Beth Lisick reads from Helping Me Help Myself April 30, 2008

Grappling with her lifelong phobia of anything slick, cheesy, or remotely claiming to provide self-empowerment, Beth Lisick wakes up on New Year's Day 2006 with an unprecedented feeling. She is finally able to admit to herself that she's grown tired of embracing the same old set of nagging problems year after year. Instead of turning to advice from the abundant pool of local life coaches, therapists, and healers readily available on her home turf of northern California, Beth confronts her fears head-on, consulting with multimillion-dollar-earning experts like uber-famous Richard Simmons, Suze Orman, and John Gray.

Throughout this yearlong experiment, Beth tries extremely hard to maintain her wry sense of humor and easygoing nature, even as she starts to fall prey to some of the experts' ideas, ideas she thought she'd spent her whole life rejecting. Beth doesn't think of herself as the typical self-help victim. But is she?

Beth Lisick has published poems, essays, a short fiction collection, and also wrote a weekly nightlife column for SF Gate for eight years. She co-organizes the Porchlight Storytelling Series, a monthly show for amateur storytellers in San Francisco. Her last book was the best-selling Everybody into the Pool.

Booksigning follows event.

Official Website: http://www.sfpl.org