Self help, money-wise

The arresting thing is how many people want to follow her As any traveller with an arm full of string knows, the appeal of eastern think philosophy has always come down, in part, to the accessories."Has Liz Gilbert sold out?" asked various book blogs last week, and although the structure of the book, divided into 108 tales after the number of meditation beads in a traditional set, raises certain expectations, Gilbert never claims to be anything more holy than a burnt-out journalist on a year out, trying to put her life back together.

And so she does. The arresting thing is how many people want to follow her. With million copies in print and a new edition on the bestseller list, Eat Pray Love and its imitators start to look like primers in wish-fulfilment, sacred rules to a better existence. You know how it goes - the combination of self-indulgence and self-denial which women must navigate in order to feel good about themselves and which, in Gilbert's case, seems to boil down to the following principle: If you go on holiday for a year, eat pasta, sit on a beach and meet a gorgeous Brazilian, there's a good chance you will be "happy", or at least, get a book out of it.

It is partly a function of our demanding times - one strand of a broader publishing trend in how to be happy, once thought a by-product of other diversions and now a pursuit in itself. Anything with "happiness" in the title and a set of rules to follow stands a good chance of vaulting into the bestseller lists, from business books (Delivering Happiness: A Path To Profits, Passion, And Purpose by Tony Hsieh) to Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project.

If it can be combined with some kind of esoteric activity, all the better, as in Cleaving, Julie Powell's follow up to Julie and Julia, in which she enrolls in butcher's school in upstate New York while think trying to figure out what to do with her marriage. Or Frances Mayes' project to renovate an Italian villa in Under The Tuscan Sun.