Book Reviews

by Elizabeth Gilbert author of Eat Pray Love

There is so much that I love in this book. Not the least of which is how her “magic” is so closely related to trusting your hunches, instincts, and putting positive vibes out to the universe. She writes this book to those people who are creative and want to do creative work, but I find it applicable for all kinds of people.

She speaks to the inherent negative thinking that blocks so many of us.. I can’t do that…that won’t work…nobody is going to want to publish/read/watch (insert your word) this. She insists that you can’t worry about what others think about your work, keep moving forward, keep working at it, and if you believe it is good “go for it.”

I loved her story about how an editor rejected her story and then she resubmitted a couple years later and the same editor loved it. How often does that happen? Lots. People get rejected for jobs for all kinds of reasons. One errant comment from one of the people on the interview committee may be all it takes for the entire group to just move on to the next candidate.

Also, in Daniel Pinks book, When, he talks about the research that shows people who interview late in the afternoon do not get hired as much as people who interview in the morning. Timing is everything and Elizabeth Gilbert calls it magic. Sometimes magic that is good, sometimes, not so good. But you seldom ever know the real reasons.

I also agree with her belief that the mantra “follow your passion” is not that helpful. She insists that being curious is actually a better mantra to follow. I totally agree with this. If you are curious, you’ll discover things by accident…what I call intentional serendipity.

Page 236 “You might spend your whole life following your curiosity and have absolutely nothing to show for tat the end — except one thing. You will have the satisfaction of knowing that you passed your entire existence in devotion to the noble human virtue of inquisitiveness“.

Be curious and take action. I really believe good things happen when you do, and so does Elizabeth Gilbert.

By Brene Brown

Who would have thought that you could describe 87 emotions and experiences so clearly? Not only does she describe them, she differentiates them and lets us know which ones are closely related and why.

Brene’s ability to help us understand the “near enemies” and “far enemies” to certain emotions is fascinating. A ‘near enemy’ emotion is sometimes more dangerous than that ‘far enemy’ because you know the ‘far enemy’ is coming but often don’t see or understand the ‘near enemy’ is there.

A ‘near enemy’ to compassion is pity. Compassion is about understanding and accepting and pity really looks at the other person as different than ourselves. It separates people rather than brings them together. Hmmmmm….good stuff.

All too often people describe emotions in very simplistic terms like happy, sad, and angry. But what is the difference between happy and joy? Well, she describes that there is a difference. Joy tends to be shorter lived. Hmmmm…didn’t really think about that too much before.

Anger. This is an interesting one because anger is often happening because of another emotion behind it. You could be angry because you are jealous, or have been wronged in some way, you are scared, frustrated, confused, overwhelmed, or many other emotions. Hmmmmm….

As a career coach or career service provider, we want to remember we can not know what a person is feeling unless we ask. They way people show emotions can be quite different and we can’t assume we know what they feel because of how we might feel in the same situation.

But you don’t have to be a career coach to benefit from reading this book. All human beings should read this book and pay attention to their own emotions better. Thank you Brene.

By Joshua M. Powell

If you’ve hiked the PCT or other long-distance trails, you’ll enjoy this take on the experience of hiking for days. Its hard to do a book on the PCT these days because so many have been done, but this is a fresh look at the trail in many ways.

He is a list maker. He has lists for songs that were going thru his head in a section, to daily notes with weather (and more), struggles he was going thru, toponyms (how the names of rivers, peaks, etc… came about), and more. So many of these made me smile because they reminded me of that section. i.e. the mosquitoes in Oregon…wow! I’d forgotten about them until I read his section on OR.

He is an amazing artist as well and includes all images he’s drawn of sign posts, building, mountain peaks, flowers, animals, people, and more.

I really liked his little “Ask a thru-hiker” stories he scattered throughout. I had this book for a long time and was not motivated to read another book on the PCT but once I started, I could not put it down. It was so enjoyable and brought back so many memories of what I was thinking and experiencing at the time.