Customer Reviews
A very funny book on the self-help industry! - By: Liz Makin, 24 Apr 2008 
If you workin the area of self-help or have read lots of self-help books then you will love this book. It is a hugely enjoyable read from cover to cover. Watch out you won't want to put it down!
'Live, Love, Learn.' - By: Ms. Laura Ashwell, 16 Nov 2006 Absolutely fantastic book - I have read it six times, & it just gets better & better. I liked it so much, I recommended it to my University lecturer & he might put it on our course!
As well as well as being a brilliant 'laugh-out-loud' book, it is also a satirical look on American society. I think there is a little bit of Edwin de Valuin us all.
Definately worth £6. BUY IT!
One of the funniest books I have read for years - By: Barton Keyes, 01 Jul 2004 I laughed out loud reading this book -- & there can be no better recommendation as far as I am concerned. In fact I liked it so much I would give it six stars if I could. This is a review, not a synopsis, so all I will say is that if you like good story, good plotting,good pacing & good dialogue with lots of funny lines & wry humour you should investin this book. I suspect you will read itin one sitting if you get the chance.
What would happen if a self-help book actually worked? - By: Frederikke Lindholm, 09 Jun 2004 Edwin de Valu is your typical American Gen-X anti-hero. Each day he stumbles out into the roar of a city he hates, to a job he hates, with a baby-boomer boss he hates. He lives beyond his meansin a trendy rehabbed neighbourhood with a wife he, well, doesn't like very much. It's the contemporary, urban, American dream! As editor of the non-fiction division of Panderic Books, Edwin is put on the spot during a meeting. He has been promising an idea to fill the gapin Panderic's up-coming catalogue - a gap created by the prosecution of Mr Ethics, Panderic's biggest self help author, for tax evasion. Before he knows it, Edwin is pitching a book foundin his "slush pile" that morning.' What I Learned on the Mountain', by Tupak Soiree, is a typewritten manuscript covered with stick-on daisies & a hand-written note on the bottom of the title page, which reads, "Live, Love, & Learn". Hardly the kind of sentiment Edwin is likely to applaud, but it's too late, he's pitched it & his boss loves it.
Edwin rushes from the meeting to retrieve 'What I Learned on the Mountain' from his rubbish bin & finds it missing. A chase for the book, & subsequently its author, ensues. Along the way Edwin discovers that the self-help book actually works. Its readers become fabulously rich, quit smoking, & have enhanced sexual prowess. Unfortunately, it turns out that a society full of enriched, happy people has dire consequences for the world economy & eventually someone figures out Edwin is responsible.
The humourin Happiness TM is needless to embrace - from Canada to Denmark via England, Ferguson's laissez-faire satire proves itself universally insightful. Now, for the idea of this anti-hero being the Satre of 21st century... perhaps. He enlights the issues of instant gratifaction/gloricifation & concludes that our vices make us the protagonists we are - not by mocking the people who try & fail, but the people who succeed. For people like me who hate the way the world's turning - this is a must-read.
