Can't Help Myself: Lessons & Confessions from a Modern Advice Columnist

Part advice, part memoir, Can't Help Myselfis a funny, disarmingly honest book by the woman behind the Boston Globe's enormously popular Love Letters column.Now one of The Boston Globe's most popular and most e-mailed features, Meredith Goldstein's Love Letters column has created a booming nationwide community of readers and letter writers-over 1,000,000 strong and growing exponentially by the day.Can't Help Myself gives readers a little more insight into the behind-the-scenes of their favorite advice column. Meredith divides it into twelve delicious chapters, each focusing on an issue with which readers are struggling, including topics such as how to cope with dating fatigue and infidelity, work romances and tired marriages, true love and true loss. She begins every chapter with an essay that talks about the topic and that includes stories about her own loves and losses. This is followed by a question from a reader, Meredith's wise answer and then a symphony of short responses from the Love Letters community. Meredith's unique voice and her touching relationship with her readers makes this a must-read book, entertaining and relatable because it tells the extraordinary (and often hilarious) story of a single woman navigating her mercurial love life, and both moving and comforting because it immerses you into her compassionate community of big hearted love-seeking confederates.

Meredith Goldstein is the author of the novel The Singles (Penguin/Plume), which was published in 2012 and appeared on the Globe's bestseller list. Meredith launched her career at the Baltimore City Paper and the Providence Journal and has been working for the Boston Globe for thirteen years where she now serves as the paper's beloved entertainment reporter and its widely-read national columnist.