Show Us Your Books – October Edition
Happy Show Us Your Books Day! I don’t have many reviews to share this month, so be sure to visit Life According to Steph and Jana Says to check out the link-up and see what dozens of other bloggers have been reading lately! It’s the 3 year anniversary of the link-up!
Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher
“When two celebrities mate, something like me is the result.”
I placed a hold on this audiobook shortly after Carrie *almost* survived the deadly year of 2016, and it finally became available last month. I definitely recommend going the audio route if you can since it’s read by the author, so you get a real performance of the story. I was surprised by how short it was; I listened to it in an evening. I felt like it was about what you’d expect from the celebrity memoir genre, but Carrie’s storytelling style does make it unique.
The Wife Between Us
This book will be released in January 2018. I received an advance copy via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
I liked this one. I don’t read a lot of books in the psychological thriller genre, but I realized a while back that I can’t do the super suspenseful ones or I end up feeling anxious. This one hit that balance of being interesting without putting me on edge. It wasn’t a “I can’t put it down!” – I read it over the course of a couple of days, split up into several sessions. It was compelling enough that I wanted to finish and figure everything out, but not one of those books that’s SO good that you’re tempted to skip work or plans to find out what happens. I did appreciate that one thing I kept expecting to happen never did, so high five to the author for not taking a disturbing route juts for the sake of it. (It’s hard to write thriller reviews without spoilers, y’all!)
I guessed one “big twist” by 15% into the book, but was still a little surprised when I turned out to be right. (If you’ve also read it, I’m referring to the thing that’s revealed after Part 1.)
Reach Out by Molly Beck
I probably wouldn’t have normally picked up a book about online networking, but I’ve followed the author’s blog, Smart Pretty Awkward, for years, so I was curious to check it out. The basic idea is that by contacting one new person per day, you can grow your network and influence quickly and use who you know to advance your career.
The book includes a lot of actual e-mails and the responses they received, which I liked because emailing any kind of new potential business contact is kind of a weird art. You want to blend sounding professional with not sounding like a robot, actually catch their attention, etc etc. There are tons of email formulas out there, but seeing real emails that got a good response is a nice change.
A minor pet peeve, but every time the phrase “reach out” appears, it’s capitalized. I get why they did that since it’s the book’s premise, but given that it appears multiple times per page, it got annoying really quickly. “The day after we met at the party, I reached out to her…” would be just as effective as “I Reached Out to her…”, but not interrupt the flow so much.
This is a pretty short read – two or maybe 3 hours at the most. I have to admit that I ended up skimming a lot because I already kinda know why you should have a blog or how to set up a good LinkedIn profile. I already contact businesses I’d like to work with all the time, so I didn’t really need the section on conquering the fear of reaching out. That said, I think this book would be great for someone in college or the early stages of their career. It’s well-organized and breaks things down for specific situations – reaching out to get a mentor, reaching out to get a promotion, etc. There’s a great section of tips from bloggers and other entrepreneurs on inbox management. So basically there’s some good info in here, it just wasn’t a great fit for me personally.
Hoping to find more time to read this month, although given that it’s probably the last month of good outdoorsy weather, that may not happen (again!). Have you read anything awesome lately?