Self-Help Smackdown: "The Secret" vs. "Eat Pray Love"

There are a lot of common points between the "love yourself" blockbusters "The Secret" and "Eat Pray Love" (from here on, shortened to EPL...which I know, makes it sound like a pregnancy test...but where's your brain going, eh?). Both are written by women on the verge - or after - a nervous breakdown, have tons of quotable meditations on life...and probably are on your shelf courtesy of a recent "convert" to their maxims. Would-be writers drool over the sales figures both books have bagged and the Oprah accolades that have followed. There's something to be said about coping with personal tragedy by looking outward - and no doubt, both books, to a receptive mind, do provide some effective points on how we can all become shiny happy people. But which one would win a self-help smackdown here on NBLB? How does the Universe-as-genie-in-a-bottle (cue vintage Aguilera track) fares against a proactive traveling yogi with a big appetite?

Rhonda Byrne, an Australian producer, kicked it off with The Secret documentary, a video now passed on via YouTube and recommended on Netflix faster than you can put up your own visualization board. That video made up mainly of talking heads involved in "life coaching" professions (which include a slew of earnest philosophers, the author of the Chicken Soup for the Soul books, a feng shui specialist, a dreadlocked pastor and some very wacked out quantum physicists) soon made its way in paper form, via the transcribed and annotated "Secret" book. Meanwhile, in EPL, we're all shown how heaven hath no joy more than a woman who can wield a pen and a passport simultaneously. Technically, EPL is a memoir with lots of interesting observations of life in Italy, India and Indonesia...but as" One Woman's Search for Everything," it also has lots of "true dat!" moments sure to make you want to eat pasta, do yoga and buy a Balinese woman a house to improve your lot in life.

I tend to group self-help books into two categories: those that set off my bullshit meter and make me laugh all the way in the opposite direction (this usually happens from the cover, which is why self-help is one section my browsing shadow rarely darkens)...and those that set off my bullshit meter, but somehow titillate my curiosity. Now "The Secret," to be honest, fell in the first category. From the mystical red seal on the covers, to the slew of quotes between short explanations...it rang my New Age kooky bell loud and clear. It took a lazy afternoon with my parents and a sheer lack of anything else to do, to get me to watch The Secret video. And...despite the cheesy as heck re-enactments (Um...men in togas? Cardinal Richelieu insinuation? And ...Byrne throwing her head back like Milla in the final scenes of The Fifth Element...wot?!?) and my giggling every time the dreadlocked pastor showed up on camera, the messages behind the odd images did, by Jove, make sense. So now I own the book, and while it's still quite a swallow of quotes and at-times outrageous claims, I'd keep it handy for those days when you feel a little blue. But it was the VIDEO that spawned the book purchase, mind you - if I were to base this book procurement on writing...I'd laugh my way back home.

Gilbert's travel therapy EPL, on the other hand, is immensely readable, first-person narrative in the hands of a capable writer who clearly was determined to feel better - in any time zone. Her journey from post-divorce depression to (spoiler alert!) finding an older Latin lover in Bali after living in an ashram seems like "Under The Tuscan Sun" with a whiff of patchouli. Her Italy section, filled with hedonistic descriptions of food, wine and good-looking Italians conversing in their poetic language, was my favorite part of her journey of self-discovery. After Italy, however, the book took a more spiritual - and gradually more serious - turn. India's ashram experience brought forth perhaps the book's most memorable character: the no-nonsense Texan yogi Richard who didn't mince words about his impressions of the extreme lifestyle, Gilbert's appetite (he called her "Groceries"), and yes...that quote: "mosquitoes so big, they could rape a chicken." Thank goodness for Richard - because at that point, after the requisite first encounters, Gilbert sounded more and more like the Architect from The Matrix.

If "The Secret" had that "Universe as genie" ridiculous moment, Gilbert's guru dreams and blue light special meditations made me want to ask her if she could PRETTY PLEASE talk about pasta again. By the time we reach Bali, it seems Liz doesn't even need the medicine man she befriends - he needs her. It becomes too neat - in this world where our books about self-discovery must have a certain messiness to be probable - girl gets divorce, goes traveling, gets her spiritual groove on, and meets cute older (balding?) dude. Maybe there's a bit of Schadenfreude seeping through these sentences as well. And maybe if we did have her kind of budget, this sort of spiritual discovery would be possible. In some way, this book is like a series of postcards, a "wish you were here," scrawled in pasta sauce and signed in the sand in Paradise.

So what's it going to be? Which feisty blonde wins in the self-help arena this time around? EPL, hands-down, is the better READ, but you could probably apply The Secret without getting shots or paying for airfare. Based on the messages, both call for a positive attitude to get over the rough spots. Each to his/her own, if you will.

If you go purely by best-selling stats (truth by numbers)...there's another feisty blonde that still kicks both their asses in terms of getting published after prevailing over adversity:


Harry Potter trumps yoga anytime. Accio!