Benrik Limited

Benrik Limited is a publishing company started by Ben Carey and Henrik Delehag
From the official Benrik site: "Benrik's mission is to introduce a welcome element of branded anarchy into our predictable lives. Benrik's books are thus instruction manuals for warped living."

History

BENRIK LTD are Ben Carey and Henrik Delehag. Ben was born in New Zealand and grew up in France. Henrik is Swedish. They both live in London, where they've established their range of extreme self-improvement books and gained a cult following of Benrikians all over the world who participate in the Diary's weekly tasks.

This Diary Will Change Your Life

Benrik have authored a number of books, most notably the This Diary Will Change Your Life series from 2004 to 2008. The 2004 and 2005 books gave day by day tasks aimed to improve the life of the readers. Followed by the books 2006 to 2007 which give weekly tasks still aimed at improving the life.

The books are published in the UK by Boxtree Ltd., a division of Macmillan Publishing.

Other publications

Also Created by Benrik Ltd are the following:

The Couple's Book(2004)

This Book Will Change Your Love Life(2004)

Lose Weight! Get Laid! Find God!: The All-in-One Life Planner(2006)

The Mother's Book(2006)

The Father's Book(2007)

A Book for People Who Want to Become Stinking Rich But Aren't Quite Sure How (2008)

This Diary Will Change Your Life 2008

The American equivalents of the diary
This Book Will Change Your Life

This Book Will Change Your Life Again;

Benrikians

Are so named as they follow the instructions for life change from Benrik. Benrikians detail their efforts for life change in blogs on the author's website.

In the 2007 diary new Benrikans were given mentors to aid them through the year. Mentors were appointed by the number of blog views.

Tasking
Benrikians participate in the weekly tasks as stipulated by the Diary.

Examples of these tasks include:

- Send your DNA to the Authorities week (2008)

- Anger the Dalai Lama week (2008)

- Dig a hole to the other side of the Earth week (2007)

- Orgasm Incessantly Week (2008)

- Invade Svankær - During this week 8 Benrikans invaded the small town.

The 1st book in 2004 included daily tasks, in 2005 the number of tasks reduced to daily tasks through the week days and weekend long tasks, except dirty weekend which lasted 3 days as it coincided with Sweden's national holiday.

Benrik Gods

There are 1000 Benrik Gods. They first appeared on the front the 2007 Diary and deal with issues pertaining to modern life.

No541 "Against Split Ends"

No14 "Against Losing The Remote"

No987 "Against Unexpected Redundancy"

No322 "To Help Find The Love Of Your Life"

No304 "To Divert Oncoming Asteroids"

No926 "Against Surreptitious Radioactive Poisoning".

The World's Longest Poem
Additionally, they have garnered a fair amount of attention from the "Poetry" community for the "World's Longest Poem."

The poem sprung from a task in the 2004 Benrik Diary.
Ben Carey said, "Helping to write the longest poem in the world was one of the tasks. It naturally seemed best suited to the web." So Benrik put the poem onto their website in 2003 with the beginning line as, "Mercy, cried the popinjay to the Pope".

Contributions to the poem of upto 60 characters can be made by anybody possessing access to the internet.
The poem grows by 3,800 lines annually.

It includes conributions from the literary, ramblers and spam ads.

Art Exhibition

A recent art exhibition at the Northen Gallery for Contemporary Art in Sunderland featured Benrik Ltd's Doomsday book as part of an exhibition titled A Modest Proposal

Benrik Ltd present 800 proposals to "improve your life" from their books 'This Diary Will Change Your Life' which have sold ½m copies. They also present a "Doomsday Book" where individuals can sign up to a resistance movement, to be formed "in the eventuality of a future totalitarian state".

Critical Reception

"Will definitely change your life, but possibly not for the better!" - Dazed and Confused

"Funny compendium of surreal new year resolutions" - Financial times Magazine

"Hip, visually delightful, and almost endlessly engaging book...they have solved at least one of your Christmas present problems. Don't settle for a boring black desk diary when you can have the latest "This diary will change your life." - The Guardian (on previous Diaries)

"Packed with out-there suggestions of things to do, it's both inspired and inspiring." - The Independent, November 1, 2007

"Cheerfully nihilistic." - The Times

"Hip, visually delightful, and almost endlessly engaging." - The Guardian (on The Diary 2004)

Contacting Benrik

Benrik can be contacted through their official website, and befriended through their facebook page

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