Peak Careers

Professional Development for Career Practitioners

Book Reviews

Books I’ve Read in 2022

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Each December I share the books that I’ve read in the past 12 months. Look for my interview with Scott Woodard, David Lee, and Amy Pierce-Danders in mid-December where we explore our favorite books and tips on how you can find time to read more.

Even my granddaughter is reading my FieldGuide for Career Practitioners! She loves to read…or technically to be read to, but you got to start somewhere 🙂

Below is a listing of the books and links to my short review of each.

Books that made me think

Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience by Brene Brown

The Earned Life. Lose Regret, Choose Fulfillment By Marshall Goldsmith

Sparked: Discover Your Unique Imprint for Work that Makes You Come Alive By Jonathan Fields

Do What You Love and Other Lies About Success and Happiness By Miya Tokumitsu

Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives our Success By Adam Grant

Books I read for pleasure

The Pacific Crest Trail: A Visual Compendium. by Joshua M. Powell.

Three Weeks With My Brother. By Nicholas Sparks and Micah Sparks

The Doomsday Conspiracy by Sidney Sheldon

Crossing Paths: A Pacific Crest Trailside Reader Edited by Rees Hughes and Howard Shapiro. Illustrations by Amy Uyeki  (*note: I am actually in a few stories in this book)

Where the Crawdads Sing By Delia Owens 

And all these books by Paul Doiron! I didn’t realize I read this many of his this year. I’ve got another one on my shelf as I write this blog. He is a Maine author whose main character is a game warden who ends up in all kinds of predicaments in locations throughout the state…most of which are places I have been.

  • Massacre Pond
  • The Bone Orchard 
  • The Bear Trap
  • The Precipice
  • The Widowmaker
  • Knife Creek
  • Rabid
  • Stay Hidden
  • Almost Midnight
  • One Last Lie

Books I read for historical/biographical 

Mountains to Mountains by Tracy Kidder

A Chain of Thunder By Jeff Shaara

The Last Green Valley by Mark T. Sullivan

Seven Summits by Dick Bass & Frank Wells with Rick Ridgeway

This is me after reading to my granddaughter.

  • Good Night Maine by Adam Gamble and Suwin Chan
  • You’re My Little Snuggle Bear by Nicola Edwards
  • Bedtime Bear by Morgan Huff

Jim Peacock is the Principal at Peak-Careers Consulting and writes a weekly email for career practitioners. Peak-Careers offers discussion-based online seminars for career practitioners focused on meeting continuing education needs for CCSP, GCDF and BCC certified professionals as well as workshops for career practitioners and individual career coaching.

He is the author of A Field Guide for Career Practitioners: Helping Your Clients Create Their Next Move and The Adventure of Finding Me in New Zealand. He is also the recipient of the 2020 Kenneth C. Hoyt Award from the National Career Development Association and the Mid-Atlantic Career Counseling Association’s Professional Contribution’s Award in 2020.

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Seven Summits

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By Dick Bass & Frank Wells with Rick Ridgeway

These two gentlemen decided while they were in their 50’s to summit the tallest mountain on all seven continents. Neither one of them had mountaineering experience but they certainly had the money to do it.

It is a good read for those of us who are interested the outdoors and big mountains. Personally my tallest mountain I have ever climbed is Mt. Whitney, the highest mountain in continental US at 14, 505 feet which I did in 2012 while backpacking the Pacific Crest Trail. But what these guys did is technically way above my hike up Whitney.

These guys goal was to climb all seven mountains in a year; Mt. Denali in Alaska, Aconcagua in South America, Kilimanjaro in Africa, Elbrus in Europe, Vinson Massif in Antartica, and Mount Kosciusko in Australia, and Everest in Asia. They had to take time off of work, which ended up being two years for Frank.

The money is takes to do these climbs is ‘above my pay scale’ for sure. The Antartica climb was over $200,000 each to orchestrate. Anyway, if you are a hiker or a climber, you should read this book, it was interesting to learn about the logistics and the mental and physical requirements to climb one mountain, let alone seven.

Note: Spoiler alert: One of them technically did not reach the goal. You’ll have to read the book to find out who.

Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience

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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.

The Pacific Crest Trail: A Visual Compendium

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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.

Cover a book

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.

The Earned Life. Lose Regret, Choose Fulfillment

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By Marshall Goldsmith

I am impressed with this guy. He has some inspiring thoughts here for all of us. This book helps us look at what is an “earned life.” One that we can feel good about and fulfilling. He defines it as:

“We are living an earned life when the choices, risks, and effort we make in each moment aligns with an over arching purpose in our lives, regardless of the outcome.” (I’ve added the underlines to emphasize points).

That last part removes all regrets. If we are doing things in our life that align with our purpose, sometimes we will find success and sometimes not. But it doesn’t matter because the decision you took was based upon your purpose. Yeah baby, I like that!

The Buddhist view of life supports this thinking. Every breath we take, we change. We are a different person. So if you made a mistake last week, that was the “old you” because every breath we take is a “new you” who has learned things since that old you made the mistake. Hmmm…. I like this too.

Another concept I like is how we get closer to our purpose in life by paying attention the his three A’s.

Action: This is what we are doing now (look at your “to do” list)

Ambition: What we want to happen (often your goals)

Aspirations: What we want to become.

If you make your decisions based upon your aspirations, i.e. what you want to become, it will clean up your “to do” list because some things on that “to do” list have nothing to do with what you want to become.

At the end of many of his chapters he has an activity that helps you make sense of his thoughts in your own life. I found it incredibly helpful to do these and really enjoyed the process.

I need to do more thinking about one of his final chapters because it really hit home with me. He states, “to make a difference in the world we need credibility and empathy.” This really hit home as I am teaching my Building Your Coaching Business seminar and a couple of the people were having trouble with “selling themselves” as part of their coaching business. They need to embrace his concept of making a difference here.

You build credibility, twice. Once over time as you hone your skills. Then it has to be noticed by people. You don’t need to brag about yourself, but people need to see you in order to build your credibility. If you have something to offer people, it’s ok to let others know. Not everyone will “buy” but what you hope is more people will “see.”

Secondly, you make a difference in the world through empathy. Making sure that you put the people you serve utmost in your mind and that you will build your relationships with others by empathizing with them…what are their problems? What are their pain points? What are their needs?

I have many more notes but will stop there. Great book for career coaches and others who are struggling to figure out their purpose in life.

Three Weeks With My Brother.

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By Nicholas Sparks and Micah Sparks

Of course Nicholas Sparks has written many great novels, from the Notebook, Message in a Bottle, The Guardian, and many more, but this touching book is about him growing up with his brother Micah and sister Dana and their strange parents. I still shake my head about some of the things they did or didn’t do with those kids.

But they turned out fine, mostly. One of the strangest things they did was that Dana and Nicholas shared a birthday and they would only celebrate Dana’s birthday “because she was a girl and the younger one.” They were poor, but this still boggles my mind.

The three weeks with his brother happened while Nicholas was extremely busy writing books and doing book tours and Micah was busy with his own business, both had families, and they took a 3-week trip around the world together. Enjoying the moments and reflecting back on their childhood.

I thought I had read this book many years ago and wanted to send it to my brother Mark who is one of my closest friends (Just like the Sparks brothers) and thought I’d just flip through it again. Turns out it had been on my shelf all these years and I had never read it :-O

So I did. I can’t wait to mail it Mark so he can read it. A wonderful book filled with times when you laugh and times to cry.