A gentle and useful manual for nervous job seekers.
This debut career guide aims to help readers who are wondering what the future holds.
A career counselor for more than 20 years, Bellows offers amiable advice for organizing a job search, interviewing, and finally landing that dream position. Most of this well-researched manual seems appropriate for readers who have little idea what career they want to pursue. But the author also devotes a couple of chapters to midlife career change and retirement. The book begins with a short explanation of the Holland Code, a system that categorizes human personalities as one of six types—realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising, and conventional. According to Bellows, once people figure out which personality groups best fit them, they can begin to determine their most logical career paths. For example, those who feel most drawn to the realistic group could be athletes or mechanically inclined individuals who prefer to work with their hands. Easy to read and understand—there are plenty of bulleted lists and numbered questions—this handy how-to also includes a variety of exercises for personal assessment. For example, a “Work Values Inventory” chart asks readers to place X’s next to the personal values, such as honesty, or work values—like having a flexible schedule—that are most important to them. With the soft voice of a kindly teacher, some of Bellows’ advice may especially appeal to younger job seekers. For example, in one exercise, she lists being “zany” as a personal strength for some careers (think comedian or children’s librarian). Relevant and up-to-date, this guide includes recommendations for helpful tools, such as the internet job posting and networking site LinkedIn. The book’s appendix also includes links for many compelling job search resources, including one that provides salary information for different careers. To more seasoned job seekers, several of the ideas found here will sound like the lectures they heard at college Career Day, such as the chapter on the importance of networking. And some exercises—like the “Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats” or SWOT analysis—can be found on the internet. Still, having this content in one browsable book is convenient.
A gentle and useful manual for nervous job seekers.Pub Date: March 25, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5136-0613-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
A moving, heartfelt account of a hospice veteran.
Lessons about life from those preparing to die.
A longtime hospice chaplain, Egan (Fumbling: A Pilgrimage Tale of Love, Grief, and Spiritual Renewal on the Camino de Santiago, 2004) shares what she has learned through the stories of those nearing death. She notices that for every life, there are shared stories of heartbreak, pain, guilt, fear, and regret. “Every one of us will go through things that destroy our inner compass and pull meaning out from under us,” she writes. “Everyone who does not die young will go through some sort of spiritual crisis.” The author is also straightforward in noting that through her experiences with the brokenness of others, and in trying to assist in that brokenness, she has found healing for herself. Several years ago, during a C-section, Egan suffered a bad reaction to the anesthesia, leading to months of psychotic disorders and years of recovery. The experience left her with tremendous emotional pain and latent feelings of shame, regret, and anger. However, with each patient she helped, the author found herself better understanding her own past. Despite her role as a chaplain, Egan notes that she rarely discussed God or religious subjects with her patients. Mainly, when people could talk at all, they discussed their families, “because that is how we talk about God. That is how we talk about the meaning of our lives.” It is through families, Egan began to realize, that “we find meaning, and this is where our purpose becomes clear.” The author’s anecdotes are often thought-provoking combinations of sublime humor and tragic pathos. She is not afraid to point out times where she made mistakes, even downright failures, in the course of her work. However, the nature of her work means “living in the gray,” where right and wrong answers are often hard to identify.
A moving, heartfelt account of a hospice veteran.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-59463-481-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2016
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