It is important to check facts and know whether someone is making things up — which is what happens all too often with the New Age crowd — or badly paraphrasing some other crank (another familiar occurrence).

The presence of a bibliography is not always a guarantee of veracity. However, a good bibliography — listing credible authors from reputable publishing houses, not just minor imprints of companies willing to print anything without bothering to check their facts — does suggest an author does homework.

About the bad stuff

Sadly, none of the books listed as Bad have been fact-checked or peer-reviewed. The author has merely signed a legal document that states, to the best of their knowledge, the book is accurate.

What you and I think “to the best of their knowledge” means is not what some of these authors think it means.

It is all too easy for some of these authors to sign that paper and spout all sorts of spurious stuff — which is how so many bad books appear on the shelves of bookstores.

Own them if you must, but their information isn’t reliable (you have to wonder about the fengshui expertise of the authors when their books contradict and steal from one another).

You probably will find these books more interesting for the insights they offer into New Age marketing techniques and psychobabble.

If you rummage through used-book stores or online services that list used books, these are the books most often listed in the “feng shui” section. If you frequent stores that stock remainders (books that were returned from bookstores because they did not sell), you will also find a lot of these.

Obviously not everyone thinks they are any good.

View the list of most popular books.