by R.C. Farrington ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 2017
An accessible motivational guide for those feeling stuck or discouraged in their professional lives.
Readers don’t have to be the smartest ones in the room to be successful; they just need to demonstrate a willingness to work hard, argues this self-help book.
C students, rejoice. Brilliant overachievers may get all the attention, but “average Joes and Josies” have a chance to triumph in business and their careers, contends Farrington (The Crystal Pendulum, 2016, etc.). “Yes, you may be average, but so what?” he writes. “It’s a matter of knowing your own capabilities and strengths and doing something about them.” A self-described average guy, Farrington knows from experience that it’s possible to live a good life even if you don’t become a CEO or millionaire. He managed to go from unexceptional student to a healthy career in the software business through ingenuity and grit. For readers to do the same, they must start with embracing that’s it acceptable to be average. A lack of exceptional skills might seem like a disadvantage, but even average folks can ask questions, use their imaginations, take on challenges, and focus on always moving forward, all relatively simple tasks that will help position them for success. All people have “God-given talents” that can help them get ahead, and it’s just a matter of identifying and deploying them. Throughout, the emphasis is on moving up the ranks of an organization and reaching professional goals. The advice tends toward the simplistic. There are no cute strategies or clever sayings here—just common-sense wisdom. At times, things are a bit too basic. In an always-connected era, does anyone need to be told that “Google is a great tool to use for research”? Nonetheless, Farrington’s point that being average needn’t hold people back is well-taken. The straightforward tips he offers may not be complex, but they cover basic truths that anyone, even an overachiever, would do well to remember: If you can show up on time, work hard, and stay positive, you’re already several steps ahead of many colleagues.
An accessible motivational guide for those feeling stuck or discouraged in their professional lives.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2017
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
Review Posted Online: Jan. 24, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Paul Kalanithi ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 19, 2016
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
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A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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