“Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?” by Seth Godin

Recommended by: Seth Godin’s blog

Seth Godin brings together several of his ideas about how to survive in our changed economy. His main premise is that non-thinking “factory” work is no longer the road to security. “Factory” is in quotes because he uses it to include any job which involves following the rules and [...]

“How to Get From Where You Are to Where You Want To Be” by Cheri Huber

In connection with reading Being Bodies, I tracked down this book. It turns out I’d read it a long time ago and remembered many of the stories, although I’d forgotten their source.

Cheri Huber herself admits that the title is a bit of a trick. Rather than trying to move from Here to There, [...]

“The No Asshole Rule” by Robert Sutton, PhD

Recommended by: Robert Sutton blog post (via Twitter)

It’s a rare business book that focuses on warmth, kindness, and peaceful, loving environments. This compassionate little book, subtitled Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t, does so with clarity and conviction.

In this book, you’ll find:

A definition of assholes (also known as jerks, bullies, tyrants, [...]

“Being Bodies” edited by Lenore Friedman & Susan Moon

Recommended by: Catherine Holmes Clark, who also has a detailed site about her journey with environmental illness.

The sweet relief of reading about Buddhism from the perspective of women connected with their bodies took me by surprise. Until I read this book, I didn’t realize how much I’d been reading around a feeling of exclusion [...]

“When Food is Love” by Geneen Roth

Recommended by: a client.

Geneen Roth has written several books about overcoming compulsive eating by removing external rules around food and listening to one’s own body instead. She also talks about the source of compulsive eating - not an internal lack of control, but a survival strategy to overcome the lack of external control in [...]

“Liberated Parents, Liberated Children” by Adele Faber & Elaine Mazlish

I liked How To Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk so much that I read the authors’ prior book.

“Liberated Parents, Liberated Children” was published first, by many years. It tells the story of how the authors and a group of other parents (fictionalized to protect privacy) learned respectful, compassionate [...]

“How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk” by Adele Faber & Elaine Mazlish

I read the occasional parenting book to find out how I should have been treated as a child, and to learn how to treat myself and others better now.

This book advocates treating children as lovable, capable beings deserving of respect. This shouldn’t sound radical, right?

The examples and exercises teach many concrete, immediately applicable skills, [...]

“Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires” by Esther and Jerry Hicks

Recommended by: Emma McCreary, and Jeannette Maw

This is the original source for the term “Law of Attraction”, as described by “Abraham” (a collective of Non-Physical Beings) and conveyed through Esther Hicks.

The Law of Attraction is defined as:

Ask (we are doing this all the time with our desires)
Source answers immediately
Allow the response (by matching its vibration [...]

“Will I Ever Be Good Enough? Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers” by Karyl McBride

A mix of personal memoir, client stories, and self-help advice, this book compassionately details the effects of having a narcissistic mother and shows a pathway for healing.

Narcissism - extreme self-absorbtion and inability to empathize with others - occurs on a spectrum from a few narcissistic traits to full-blown Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Women with these [...]

“Comfort Secrets for Busy Women” by Jennifer Louden

Recommended by: Emma McCreary

When I saw its pink cover and tie-in title with Jennifer Louden’s earlier book “The Women’s Comfort Book”, I expected to be bored by shallow platitudes.

Instead, I engaged deeply with Louden’s ongoing process, vignettes from other women’s stories, gentle questions rather than strident answers, and a focus on creating an authentic life [...]