Best mens grooming books according to redditors

According to [How to Be a Gentleman: A Timely Guide to Timeless Manners](http://www.amazon.com/How-Be-Gentleman-Timeless-Manners/dp/1401603351/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1252680779&sr=8-1 "A book which I regard as an essential reference") the crotch is the polite way to go. At least you are facing the person. Also in that section is the mandate not to apologize when moving through such an aisle; after all you are doing nothing wrong. "Excuse me" is appropriate, however.

UK link if anyone needs it :)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B007O3167C

Great question. I'll start with a quick shoutout for my book, Style for Fat Guys, as this is dealt with in much greater detail there. Note that the title only uses the word 'fat' as it's the most commonly searched-for term for portly gents trying to find style advice, and I make special note in the book to use more positive/colourful language to describe a gent's girth.

Anyway, the reason you look/feel great in your suits is because they do all the right things to bring an overweight body towards the "ideal" masculine proportions; they give you a strong, structured shoulder - which counteracts the overweight man's naturally slumped/sloped shoulder - and taper in at the waist. This makes you look strong and is exactly what a suit should do.

What do you do for work? It's fine to use sport coats and blazers in a casual style - I personally wear blazers with jeans and a t-shirt, still gives you that same structure but can be worn in a much less rigid way.

How To Be a Man: A Guide To Style and Behavior For The Modern Gentleman by the late Glenn O’Brien is also good. He was the former style guy for GQ, and was just an all around great dude. For instance, the coolest piece of clothing he owned was a motorcycle jacket that Basquiat drew on the back of.

Not a bad little guide for how to help heavier guys look a bit snazzy. I think it only works if you have an e-reader.

Dear Yarcofin,

Whilst I admire your desire to demonstrate yourself as a gentleman, despite the fact that no plebeians, such as yourself, shall ever be true gentlemen--as plebeian blood is many shades from blue--I shall endeavor to guide thee nearest, by way of the written word, to the state of the cavalier.

I shall hope you will find much erudition, form, and poise betwixt pages and pages of the following ledgers:

How to Be a Gentleman

The Affected Provincial's Companion

How to Be a Man

Gentleman: A Timeless Guide to Fashion

Dressing the Man

The Art of Manliness

Regards,

Curtains

The Looks Men Love by Vincent Roppatte and Sherry Suib Cohen

What a shame. As a kid, I was an avid fan of his public access cable show TV Party where I learned about artists like Walter Stedding, Tuxedomoon, Klaus Nomi, and Basquiat, and had a chance to see musicians like Mick Jones, Chris Stein, and Debbie Harry, whose music I was already into, in a whole new context. The shows are on YouTube and were, at the time, subversive yet endearingly ramshackle and amateur. I continued to enjoy his writing on manners and style, and would seek out his Style Guy columns in GQ, which to me were less about matching your socks with your shirt, and more about individuality and being your own person.

If you are a fan of his, it's worth tracking down his Tea at the Beatrice interview series on Made 2 Measure. Many of the subjects were friends of his, and that comes through in each episode's loose, informal structure. I especially enjoyed his interviews with Chris Blackwell and Nan Goldin, though while watching the latter I remarked to my spouse that Glenn seemed quite ill.

Ines de la Fressange wrote a book about men’s style tips called The Parisian Field Guide to Men's Style, however I didn’t really like it that much because it mainly focused on menswear and seemed incredibly limiting outside of that. It basically made it seem like style rules can’t be broken in a sense.

There’s also Massimo Osti’s, the creator of Stone Island and pioneer of modern day technical clothing, book Ideas From Massimo Osti, which I think focuses on his legacy and where Stone Island is now.

Edit: And of course you can’t forget the legendary Anthology of a Decade by Hedi Slimane.

Edit 2: I'm also forgetting the famous How To Be a Man by the late GQ legend Glenn O'Brien, as well as Men and Manners and Men and Style by David Coggins.

A good rule of thumb for this is "don't do anything your grandfather wouldn't approve of".

There's also a book:
http://www.amazon.com/How-Gentleman-Revised-Updated-Gentlemanners/dp/B00CVDMEP8

>I suspect that many popular posters also work in the fashion industry

I can think of one (jascination, who wrote this book, is a style consultant in Australia), but no one else that I know of. Shujin writes for Primer now, but that's not his regular job - I think he got it due to MFA, not the other way around. There was a post about what the Consistent Contributors do for a living a while ago (now deleted), but I think most of them were in regular white-collar office jobs. Lots of IT and graphic design people, if I remember correctly.

>I do also admit that there are quite a few clothing staples that every modern man should possess: oxford shirts, straight-fitting jeans, leather shoes, a couple of suits ...etc And I see nothing wrong in reminding men of this.

Those are basically the clothes people are referring to when they talk about the "MFA uniform".

Okay, you're not going to fit it into a single book. This is a good place to start:

http://www.amazon.com/How-Be-Gentleman-Timeless-Manners/dp/1401603351/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1280113263&sr=8-1

I quite like this one for clothes:

http://www.amazon.com/Gentleman-Timeless-Fashion-Bernhard-Roetzel/dp/0841601623/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpi_1

Hm. Picking the food on the ground is nice. Tipping big is very good. Stacking the plates, tough, is bad etiquette.

Source : How to be a gentleman, a timely guide for timeless manners

I've literally been on the lookout for something like this, so thank you!


It's also available in the UK, for my fellow British redditors.

I've been doing them myself. What got me started with massaging was a book I read in February (https://www.amazon.com/TRUTH-about-Hair-Loss-Prevention-ebook/dp/B07BTKM35N). I've also incorporated the inversion techinique I've seen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNICEYoSKUc.

There are other things I'm also doing, like changing my diet incorporating anti-inflammatory foods. I've also recently got a new scalp massager that I've been using that I like a lot: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07RRNFW3T. This one I think is good not only to massage and increase blood flow, but it also helps in removing dandruff (which I can greatly benefit from, since I have seborreic dermatitis too, which certainly adds to the hair loss).

G Bruce Boyer's Elegance is a good one.

The first two months I did 30-60 minutes of cardio every other day and started eating less knowing absolutely nothing about fitness and nutrition.

Then i bought this book and some other books about a healthy diet. I followed the routine for 60 days, started counting calories (2000calories, then 2500, now 3000). Today I had my third workout at the gym, looking to get some of that muscle back (I'm as strong as I was with 13 years, ouch)

How about a book on how to dress well and just be a man in general? Glenn O'Brien over at GQ penned an excellent book called How to be a Man. It is a great primer on how to dress and act like a mature gentleman. Now, it does have chapters on smoking and drinking etiquette... And Christmas seems to be more of a time for "fun" gifts that engenders happiness and joy rather than "meaningful" ones that always come with a lecture/speech/story (reserved for important birthdays or occasions). So it's your call, dad. My favorite Christmas gift from my parents has always been video games because I love that shit.

Boy it's hard to be a dad nowadays. I salute you good sir.

EDIT: I see that people are suggesting pocket knives. To be honest, the pocket knife I got from my father on my 16th birthday was arguably one of the best gifts I have ever gotten. And I think a pocket knife makes for the greatest gift for boys of any type, not just the outdoorsy ones. Because every man should carry a pocket knife with him. But again it falls under the "meaningful" category for me. It's a rite of passage, really. It's a great opportunity to teach a boy something about maturity/responsibility and power, respect and appreciation for risk and danger, etc. that kind of thing.

Maybe this

Paired with this

Beyond Soap, Water and Comb: A Man's Guide to Good Grooming and Fitness is the best resource I've seen on this subject. While apparently people quibble over any aspect of grooming, I don't find its advice nearly as littered with really objectionable stuff as this chart.

Read this book. As well as this book. Watch this movie.

Take lessons from these. But most importantly, be passionate about something. That's how you begin to discover yourself (in a good way).

I see what you mean, but I don't have the knowledge to apply this to my wardrobe in general to manipulate proportion in a successful manner. I found this though which seems to have some good information on the topic.

Speak with class

look fancy doing it

and

...

Dress with style and sophistication

...

How to play the part

and

also

Get him a copy of "How to be a Gentleman". The book is small, compact, and teaches essential manners in large, bold type. It is appropriate for all ages, though it admittedly skews more towards adulthood than young adulthood.

No one is going to care what you look like if you have boorish manners.

No, you can also purchase that book. The focus is straight-razor shaving. It has some reader reviews, if those are of interest.

Read "How to be a Man" by Glenn O'Brien. Not only will it help in a basic understanding of bodily care, but also how to dress and how to act in certain situations. I wasn't taught these things either, but managed to learn on my own eventually. Acting nice > Looking nice, but both are important.

http://www.amazon.com/How-Be-Man-Behavior-Gentleman/dp/0847835472/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1321023038&sr=8-1

i'm sorry, i thought that challenge was very popular.

you do a lot of body-weight exercises for all body parts like 3-4 times a week. in most of the sessions, the time between the excercises is limited to keep the pauses as short as possible. every week there is an evaluation session where you can test your skills and might move up to a harder "level" of the exercise.

This is the book: https://www.amazon.com/90-Day-Bodyweight-Challenge-Men/dp/3868837736

I thought that sentence was going to end "clearly you haven't seen what I shave".


Whew!


I see last year's Xmas gift has produced some dividends.

Here are all the local Amazon links I could find:


amazon.co.uk

amazon.ca

amazon.com.au

amazon.in

amazon.com.mx

amazon.de

amazon.it

amazon.es

amazon.com.br

amazon.nl

amazon.co.jp

Beep bloop. I'm a bot to convert Amazon ebook links to local Amazon sites.
I currently look here: amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, amazon.ca, amazon.com.au, amazon.in, amazon.com.mx, amazon.de, amazon.it, amazon.es, amazon.com.br, amazon.nl, amazon.co.jp, if you would like your local version of Amazon adding please contact my creator.

It's a book by Mark Lauren, there's one for men and women on German Amazon, unfortunately only the male version in the US for some reason:

http://www.amazon.com/90-Day-Bodyweight-Challenge-Men/dp/3868837736/

There's this one however, for women: http://www.amazon.com/Body-You-Guide-Womens-Fitness/dp/0345528972/

Style for Fat Guys highly recommended.

I wouldn't say that someone that "keeps looking at magazines" is someone who has no interest in improving their appearance.

But instead of magazines who are made to push always the latest and greatest fad, how about a book whose purpose is to introduce you to the fundamentals of style?

Random example: http://www.amazon.com/The-Fundamentals-Style-illustrated-ebook/dp/B007O3167C

As someone who worked in clothes and tennis stores as a teenager, I can assure you the shop assistants just want a sale. This much is true. But if you go out of rush hours, they will be bored out of their minds. Just go talk to them, try different things. Never feel sorry for saying "this is out of my price range". And don't take home anything you think you might use. Just like the girls rejecting you, reject anything that you put on and that doesn't click.