Women Food and God by Geneen Roth Simon & Schuster HK$187

If Oprah Winfrey likes a book chances are so too will millions of other people. That's to say Geneen Roth is assured of success with Women Food and God, regardless of whether readers warm to it. Many will, even though there's little within its covers that isn't common sense. Roth, who used to be a crash dieter who had gained and lost more than 450kg over the years, has simple rules: eat when hungry, in a calm environment and without distractions; eat what your body wants, until satisfied and in full view of others. For almost two decades, she says, the suffering she felt about anything found expression in her relationship with food. Overeating was a way to shame herself. Roth, who holds retreats for those who prefer verbal to written self-help - and for whom God is a flexible concept - includes many anecdotes from those events in her book. There are questions she has been asked, such as how to change one's connection to food, to which her answer is simply to understand who you take yourself to be. If all this sounds rather soft, then veer away from the book, but not in the direction of that third muffin.