Best Book Ever

Readers, I'm always on the lookout for amazing literary gems at my library, and I really hit the mother load this time. Our newest entry comes to us from Timothy Welch and the good people at Prentice-Hall, circa 1984: Tape It Off! a guide to "lose weight quickly and enjoyably through self-hypnosis" (!) Check out that cover image: the Olivia Newton John Body Heat era-inspired outfit, the mall queen hair, the brick-sized Walkman...and then you have the promise of self-hypnosis...gosh, it's just a winning combination, isn't it?

Working in a library I come across hundreds of diet books, so it really takes a special contender to grab my attention like this one has. So the cover, title and premise alone was easily enough to win me over, but the real clencher? The first sentence in the first chapter (no joke): "You're too fat!"(!!) Wow, I guess that was the type of positive encouragement one could expect to get from the early eighties...really makes you realize how touchy-feely and PC we've gotten with our diet books here in the next century.

And lest you think this was just a one-off dabble for Prentice-Hall in the genre of self-improvement through DIY hypnosis, the back of the book jacket sets you straight--there is a whole series of this stuff to explore! Some of these titles sound pretty promising: Financial Well-Being Through Self-Hypnosos by Joseph Itiel, You Can Do It With Self-Hypnosos by Charles E. Henderson, and (you should've seen this one coming): Improve Your Sex Life Through Self-Hypnosos by John Kappas! I'm sure I can run up to my local Borders and snag these.

The book is full of scripts that you are supposed to read aloud in a calm, monotone voice into your gigantic tape recorder, then play it back to yourself just before mealtime. The theory is that you'll hypnotize yourself into a non-hungry stupor, thus ditching your thunder thighs and gaining the confidence you'll need to hang around in a candy-striped leotard and stirrup pants (pink and red?? Oh, girlfriend, no). So the book is chock full of odd little mantras to tell yourself, but it's also got random descriptions of stressful real-life situations that may contribute to overeating. Some of the weirder chapter titles include: chapter 3: Eye Fixation and Arm Levitation, ch 7: The Candy Lady and the Pie Guy, ch 12: Domestic Dissent, ch 13: My Enemies, The Children(!), and ch 15: I Wish I Were Pregnant(??).

Wacky. Just...wacky.