton H. Bryant is as much an exploration of the boundaries of the genre of biography as it is the tale of a captivating young man who symbolises a nation’s greed. Fuller’s previous works are Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight and Scribbling the Cat.

PS: Although this one deserves an inclusion in this literary line-up, it is only due out later this year and so there is not much information available about it. Titled Her Fearful Symmetry, author Audrey Niffenegger of The Time Traveler’s Wife fame says her second novel is about two identical twins who test the boundaries of their bond. "Things get out of control, as you might imagine," she concludes.

Bookshelves and Bookends

If you are looking for a D.I.Y. project for your book collection at home, have a blank wall to spare and consider yourself handy with a piece of wood, why not take some inspiration from the Tier shelving unit by Hivemindesign, a design company from Brooklyn, New York.



For an eye catching and unusual way to keep your books upright, why not use some industrial equipment as a bookend. Or you can buy this one from Cool Material for $34 (R270).

The Hong Kong Bookshop Part I

Walking the streets of Kowloon and Hong Kong Island, I felt I was on a mission to find out what sort of book culture Hong Kong possesses. The bibliophile in me had visions of finding quaint little bookshops stocked with hand-selected titles, manned by well-read, knowledgeable staff and perhaps even laced with the smell of coffee brewing.

What I found was a city alive with vibrance and excitement about ... shopping. The malls are temples towards which those walking the overpopulated sidewalks are driven to worship. A chain of bookshops, called PAGEONE, is however only found in the bigger malls which house the likes of Gucci and Vivian Westwood. Of its three stores in Hong Kong, if I had to pick one, my favourite would be the one in Causeway Bay’s Time Square Mall. It has a clean, modernist look with fashionable white shelves and, if it’s volume you are after, you may have found heaven.

Readers are spoilt for choice with books that can only be acquired from specialty shops back home and I was particularly impressed by the shop’s well-stocked art, architecture and design sections. (PAGEONE also encompasses a publishing company of some great design books).

However, the shop is very commercial and the bestsellers at the moment are movie tie-in jackets, like The Reader, My Sister’s Keeper and Angels & Demons, and Bobbi Brown’s Makeup Manual. And, although it delivers aesthetically, it lacks atmosphere. What is needed are some chairs where readers can browse through books, take in the setting and relax.

At least there is a cup of coffee brewing in the overpriced coffee shop next door.