Cartoon by Erik Bergstrom
Still, as Beth Blum has pointed out in âThe Self-Help Compulsionâ (2020), reading books for life advice is an ancient practice. Aristotleâs âNicomachean Ethicsâ can be read as a guide to virtuous living. (Like many of McHughâs writers, Aristotle was only summing up the characteristics of people generally counted as virtuous in his time and placeâthat is, the eastern Mediterranean in the fourth century B.C. You want to be thought virtuous? Be like them.) Blum calls Boethiusâ âThe Consolation of Philosophy,â which was written in the sixth century, âbibliotherapy
avant la lettre,â an idea that Alain de Botton, the leading contemporary bibliotherapist, acknowledges in the title of his 2000 book, âThe Consolations of Philosophy.â People donât generally describe the Bible as a how-to book, but it partly isâas is the Quran.