Book Reviews

I stumbled on this book at Marden’s store (surplus & salvage store) and noticed the author also wrote The World According To Garp and The Cider House Rules, so I was intrigued to read this one.

What a great book for a variety of reasons. One is that I can’t stop thinking about it even though I finished reading it a few days ago. There were times I would laugh out loud while reading passages. Irving has a sense of humor that surprises me – when I least expect humor he drops it in – and it is funny.

Yet there are some pretty dark sides to this book, a troubling book at times that this family of misfits continues to have to deal with throughout their lives. Their family story is told from one of the children looking back on his life many years later. His strange relationship with his sister Franny. His fathers view of the world – a very innocent view and it gets them into trouble again and again. And his other siblings and mother and how they managed to live together.

Oh yes, there are two bears in this story that are both “head scratchers” in their own way.

There were two books in the Marden’s pile from John Irving, now I am on to the other one, A Widow for One Year.  But I need to read something else before I take on another Irving so I can let this one “steep in my cup” for a while.

Yes, read it. It is a great story.

The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results.

This book was recommended to me by my business coach (Thanks Mandy) and also was recommended reading from my December interview on books (Watch now). 

Yep, it is a great book at focusing your efforts and energy to ONE thing that is the most important thing to you now. Each day. Each moment, before you begin doing things, you stop and determine the “ONE thing that you can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary.

It is filled with activities and thought-provoking questions to get you to realize that doing less is actually doing more. This is focused on your work but can be applied to personal, spiritual, school, worship, your community, and all areas of your life.

My ONE thing right now is to finish my book, A Field Guide for Career Practitioners, and I begin every day with 1-2 hours of writing, editing, or other book-related things. I create a ‘to do’ list of three things and this is always #1. The author would have you do a ‘to do’ list of one (1) thing and allot 4 hours to it each day. Not sure I can juggle all that needs to get done by giving it 4 hours, but I like his idea…keep it simple, focused, and say no to anything during that time which does not support your ONE thing.

Throughout the book are links to additional resources, like this to help you discover your ONE thing. (Here’s one) and I have yet to explore those but I can only assume they will be helpful.

If you feel scattered and not sure how to rein in the ‘tsunami of information’ in your life, check this book out.

From the South Side of Chicago to the Whitehouse. What an amazing journey. 

What I loved about this book was the insight into how Michelle Obama thinks and her passions. Along with her thoughts and passions, you also get a taste of President Obama’s thoughts and passions. Both of these people are passionate about helping under-served populations get a leg up.

Her South Side upbringing was fairly typical middle class and a blue collar working class family. Nothing special and also not poverty. The things I loved about her description is that it could have been my family…loving, supportive, caring about education. Of course, my life was easier being caucasian.

Her constant drive to do her best and challenge herself is impressive. But even more impressive is her desire to help underserved populations which she did as a lawyer in Chicago and also as First Lady in the White House. Her ideas were big and far-reaching and her commitment to getting them done through collaboration impressive as well.

This book was very enjoyable and I have more admiration now for both Michelle and Barack Obama than I did before reading this. I can see why it is a #1 seller.

Attended the Maine Career Development Association workshop in November 2018 on the Brain-Based Career Development model. It was a very informative workshop by @Imants Jaunarajs and @Erika Kirk Peyton from Ohio University. I was so interested that I ordered their monograph from NACE.org when I got home.  (Order your own copy)

Big takeaways from the workshop and this monograph are:

1. Brain can only handle 4 pieces of information in the prefontal cortex, two is best. This means we need to work hard to focus on 1 major task at a time. Most of us have many more thoughts going on at once.

2. Remember our students/clients are coming with lots of things on their mind and we need to help them focus. Don’t overload them with lots of tasks. Narrow the issues down to 3 or 4 and then focus on 1 at a time. Even if it means more meetings.

3. Keep the focus on the student/client “what would you like to accomplish today?”

4. Set clear expectations for the time you have with them. (again don’t overload them; your role; checkin about halfway;)

5. Help them find their solutions with your coaching. Goal is for you to talk 20% of time.

6. Assign action steps that can be accomplished in 2-5 days.

The book includes 3 pages of great coaching questions that keeps the ownership with the client as well as case studies demonstrating how the coaching session looks, and their 4-quadrant form they use. All very helpful.

This theory supports so much of what I already do…nice to know my intuition was correct and actually based on theory 🙂