Feel This Book: An Essential Guide to Self-Empowerment, Spiritual Supremacy, and Sexual Satisfaction [Hardcover]

Ben Stiller (Author), Janeane Garofalo (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 27, 1999

"We are professionals. Though not specifically professionals in the field of 'psychology' or 'psychiatry,' we are both highly paid actors and comedians, and as such know more about neuroses than you could possibly imagine. . . ."

If you're tired of following the rules, dating people from Mars and Venus, gorging on chicken soup for your soul, or getting lost on a road less traveled, then it's time you listened to Ben Stiller and Janeane Garofalo, two people who actually sweat the small stuff . . . because, let's face it, if your body doesn't sweat, it dies--much like Ben and Janeane's train wreck of a relationship many years ago. From that experience came wisdom and self-reproachment. Now, in Feel This Book, they tackle the tough questions:

- Is love necessary?
- How can I make money off my spouse?
- Compassion--is it overrated?
- Why can't I sleep around and still love you?
- How many times have you told your significant other that you would pick up something for dinner on your way home from the office, and next thing you knew you're at an all-night eatery with some hermaphrodite you found on the strip, having eggs and bacon at three in the morning?

Through helpful tips, completely fabricated case studies, the six laws of spiritual success, the fourteen by-laws of spiritual awakening, and the twenty-three addendums and sub-laws regarding anything spiritual and successful, Stiller and Garofalo teach such valuable lessons as:

- When it comes to family, grasp onto the blame and don't let go
- Make the connection . . . between Deepak and Tupac
- Your mother lied; looks are everything, and the sooner you submit and stop denying the inevitable, the happier you will be
- And much more!

Feel This Book. Let it be your path, your compass, your sensible shoes, your Frappuccino®. It's what self-help was meant to be.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

A warning to readers: though Ben Stiller (Flirting with Disaster) and Janeane Garofalo (The Truth About Cats and Dogs) used to be a couple, do not confuse their advice book with Chicken Soup for the Couple's Soul. This is more of a cross between James Thurber and E.B. White's satirical Is Sex Necessary? and MTV's Beavis and Butt-Head: Chicken Soup for the Butt.

The ex-couple give us alternating chapters of remarkably rambling, extravagantly ironic, showbiz-insider's philosophical musings, but they do discuss their actual relationship, just to let you know where they stand--right on your funny bone, exerting maximum pressure until you beg for mercy. After their breakup, writes Garofalo, "We agreed that in the future we would only meet for professional purposes, or if we were drunk and felt like having emotionally destructive sex."

This faux tome (also read by the authors on audiocassette) is a meeting of the minds for professional purposes. But again, don't be fooled by what these wily authors say! The intriguing chapters referred to in the opening pages--"Why Can't I Sleep Around and Still Love You?"; "How to Fake an Orgasm to Show Your Love, or The Art of the Squeal"; "Negotiating with God for What You Want--and Getting It!"; "Pros and (Very Few) Cons of a Third Party in the Bedroom"--these chapters do not in fact exist! What does exist is a dog's breakfast of jokes from a pair of clowns. Read it and weep, but heed it at your peril. --Tim Appelo

From Publishers Weekly

Television-bred celebrities as humor authorsAthe likes of Paul Reiser and Drew CareyAhave used spoken audio as a means to help establish their literary audiences. Books on tape offer a natural conduit for such actors' messages, better, often, than the print versions. Stiller and Garofalo, both young, sophisticated and genuinely funny film actors, go a step further, parodying one of audio's nonfiction staples: self-help tapes. They start with dry disclaimers, stating that they are celebrities and so know nothing of psychology, then describe calls from their agents asking them to record "a funny audiobook about relationships." Taking the classic he-said/she-said format, the two trade off with first-person vignettes that tell a modern love story, with all its "mistakes." Stiller tells of going home with Garofalo to meet "her people" in Nutley, N.J. She counters with descriptions of his goofy behavior once there. The humor is deadpan, with a bitingly sarcastic undercurrent. There is good chemistry between the pair, lending to a sense of playfulness and spontaneity often absent from audio programs. Stiller and Garofalo know their audience wellAand just how to play them. Based on the 1999 Ballantine hardcover. Also available on CD. (May)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books; 1 edition (April 27, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345412923
• ISBN-13: 978-0345412928
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (82 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,781,339 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Feel This Book., July 26, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Feel This Book: An Essential Guide to Self-Empowerment, Spiritual Supremacy, and Sexual Satisfaction (Paperback)

After a whole school year of reading classical literature, I bought this book to loosen up and get a laugh. A lot of stuff in this book is funny, other parts are simply clever. I'll admit that I found JG's essays a little redundant and she writes a little harshly, while Ben's additions (building yourself a "linen" cave, Mama Whitefeather's ring toss antics, and his hilarious lumberjack experience) were a lot funnier than Janeane's "inner warrior." The low points are that JG and BS don't really compliment each other and there is no real THEME to the book. This is no classic and I think that Ben's constant rantings about how he wants to make money off the book are not funny, but scary. Also, some of the references will become dated within a few years. Another downside of this book is that it's only funny the first time you read it; I read over a few of Ben's chapters a couple of months later and I didn't even laugh once. Still, if you want a quick laugh, pick up this book, and then read some Virginia Woolf so you can feel intellectual again. 3 stars.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Feel our pain!, December 7, 1999

By 

R. Cooke "disgruntled programmer" (Seattle, Washington) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Feel This Book: An Essential Guide to Self-Empowerment, Spiritual Supremacy, and Sexual Satisfaction (Hardcover)

I love Stiller and Garofalo, but as I read this book, I kept waiting for the funny part. Imagine how disappointed I was to get to the end and not find it! I was looking under the book jacket for hidden pages or SOMETHING, anything satisfying.

As much as I really want to love everything they do, their comedy just doesn't translate to the printed page. This book is a series of lukewarm essays that, although they may have their moments (Stiller's roadtrip diary being one of them), don't build on each other, and never attain critical mass. My suggestion: If you want to support Ben and Janeane, buy the book, but spare yourself the pain and don't read it.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I felt this Book, June 11, 2004

By 

Jay Raskin "PhilosopherJay" (Orlando, Fl United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Feel This Book: An Essential Guide to Self-Empowerment, Spiritual Supremacy, and Sexual Satisfaction (Hardcover)

I felt this book. Not just felt it, like holding it, I mean you have to hold a book to read it, but what I mean is I loved this book. It helped me get in touch with my inner comedian, the guy inside of me who wants to host a radio talk show and make $10,000,000 starring in a motion picture. Every chapter is hysterically funny. Well, not every chapter. The one by Ben Stiller having a guardian angel who looked like Hoss Cartwright is kind of like a bad sketch comedy bit that goes no where, but everything else in the book is right on and cool, to quote hip seventies language.
I guess it is kind of wierd to be praising a book five years after it came out and everybody else reviewed it five years ago. Okay, so I'm a little behind, but so what? Maybe this book was ahead of its time, maybe its time is now. Maybe Ben Stiller and Janeane Garafolo, Garofolo, Garofalo's time is now. They seem to be doing pretty well, Janeane is doing that terrific radio talk show and Ben is making a movie every other month, and I see all of them. Well, I didn't see the recent one with Jack Black, but that was in and out of the theater in like two days, but I did see "Meet the Parents" twice in the movies and twice on TV, and I'm waiting for the sequel which I have heard Barbara Streisand is going to be in.
Anyways this book has really helped me. It hasn't helped me to sell any of my thirteen screenplays which nobody has bought, but it has helped me to see being pathetic as a source of humor. That's good and amazing. Well, maybe not amazing, but interesting. And believe it or not I finished it in one afternoon, and I never did finish that book by Ellen Degeneris. Maybe, I'll finish that book today and write a review of it.