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Book Can Help

By MARGO HAMMOND
Published January 1, 2006

It's a new year, and with it comes the usual onslaught of self-help books ready to help us keep our New Year's resolutions.

These self-help tomes traditionally come in two varieties. Some aim at specific vices. Diet books that collectively weigh more than we do. Anticlutter books that clutter up our houses. Books on how to get rich quick that cost us an arm and a leg. The others - from Oprah's Live Your Best Life to Susan Shapiro's How I Stopped Smoking, Drinking and Everything Else I Loved in Life Except Sex - look at the big picture.

Since both can be useful, I decided to take a two-pronged approach.

I read one book for each of my three New Year's resolutions to inspire me to keep on keeping on. Then, I read a book that takes a more sweeping view of life to help me make more sweeping changes.

Here are my resolutions and the books I chose:

Resolution No. 1: Eat healthier

Japanese Women Don't Get Old Or Fat: Secrets of My Mother's Tokyo Kitchen by Naomi Moriyama and William Doyle.

One-upping a certain French woman who claimed that only her compatriots stay thin, Moriyama reveals seven secrets of how Japanese women not only avoid adding pounds but also prolong their lives. Think fish, soy, rice, vegetables and fruit. That's what Japanese women do, and only 2.9 percent of them are obese, the lowest rate in the world, say the authors.

Resolution No. 2: Declutter

Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui by Karen Kingston

Kingston doesn't just tick off the steps to getting rid of all that excess stuff in your life. She helps you understand why you are hoarding in the first place. Clutter, she says, is stuck energy. "The word "clutter' derives from the Middle English word "clotter,' which means coagulate - and that's about as stuck as you can get," she writes. But the good news is that if you let go of stuff, you allow space in your life to do what you really want to do.

Resolution No. 3: Be more thoughtful

Talk to the Hand: The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good Reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door by Lynne Truss

Truss, who wrote Eats, Shoots & Leaves, the bestseller about the sorry state of grammar, this time aims her poison arrows at the world's boorish behavior. Truss doesn't offer a handbook of good manners per se. She just points out the rudeness of people who make loud cell phone calls and refuse to send thank-you notes. I guess there are a lot of people who ought to put "try a little tenderness" on their New Year's resolution list.

This year my big-picture book was Andrew Weil's Healthy Aging: A Lifelong Guide to Your Physical and Spiritual Well-Being.

Weil, who heads the program in integrative medicine at the University of Arizona, offers much of the usual advice we all know but need to hear again and again: eat healthy, exercise, watch your stress level and think happy thoughts. He offers specific recommendations about what foods to eat and what food supplements to take (although I found the section on the latter, a field filled with controversy, less than convincing). His anti-inflammatory wellness diet echoes the approach to eating that has become more fashionable lately than just counting calories and avoiding fats and carbs.

What is unique about this book, however, is Weil's insistence that aging cannot be reversed. That's right - all those thousands of dollars spent on antiaging promises are for naught. What we can do, he says, is grow old gracefully: Appreciate the aging process and be as healthy as possible while we age.

In a funny passage, Weil goes to an antiaging convention and, amid all the booths offering pills and creams and other antiaging quackery, finds friends from Alaska who are offering Alaskan smoked salmon for sale. They are the only ones offering actual food, they tell him, and no one knows what to make of them. Weil, by the way, confirms Moriyama's claim that the Japanese stay healthier longer, citing the good health of centenarians on Okinawa (who eat a lot of fish) and Sardinia (who drink a lot of wine). Look soon for Italian Women Don't Get Fat, Old or Bad Breath.

Getting old usually has negative connotations, Weil admits, associated with words like rot and decay. But there are many positive aspects to aging that easily can get lost in this youth-obsessed culture. In my favorite chapter in Healthy Aging, he describes six things that we value the older they get: whiskey, wine, cheese, violins, antiques and trees. In each of these, there are wonderful qualities that only develop slowly over time. The taste of a coveted 12-year-old whiskey. The bouquet of a wine that has continued to age in the bottle. The beautiful sound of a Stradivarius violin. The patina of well-worn antiques. The gnarled and knotted endurance of the banyan tree. As many ancient cultures that revere old age have long understood, age can bring peace and wisdom.

Maybe this year I'll add a fourth New Year's resolution: Learn to love wrinkles.

[Last modified December 30, 2005, 09:47:03]