If you've read Augusten Burroughs, you probably think he would be the last one to offer serious life advice in the form of a self-help book. But, in fact that is exactly what he has done in "This is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Molestation, Fatness, Spinsterhood, Grief, Disease, Lushery, Decrepitude & More. For Young and Old Alike."  If the almost paragraph long title is any indication, this is not your run-of-the-mill self-help book.  In fact, Augusten puts the entire genre on his head by proclaiming that self-help is part of the problem and not the solution.

The author who has lived a fairly unconventional life by any standard does not claim to have unearthed some magical powers that will make one's problems go away but through humor and challenging popular conceptions about therapy and self-help, he shows his readers that the answer lies within. And of course all of this is done with the dark humor that's made him a bestselling author.

The chapters of the book are comically titled with "how to be fat," "how to finish your drink," and "how to lose someone you love," for example, where he counsels people to stop striving to be what they are not and just accept who they are.  

But as Janice Harper, a Huffington Post blogger noted, "But it's not a book for everyone. In fact, I dare say that most people who read this book will toss it in the fire while cursing the author for daring to suggest that AA is over-rated, it's perfectly fine to be fat so buy yourself some clothes that fit, and the happiness industry is nothing more than "side-of-the-cereal-box-psychology" that has us fooled into thinking affirmations will somehow change the way we feel when what we really need to do is stop lying to ourselves and acknowledge that we're really feeling miserable and hopeless (at least when that is how we're really feeling)."

Burroughs draws on his life once again in this hybrid of a memoir and (anti) self-help book as he did in "Running with Scissors." In the former book, we learned that despite not having had any formal education past the third grade he goes on the become an advertising executive. We also learn of his being brought up by his mother's psychiatrist and his addictions later in life that forced him to go in and out of rehab and his eventual transformation.

While his latest book doesn't go into as much detail into his past experiences, it is the basis for the advice he dishes about how we can be happier without therapists.