I think many of us share the same thoughts you are describing, so thanks for sharing them.
The principle I'm trying to go by is: I'm sure there are plenty of great new books, new films etc, but I still haven't read/seen way too many of the classics that people have been thinking about for decades and even centuries. At least 30 years since first publication is the mark I joke about going by. Perhaps you might add "award-winning" and/or "still in print" to your search terms. For the most part, we can be trusted with keeping the best books around. And of course that's just the principle, not the reality, as you can infer from my having read this page.
I think if you read a modern non-fiction book about self-improvement you would get a dreadful notion of what a book really is and would be right never to want to read one again. There is no fluff in a classic, no such thing as skimming it or speed reading it, it's just a totally different experience.
So I might suggest going back several years into lists of books that won the Pulitzer prize, for example, or the Man Booker prize, things like that, and seeing if something piques your curiosity. Perhaps a truly good book that would fall within the "self-help" definition is "The Denial of Death" by Ernest Becker. It was probably the first good book I ever read at about 24 years old, and the first time in my life I experienced sadness at getting close to the end of the book ("what am I going to do when it's over?"). I don't remember why I picked it up or why I actually read it, but I did for about an hour every day at a coffee shop that I stopped at on my way back home from work, and it was unforgettable.
The principle I'm trying to go by is: I'm sure there are plenty of great new books, new films etc, but I still haven't read/seen way too many of the classics that people have been thinking about for decades and even centuries. At least 30 years since first publication is the mark I joke about going by. Perhaps you might add "award-winning" and/or "still in print" to your search terms. For the most part, we can be trusted with keeping the best books around. And of course that's just the principle, not the reality, as you can infer from my having read this page.
I think if you read a modern non-fiction book about self-improvement you would get a dreadful notion of what a book really is and would be right never to want to read one again. There is no fluff in a classic, no such thing as skimming it or speed reading it, it's just a totally different experience.
So I might suggest going back several years into lists of books that won the Pulitzer prize, for example, or the Man Booker prize, things like that, and seeing if something piques your curiosity. Perhaps a truly good book that would fall within the "self-help" definition is "The Denial of Death" by Ernest Becker. It was probably the first good book I ever read at about 24 years old, and the first time in my life I experienced sadness at getting close to the end of the book ("what am I going to do when it's over?"). I don't remember why I picked it up or why I actually read it, but I did for about an hour every day at a coffee shop that I stopped at on my way back home from work, and it was unforgettable.