You are not your bookcase

Once when an ex-boyfriend was in the shower, I found a copy of Harville Hendrix's classic "Keeping the Love You Find: A Guide for Singles" in his apartment. It too was under the bed. I didn't say anything about my discovery at the time because, one, I had no business looking in that drawer, and two, to out him as something other than the self-contained, emotionally robust, Harvard-educated Master of the Universe that he presented himself as struck me as more than our fragile relationship could handle. (After he dumped me, incidentally, I bought a paperback of Lama Zopa Rinpoche's "Transforming Problems Into Happiness" and stashed it on the shelf behind the collected works of Philip Roth.)

Closeted self-improvement sessions have a whiff of sadness to them. But those who undergo them are far better off than those who can't bring themselves to. Too clever for "dumb" books, they never learn that even banal prose can illuminate experience. Or, as music critic Carl Wilson writes, that "stepping deliberately outside one's own aesthetics" can be an exercise in shaking off ugly social prejudices.

You have to ask yourself, who benefits most from the "I like this = I'm like this" cultural moment? Apple? McSweeney's? Not the consumer, I imagine. That educated people are choosing not to access vast swaths of available help and information is hardly cause for glee. It would be awfully nice, instead, to read whatever you please without fear of being branded one thing or another.

I asked a journalist friend who, as he puts it, "has to read a lot of embarrassing books for work" -- most recently a coffee-table book celebrating Miller Lite ads, and yes, he took it on the subway -- how he copes. "Well, I'm so used to it now that the stares don't faze me." But he does abstain from the practice of posting his lists of favorites -- on Facebook or anyplace else. "I don't feel I'm capable of truthfulness there. There are the books I like, and the books I want people to think I like. A truthful list would probably range from Kingsley Amis to Michael Crichton. Would I post that? Would that seem too contrived (ooh, how very high-low!)? I would need a therapist to sort it out."

Or, we could just skip this fixation on product signifiers altogether. I propose a movement in another direction -- one in which we spend less time trying to fashion portraits of ourselves as curious, reflective, wide-ranging intellects, and more time … reflecting and ranging wide. Toward that end, here are a few short exercises that might help:

Go to the nearest bookstore and meander over to the self-improvement section. Stand in the aisle for 15 seconds. Leave. Proceed upstairs to the fiction and literature section. Browse. Come back downstairs to the self-improvement section and remain in that aisle for a full minute, during which time you must pick up one book and hold it long enough to read the back cover copy.

Start tossing around the word "research." If someone finds you holding an embarrassing book, you say, "Oh, I'm reading this for research." Most people will not inquire further. (I learned this when brandishing "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People." For research.)

Take that book out from under the bed and put it on the bookshelf.

Type up a shadow list of products, one that really captures you. (My list, for instance, would be: ChapStick, Kleenex, $9 bottles of red wine, pumpkin walnut muffins, Mrs. Meyer's Dish Soap, and boy-short underwear from American Apparel.) Print it out. Stare at the list. Take a deep breath. Let yourself be humbled. Then toss it in the recycling bin. Step outside and take a walk.

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