Personally, I abhor them. I know that's an unusually strong stance, but I have a deep aversion to the industry. I find that most of their advice is just common sense wrapped in interesting anecdotes, and I feel that they can actually limit people by putting artifical boundaries on their thinking and definitions of success. IMHO literature and history has more than enough to offer in the realm of introspection and self-improvement, and self-help sells people short.

I feel that people are often blind to the possibilites around them, and to the limits that they allow to be placed on their behavior, to those they place on themselves, and I think self-help books just perpetuate this type of thinking, even when they are obstensibly telling the reader to rebel. Worst of all, IMHO are those that provide formulae for viewing the world. What an awful way to simplify people and ignore the subtleties that give social interaction meaning and possibility.

I hesitate to write this, as I understand that many people find them valuable. However, I just can't stomach the premise. IMHO life is too interesting and too complex for self-help to be worthwhile. I'm not saying that there isn't anything useful to be found in those books, but I think those qualities are wrapped in a premise of deception, one that both the author are reader suffer from. There's plenty of better ways to engage your world that will help you.