Product Description

Inside find helpful advice, such as:

• Take a Vacation, Not a Guilt-Trip
  Don't Get "Should Upon"
• Hades or Homecoming?
  Opt In- or Out-of Family Events
• Quit Being Your Mother
  Ban Worry from Your Holidays
• It's Not Daytona—You're Not Jeff Gordon
  Don't Try to Cook Tailgating Turkeys

Don't Get Scrooged is a jewel of a handbook on how to avoid, appease, and even win over the Scrooges who haunt your holidays. Whether it's the salesclerk who ignores you in favor of her cell phone, the customer who knowingly jumps ahead of you in line at Starbucks, the unnaturally irritable boss down the hall, or the in-laws who invite themselves (every year) for a two-week stay at your house, you will always need to deal with Scrooges, grumps, uninvited guests, sticks-in-the-mud, and supreme party poopers. Learning to handle them whenever and wherever they appear is not just optional—it's essential.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #466774 in Books
• Published on: 2006-11-01
• Released on: 2006-10-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 176 pages

Review
"Psychologist Richard Carlson offers lots of suggestions in his just-in-time book, Don't Get Scrooged.." (Detroit Free Press )

"Carlson is back this holiday season with advice - just in time to handle the relatives, rudeness and retail nightmares." (USA Today )

"This well-written book is easy to browse and contains sound advice." (Library Journal )

"This is a smart little book full of advice based on sound psychology." (Richmond Times-Dispatch )

"Carlson offers us ways to deal with our extra-pressured existences. There's good advice to be had inside." (Boston Globe )

About the Author

Richard Carlson (1961-2006) is a bestselling author whose books include Don't Sweat the Small Stuff . . . and It's All Small Stuff; Don't Worry, Make Money; You Can Feel Good Again; and You Can Be Happy No Matter What. His books have been published in 35 languages in over 130 countries.

Customer Reviews

Well written and appropriate for the holidays
Every year holidays get more and more demanding and less and less fun. Richard Carlson has welcome advice for getting through it all a lot happier than we have in the past and a little closer to those warm and fuzzy feelings we expect from this time of year than we usually get. Although there is little in the book that is surprising or new, it is presented in convenient little segments in a wonderfully readable form. The author presents the material using his own experiences and those of others to illustrate his points in each chapter and does so succinctly and with great sense of humor. I found the book a delight and read it from cover to cover in about two hours. I expect to monitor my own behavior and that of others around me and to re-read the appropriate chapters until I manage to succeed in getting through my holidays with a happy disposition. A good resource for everyone any day of the year when we find ourselves rehearsing unpleasant events from our days activities without generating either solutions to problems or a new way of thinking about things.

Valuable Advice--Even for an Advice Giver
The title and cover caught my eye in a megabookstore and although I usually read fat novels, not slim self-help books, I figured I'd sit down and dip in. I admit it: I'd been stewing about a confrontation over the holidays. Well, guess what? The advice is friendly and readable and so good that I ended up buying the book and pressing it on family members. There are a few semi-lame chapters, but basically, Carlson helps us let go of crazy nonsense and not let scrooges hijack our brain waves (especially at holiday time). If something is bothering you, he encourages you to think: Okay, I see why this is making me mad. But why is it making me so so so mad? If someone is playing victim, he helps you stop playing rescuer. If someone is acting like a turkey (his word), he helps you get him/her to act like an adult and to disengage. The funny thing is, I *am* an advice columnist myself--since 1994--for Girls' Life Magazine, but even we authors can use peptalks once in a while!
Carol Weston, author of GIRLTALK and FOR GIRLS ONLY and THE DIARY OF MELANIE MARTIN; [...]

decent but pricey
its a *small* collection of inspirational stories. Look at the size of the pages; roughly post-card size. And lots of white space. I enjoyed the stories, I'm not criticizing that at all. But even the discount price of $11.53 is too much for this book. So rated on what you pay for what you get, I can only give it 3 stars.