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'Severance' Self-Help Book Is Now Free for Download

Fans of the Apple TV Plus show can now enhance their enjoyment of the show by reading Ricken's self-help book from the series.

Headshot of Gael Cooper
Headshot of Gael Cooper
Gael Cooper
CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
Expertise Breaking news, entertainment, lifestyle, travel, food, shopping and deals, product reviews, money and finance, video games, pets, history, books, technology history, and generational studies Credentials
  • Co-author of two Gen X pop-culture encyclopedia for Penguin Books. Won "Headline Writer of the Year"​ award for 2017, 2014 and 2013 from the American Copy Editors Society. Won first place in headline writing from the 2013 Society for Features Journalism.
Gael Cooper
2 min read
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The book cover accurately spoofs the style of real self-help books, like Dianetics.

 Apple TV Plus/Screenshot by CNET

If you're a fan of Severance on Apple TV Plus, then you're familiar with the fictional self-help book "The You You Are: A Spiritual Biography of You," written by Ricken Hale. If you're interested in augmenting your Severance viewing by reading the pivotal book, you can now download it online for free.

On Jan. 31, Apple released the eight-chapter, 39-page version of The You You Are on Apple Books, where you can download it as a weird accompaniment to the intriguing show. It's also available as an audiobook, read by actor Michael Chernus, who plays Hale.

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Chernus also appears on the book's cover, against an orange-red background that is bound to remind readers of other similar books. (Dianetics, anyone?) His character has written four other self-help books, but this is the only freebie.

The promo text for the book plays right along, bragging that the book "guides you on a brave journey of self-learnedness," and that it's an "invitation to merge with your true 'You.'"

Read more: Severance Season 2: Episode Release Guide for the Must-Watch Sci-Fi Thriller

When you do download the book, it begins with a letter from the fictional author himself, in which he thanks you for reading, and notes that "events beyond my control" have stopped him from releasing the whole book, but he's sharing the first eight chapters. The book then begins with a literal bang, starting with the sentence, "It's said that as a child, Wolfgang Mozart killed another boy by slamming his head in a piano." (He didn't.)

Readers/viewers seem to be playing along with the concept, with one commenting on the Apple Books reviews page, "Dr. Hale is a true visionary with an unparalleled mind. If I could activate the Overtime Contingency so that all the Innies could have a chance to meet this generation's Shakespeare in person, I would."