Helping Me Help Myself: One Skeptic, Ten Self-Help Gurus, and a Year on the Brink of the Comfort Zone is perfect for lazy, cynical people who say they want to work on improving themselves but really just want to make fun of others. It enables you to read only one book and become knowledgeable about many of the prominent self-help guru theories.

The story commences with Beth awakening with a hangover, mysterious bruising, and muscle pain on January 1, 2006. Via a replay of the videos on her digital camera, she realizes she has performed her party trick of "doing the splits." While contemplating her first-ever New Year's resolution (to be able to do the splits on her other side for her next New Year's Eve party) she somehow happens on a decision to stop eschewing self-help books and take a year to explore and write about the self-help world. The beginning is fantastic and grabs you. She has a wry sense of humor and you can't wait to hear more.

The reader discovers Lisick is an author and a banana. In between writing gigs, she receives a paycheck by dressing up as a banana. Her husband is a workaholic. Their marriage is celebrated between the hours of midnight and 2:00 a.m. They have a tantrum-prone four-year-old. They are poor financial managers. Her father is very sick. They have completely neglected their house such that the front steps are rotting and the bedroom ceiling is in danger of caving in. What better time than this to take an entire year and attend expensive self-help workshops?

Helping Me Help Myself begins on a comedic note and maintains a healthy dose of sarcastic humor overall. It is divided into monthly chapters. I'll briefly review her year.

In January, she peruses a Jack Canfield (of Chicken Soup for the Soul fame) book, The Success Principles: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be. This book recommended she ask for what she wants. Ironically, in this chapter, she asks for help repeatedly and gets rejected.

In February, she explores Steven Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and attends one of his workshop. In March, she forces herself to choke down John Gray's Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus and attends his vitamin-hawking seminar.

In April, she takes Richard Simmons' Cruise to Lose, even though she has never had a weight problem. In May, she reads Organizing from the Inside Out by Julie Morgenstern, and organizes a few rooms of her house.