Book Review: "Brazen Careerist"

Sorry I haven't done a book review in a while. Since the last time I did one (a week or two ago) I've re-read the Clif Bar book, read and re-read Harry Potter 7, read The Black Swan, and now I've finished Brazen Careerist.

I've been an on again off again fan of Penelope Trunk's blog, so about a week ago when I was searching through Amazon I figured reading her book could do no harm - and thus ordered a copy. Well, it arrived yesterday so I began reading at around 8pm. Less than 3 hours later I was done with the book and I decided to go to sleep before writing a book review.

This book is for anyone age 16 and up. Brazen Careerist provides job, networking, and life advice. Her take on the boomerang phenomenon is spot on and so is her writing on email etiquette; the thing that bugged me about the book was that I felt I had read lots of it before... and it turns out I was right.

See, Penelope often uses book excerpts on her blog - so much so that I felt a good portion (maybe 20%?) of the book had already been posted on the blog. This was a big disappointment because after spending around $15, I expected more unique advice I hadn't seen before. I also was surprised at the brevity of the book; her book totaled 197 really small pages.

My recommendation: if you haven't/don't read Penelope's blog then you likely haven't read the book excerpts she's posted online. If you haven't read the book excerpts yet, I suggest you do so to get the general gist of her book. From there, if you like an excerpt or two, and have money to spare, then stop reading the blog and buy the book so that the experience is better! But make sure you don't pay over $15 and if you can borrow the book from someone then that's an even better deal.

Read this if you're trying to pick a career path

I'm an on again off again fan of Penelope Trunk, but this recent post is fantastic. She really delves into "work" - that is, picking work that you find interesting and that you're great at doing. If you're still in college or high school, or even if you've just recently graduated, then click the link. And then, of course, let me know what you think!

Linking Back: Teaching Happiness, Facebook, and Making Conversation

- I'm not sure how I missed this post about two weeks ago (actually, it's because I didn't know about the New Economist blog until just now) but the post is just great. G-R-E-A-T great. I'm not even going to summarize so that everyone clicks through to the post above.

- This should count as education because you can learn from the post so here are some tips on making conversation, from the candid Penelope Trunk.

- Are you tired of student loans?

- Hm, how can I get this to happen to the CK Tutors blog? :-)

- And it seems, as always, that Facebook is everywhere. But an IPO?

- And from Jay Mathews at the W Post, 10 steps to reduce application stress. I don't really agree, but it's my duty to provide links and so here is the link.

I'll be in Newport this weekend and in Atlanta through Wednesday, so posting will be spotty at best. As always, feel free to send an email, write in a comment here (or on Facebook), send an IM, etc. etc. Even though I'm not always available, I always respond to messages. Have a good weekend!