Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
S3, E8 The Career Coven: The (Non-Fiction) Books That Changed Our Lives
64 Plays12 days ago
This week's episode of the Career Coven is on the non-fiction books that changed our lives. Bec and Annie have a really fun time discussing the books which have had the most impact on them, particularly professionally, as well as going through some incredible listener recommendations. If you’re looking for a reading list to get you through the year, this episode will give it to you.
Our top 5 recommendations:
- Al Ramadan & Dave Peterson - Play Bigger
- Edith Eger - The Gift
- Eric Jorgenson, Jack Butcher - The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness
- Lucy Jones - Matrescence
- Glennon Doyle - Untamed
Enjoying this content? Please rate and subscribe on your preferred platform, and let us know what you think!
The long list of listener recommendations, and our other recommendations:
- Emily Wapnick - How to be Everything
- Bill Gates - How to Avoid a Climate Disaster
- Jack London - White Fang
- John Steinbeck - East of Eden
- Lucy Maud Montgomery - Anne of Green Gables
- Amir Levine & Rachel Heller - Attached
- Sharon Blackie - If Women Rose Rooted
- Herminia Ibarra - Working identity
- Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott - The 100 Year Life
- Margaret Heffernan - Wilful Blindness
- Julia Samuel - This Too Shall Pass
- Brene Brown - The Gifts Of Imperfection
- Viktor Frankl - Man’s Search For Meaning
- Malcolm Gladwell - Outliers
- Ekhart Tolle - The Power of Now
- Michelle Obama - Becoming
- Jia Tolentino - Trick Mirror
- Matt Mochary - The Great CEO Within
- Mary Ann Sieghart - The Authority Gap
- Naomi Alderman - The Power
- Reni Eddo-Lodge - Why I’m no longer talking to white people about race
- Emma Reed Turrell - Please Yourself
Interested in that weird thing where you read at speaking speed we were talking about? It's called subvocalisation and you can read more about it here
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to The Career Coven
00:00:06
Speaker
Hello and welcome to The Career Coven, the podcast for serious careers with unserious chat. I am Bec, a coach, corporate citizen and recovering perfectionist. And I'm Annie, workaholic, learning boundaries.
00:00:18
Speaker
In each episode, we unpack career challenges and workplace wisdom through honest conversations, practical tools and healthy dose of real talk so you can thrive on your own terms.
00:00:29
Speaker
Let's get into it. How are you, Bec? How have you been since we last spoke? How have I been since we last spoke? I've been fine. I'm in the process, as you know, as I've mentioned, buying a renovation project and i just keep unveiling things that are really expensive that I didn't know existed.
Bec's Renovation and ChatGPT
00:00:50
Speaker
So that's kind of annoying, but I use ChatGPT to try and help me work out what sort of technical design I needed for my house.
00:01:01
Speaker
i was like, i feel like I'm an advanced human doing that I can confirm you're not an advanced human for doing that but yeah love chat GPT it's our friend how am i yep I'm well I'm well thank you everything's ticking along as it were so how's our girl Susan My sweet little girl, she's an angel. She's asleep next door. She's basically been asleep for almost the entire day today, which is unusual.
00:01:28
Speaker
But yeah, she had some playtime with some other dogs, which just really took it out of her. She's not one for socializing. So yeah, but she's a dream. Obviously, she's everything I um have ever wanted or dreamed of having. So, you know, it's good to feel that about your dog.
00:01:41
Speaker
But yeah, otherwise, no real news from my end. Continue to be prepping for the old wedding number two. And otherwise, just sailing through life, breezing on through. Easy breezy, me.
00:01:56
Speaker
Easy breezy. Lovely. I mean, can't wait for wedding number two. Gonna be best weekend of the year. Oh, fingers crossed. Fantastic.
Impactful Books Discussion
00:02:05
Speaker
Today, Annie, we are talking about the books that changed our lives. I came across this question in reflection prompt from my coaching course, and I just saw it was such a great question. And I wanted to know your answers to it. And I wanted to know everyone's answer to it. I'm constantly, constantly hungry for book recommendations. I'm in a way that far exceeds my reading output.
00:02:29
Speaker
But I sort of collect books I want to read in Goodreads, like they're going out of fashion. Interesting. how How many hours a week do you say you read, just to put you on the spot?
00:02:40
Speaker
Well, I'd like to say I read a lot. But in fact, I audiobook a lot. And in my head, that still counts as reading. That's a fact. That's a true fact. I have a baby and I often have zero spare hands, but i my ears are often available for content consumption.
00:02:58
Speaker
And I am really loving audiobooks on Matleaf. I won't talk about it in detail, but Demon Copperhead was amazing. And by Barbara Kingsolver. Fantastic. Would recommend. And I'm probably reading about one, I'm listening to audiobook a week, I would say.
00:03:17
Speaker
Variable depending on length, but about that at the moment. What about you? Definitely not that much, unfortunately. But I also probably listen to audiobooks. more than reading, but I actually love to just sit down with a book. You know, it's one of the things I find most relaxing.
00:03:34
Speaker
So, but yeah, my current work life means that I probably listen to more audio books and it does count as reading. It's reading. I also think like it's really hard to read when you've had a really big day of work. I don't find reading like necessarily easy.
00:03:54
Speaker
that fair? Maybe. But like where my brain is wired. But when I'm on holiday, i can read like all day, every day. Obviously pre-child, but I would literally just read like 10 books a holiday and have the best time. So that normally my book consumption is lumpy with my holiday timing, I would say. The other thing I would say, which I recently discovered...
00:04:15
Speaker
and I don't know if you saw this when it was sort of doing the rounds on the internet. It's how some people, when they read a book, like an actual book, not an audio book, the speed at which they read is basically their voice reading the book in their head.
00:04:28
Speaker
And some people don't have a voice in their head reading and those people can read a lot faster. so I'm really jealous of those people. Do you have a voice reading?
00:04:39
Speaker
Oh, what the fuck? I'm actually, I'm so jealous. So you, you are like hearing your own like. Yeah. So the max speed that I can read at is basically speaking speed. Oh yeah. No, I definitely don't have that. No.
00:04:52
Speaker
No. Congratulations. You're in like the fast readers club. There's a whole, I'm going to link in the show notes for anyone who's not familiar with this whole thing, but it's genuinely mind blowing to me that people can read books without their own voice narrating it.
00:05:04
Speaker
Yeah. Interesting. Let's put that in the show notes. I would love to read that. I hadn't heard of that. I hadn't seen that, but I'm pretty sure I don't have that. It's something to do with like, I think I've totally forgotten the name. I should have looked up earlier, but it basically your throat is almost making the shape of speaking without you actually speaking.
00:05:23
Speaker
Oh, interesting. Yeah, really strange. Anyway, we want to talk about books, how great they are. They can be such a great source of kind of insight and learning. Are we going to talk about fiction and nonfiction today or should we focus on nonfiction? Well, my tea that I've bought and our one shared nonfiction.
00:05:45
Speaker
So I haven't bought any fiction recs, to be honest. So this should maybe be the nonfiction books that changed our lives. I like that clarification because there's there's a lot of fiction that's incredibly moving.
00:05:58
Speaker
Let's park the fiction for now. Let's focus on
Annie's Book Recommendations
00:06:01
Speaker
nonfiction. The book, obviously, that immediately came to my head is the book that I have recommended on nearly every episode of this podcast, which is Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans.
00:06:12
Speaker
I am not going to do that today. because i can't say that today. do you know what i mean? I've just described myself as easy breezy. If I have to sit through another like, but design your life. We know you love it and respectfully, we all respect it.
00:06:27
Speaker
And one day I will read it. But enough's enough. What's the next one on your list? and So I'm parking that one for today. Did you have one that immediately came to your head on this topic? Yeah, mine is my first one.
00:06:39
Speaker
It's cool. Should we roll straight in? Yeah, should we just do it? Yeah. It's called Play Bigger by Al Ramadan, Dave Peterson and Christopher Lockhead.
00:06:51
Speaker
And it's a strategy book about creating new categories of companies. And that sounds incredibly boring when I first say it like that. But it's really, i think, quite an inspiring way to think about how you can create things that have never existed before.
00:07:11
Speaker
And you can shape markets to meet those new creations if you are smart about the things that inform your category. And so i think that for me, one thing I always struggled with when I was a founder was like, I had lots of these big ideas, but women aren't really meant to typically have big ideas. I didn't necessarily have a lot of confidence, even though I had the ideas that And I think this book really was like a very, I remember listening to it at a time where I was like, before I was fundraising and I was really like, yeah, no, you actually can create like things that are completely novel with good inputs and you can move markets towards your way of thinking if, if you think big enough, but it's also like, you really have to, one of the premises, like you'd really have to
00:08:01
Speaker
do the research and define your category really, really, really well. And then you have to like, I mean, it's called like play bigger, right? But you have to like really go after it once you decide that that's what you're going to do. Like no holds bars, like very intense. And I think that, yeah.
00:08:18
Speaker
I found it both kind of strategically interesting in terms of it it kind of explains to you how you would create a category and what things should be considered. And obviously it talks through a lot of very practical examples of categories that have been created, but it also is just quite an inspiring way to think beyond maybe your own constraints.
00:08:42
Speaker
which is actually a theme in both of my books. So that's my first one. And that's really, that's really why i yeah, that's why it changed my life. I think it just got me to kind of believe in myself at time where maybe I was struggling to do that.
00:08:55
Speaker
So, yeah.
Bec's Book Recommendations
00:08:56
Speaker
And I think, I mean, it sounds, it was like the right book at the right time for you. Would you say the like best audience of this is like an sort of aspiring entrepreneur, founder?
00:09:09
Speaker
For sure. Yeah, for sure. I wouldn't say like, if you're like a postman that loves fishing, I wouldn't say this is going to be the book for you. It might be.
00:09:21
Speaker
But if you're not trying to create a new type of industry, then it might be a bit dry. mean, like,
00:09:32
Speaker
So yeah, I think the audience for that one would be founders, aspiring founders, someone that has maybe an idea, but doesn't necessarily believe they could or should do it. I think, i listen to this, get pumped.
00:09:46
Speaker
There we go. what's um so we're not going to talk about design your life, but what are we going to talk about from your perspective? I found like having having sort of proposed this topic, I actually then found it incredibly difficult to answer. and i think the reason why I found it incredibly difficult to answer is because it's difficult to prioritise. When I was talking to my husband about it, he made a really good point that so many books are sort of really time-place, context-specific in terms of what they mean to you when you read them and the kind of mindset that you're in and those sorts of things. and i also...
00:10:21
Speaker
just sort of think I've got a bit of a recency bias in in my book list because I have done a lot of reading about sort of being pregnant, becoming a mum, those sorts of things. I sort of hesitated to put this in here because this is a careers podcast, but then I thought it would be remiss if me not to.
00:10:39
Speaker
So I'm going to go for it anyway and skippers, skip ahead if this is not relevant, but it's relevant to everyone because you all came from a vagina. so Amen. Amen. Yes, we did So the first book is Matrescence by Lucy Jones. I actually referenced it in season two in the episode with Alice Pelton about pregnancy at work. It is the most honest book I could find and relate to about my experience of being pregnant and like early motherhood because it's just an honest experience. And I think
00:11:13
Speaker
So much of the reading that I've done in this space in this time is about, I really value when people are honest about those experiences because you don't hear usually kind of what's going on in the depths of it.
00:11:25
Speaker
What I really liked about it was it it's kind of really true to that the the kind of volatility of of becoming a mother. The book is sort of goes through a lot of scientific studies and research. Well, I say a lot, there aren't that many on pregnancy and and kind of the perinatal period, but where where there is science, it's included. and the The author, Lucy Jones, is sort of generally speaking, she writes from a place of intersection of ecology, health, and culture.
00:11:56
Speaker
and One of the things I love about the book is when at the start of each chapter, which sort of goes through um what's happening in your experience. She has a reference of what's happening in nature of something that really incredible that's happening in a kind of similar way, which I absolutely just love. I think it's really clever.
00:12:14
Speaker
And, you know, part of becoming a mother is this whole relationship physical experience that you have very little agency over once it starts, if any.
00:12:25
Speaker
And part of it does just feel like a completely different experience to what's happening in your head. And then there's also the kind of psychological aspects of it too. But I just thought it was really incredible. i would recommend it to absolutely anyone who's pregnant. I just sort buy it for like, it's to me, staple reading.
00:12:41
Speaker
There was another book that I read in this time called Maternity Service, which I probably also put as Staple reading, that's by Emma Barnett, who's a women's art host. Someone else in our coven also recommended this book, friend of the pod, Penny.
00:12:54
Speaker
She said, as a non-mother, I found this an amazing insight into something I won't ever experience. It was the first book that seemed to come close to capturing what I saw in all the women around me. She's a women's coach. So I would say this is the book that really, for me,
00:13:07
Speaker
was when I found pregnancy really fucking hard. This was the book that was like, that's just normal. And that was really reassuring. Yeah. Okay. That's my first one. What's your next one?
00:13:17
Speaker
So my next one is a book called The Gift by Edith Eger. It's called The Gift, 12 Lessons to Save Your Life. And Edith Eger is a Holocaust survivor and a clinical psychologist.
00:13:33
Speaker
And her big revelation that she talks about in the book, but is definitely from her own personal experience, is that there's like no greater prison than the prison in your own mind. so So she was like nothing that she ever experienced in the concentration camps was ever as bad as the self-imposed limits that you put on on yourself, like nothing anyone else could ever do to you.
00:14:02
Speaker
could be as bad as the things that you do to yourself in terms of kind of self-limiting beliefs. And yeah, it's like a chapter by chapter kind of manual of different types of trauma that cause you to react in your mind and put walls up and and create like what she calls like prisons for yourself.
00:14:24
Speaker
So there's like a chapter on victimhood, fear, guilt, anger, avoidance, And like, basically, you know, it's all about you, you can free yourself from, from those traumas. If you just kind of accept what happened to you, recognize that you can't control the things that happen to you that are done by other people.
00:14:47
Speaker
But you can choose how you respond and how your brain responds. So yeah, her overall kind of mantra is like, you're not the things that happen to you. You're what you kind of choose choose to become. She's like the top most inspiring woman ever.
00:15:01
Speaker
She's like... Sounds amazing. She's a legend. And I think she was like 98 when she wrote this book or something. Wow. She's still just really like, it's really feeding that like she was, she is just the most amazing woman I think she has now passed away. But it is quite extreme, obviously, because it comes from like, she obviously went through one of the single worst things that's like ever happened in in modern history and come out with like such a kind of positive way of processing that trauma and like had so then such a massively positive impact on the world.
00:15:37
Speaker
But I just think that for me, self limitation is like a repeat theme. And I am someone who really, really struggles, especially like just before things are about to like change.
00:15:52
Speaker
It's like holding on for like the final moments of trauma has always been something I found like very, very difficult. And I think that is just a behavior pattern, you know, and this, this book kind of, yeah, it sort of helped me understand that. But i also just think she's just such an amazing person to like listen to. And it's such an enlightening perspective. And yeah, just, just a very, very impressive, amazing woman.
00:16:17
Speaker
But it was during the pandemic at a time when I was feeling super low energy. So again, as you said before, it was like the right book at the right time. And then it's like really kind of st struck a emotional chord because of that.
00:16:30
Speaker
i mean, that sounds absolutely amazing. I'm going to put this on my reading list. She's amazing. This is not the only Holocaust book that has appeared in the show notes, actually. There was a recommendation from Letty, friend of the pod, and she also recommended a book different in sort of style and content by Viktor Frankl, which is called Man's Search for Meaning. And this book is is also come up in our coaching course. Viktor Frankl's kind of point is that even in the darkest time in your life, if you have agency to decide which shoelace you're
00:17:03
Speaker
you tie first, left or right, you you're kind of exercising your agency and and and you can you can kind of bring yourself out of it. And Letty said that it helped her certify her belief that everyone can find meaning and purpose in life by how they respond to their experiences, despite the most dire circumstances. So different angle on a similar topic, but I think there's so much we can learn from both of those books.
00:17:24
Speaker
That's a really special recommendation. I'm almost embarrassed to recommend my second book. No, come on. I'm just going to gear switch, change the tone completely. We need it, to be honest. Everyone just forgive this clunky segue into definitely a different vibe of memoirs. So again, this book, Time and Place, I read it. It was in the pandemic. On my first holiday, I was like severe burnout from crisis job and was sort of looking to be inspired. I i did the thing that I mentioned another episode where i bought a nonfiction book at the airport and wanted to change my life. And turns out it did. So I've slagged off Mel Robbins and
00:18:09
Speaker
to some extent, Brené Brown. And here I am eating my words. It's Untamed by Glennon Doyle. For those who can't see it, that was a chef's kiss from Annie. Yes. It's beauty.
00:18:20
Speaker
I have to confess, I've actually never listened to her podcast. That's probably an own goal. But Glennon Doyle, it's also not her first memoir. Pretty sure she wrote one before that called Love Warrior, which was an Oprah's book club pick She writes, generally speaking, about kind of identity and addiction and relationship and generally is about kind of empowering yourself. What i really like about is, I suppose that perhaps I just like Glennon and the book is great part of that.
00:18:48
Speaker
I haven't read the first memoir. The second one, Untamed, is about a phase in her life, which happened after the first memoir, where she goes through this like really deep questioning of just some really core things in her life.
00:19:03
Speaker
One being her sexuality. She just, having been married for a really long time and and lived a sort of heteronormative life, realised that actually she was sexually attracted to women and and has subsequently married a woman and also sort of deeply questioned her relationship with religion and went from being quite Christian, I believe, to being much more kind of spiritual in a more organic way. And I ah suppose as part of this...
00:19:31
Speaker
The entire memoir is about kind of trusting your kind of instinctive knowing, which I just really believe in. i'm sort of ah a really strong believer in intuition. i think I have a strong intuition. I always listen to my intuition.
00:19:44
Speaker
So it was kind of nice to feel that kind of thread being pulled In a book, I really like the phrase, we can do hard things, which is a classic Glennon Doyle phrase. So I think there's just a lot to be kind of inspired about in in this story as a reminder just that, you know, we all change and evolve as people and that's okay. And I think i think that's really a great message. It reminds me of, have you heard of a book called Women Who Run With The Wolves?
00:20:10
Speaker
No. So this is an older book, a much older. So I'd say Glennon Doyle's, it's almost like a new age memoir version of it, but it's written by woman called Clarissa Pinkola Estes, and she's a psychoanalyst, but also a poet. and And she talks about what it's like to be the kind of archetypal feminine and the feminine psyche, but explores it through kind of myth and folklore. This is a bit of a left field recommendation. It's not everyone and like that's fine. But it sort of talks about the wild woman archetype.
00:20:44
Speaker
That's Clarissa's big thing. And that's about kind of deep, instinctual feminine souls. So it feels kind of like a more modern specific example of that i'd say it's more accessible than women who run with the wolves that's a great book but i'd say that's that's a sort of staple woman book run with the wolves and untamed is a slightly more popularized memoir of the same vein but i just think it's so cool that to have the courage to do that yeah agree especially if you're a public figure to just sort of rewrite the rules of your life i think that's really powerful you've read it what did you think Yeah, yeah, loved it. I loved it. She's very inspirational. And I think like, you know, she did it in the middle of her life.
00:21:24
Speaker
And I think there is just something so brave. You know, she had kids, as you say, it was a very heteronormative life. It wouldn't have been easy to get out of those societal structures. And she did it anyway. i just really liked the whole energy of it.
00:21:39
Speaker
It was just so affirming, right? Not you know, and like, what does people think of me? It was actually more just like, no, I really fucking realized I don't give a shit what people think about me because I want to do the things that make me feel happy and authentic and give me energy. And yeah, I found the whole thing an absolute delight end to end, really a strong wreck from you there, I would say. Different in tone to... Mine feel a bit more miserable. Mine have come from places of sort kind of deep introspection and misery, whereas that one feels you know a bit more fun.
00:22:11
Speaker
There was soul-searching happening at the time that I was reading it, but it's, I'd say, a bit of a lighter, more of a sort of light, light bedtime read. I definitely read it on a beach, so it probably classifies as a beach read. Okay, we both included the same book, so we should both talk about And actually, you recommended this book to me, so I can't take credit for that. I just...
00:22:32
Speaker
hopped on to your train on this.
Insights from 'The Almanac of Naval Ravikant'
00:22:36
Speaker
Tell us all about it. I was recommended it by another brilliant woman called Meg Donnelly when we were both starting freelancing after having been startup CEOs. And she was the only person that I knew that was going through a similar time to me. And she was like, you've got to listen to this book. It makes you rethink everything and how you're living. And I was like, okay. it's And it's got a really like plain cover and it's like, And then, yeah, it's absolutely amazing book, isn't it? It's an absolutely amazing book. It's called The Almanac of Naval Ravikant. hope I've said that right.
00:23:12
Speaker
listened to an audiobook you did by Eric Jorgensen. So, yeah, Naval Ravikant is an Indian-American entrepreneur. And he is a founder of a very successful tech platform called AngelList that connects startups with investors. And then he's gone on to make lots of investments over his time in Silicon Valley. And he basically is a very successful investor, a very successful person, but has a kind of very simple attitude towards life. And in this book, he shares his sort of
00:23:51
Speaker
philosophical insights on wealth and happiness and yeah I think that different maybe you say the things that really impacted you but I will say the thing that it made me change my perspective on was particularly wealth. i thought about how to create wealth and what wealth was in a very different way after listening to this book and and I listened to it. I didn't read it. So his position on wealth is that he would say you should leverage a specific knowledge, accountability knowledge
00:24:31
Speaker
basically use the deep skills and knowledge that you have to create long-term wealth rather than short-term wealth. So he is a big advocate of like avoiding zero-sum games, understanding the value of compounding and investing every month, even if it's a really small amount over a really long time horizon, that that will give you much bigger outcomes than investing like a lump sum at later point in time. He also talks about investing in assets so that you can earn money whilst you sleep. We were both really into this for a time. I specifically remember us wanting to take pictures of our toes and put them on a platform so that we could earn money whilst we slept. And I still think a lot of mileage in that for us potentially. going rule it out. I don't have attractive feet and they're actually two sizes bigger since pregnancy, but i'm never going to rule it out.
00:25:19
Speaker
I agree with you. i think that there are kind of two main threads in this book. One is sort of personal philosophy on happiness and one is on wealth and money. I found I agreed with him on the personal philosophy aspects. I think, you know, he he sort of talks about desire is suffering and happiness is a skill and not a goal. I think I agree with those things. It's kind of Buddhist leaning. It's a bit The Good Enough Life by Avram Alpert, which is another one that I'd listened to and enjoyed.
00:25:49
Speaker
you know, sit similar sort of things. I don't feel like I learned as much from those bits, but I did definitely agree with them. So thank you so much, Naval. I definitely found the financial part of this the most interesting. I think it's kind of interesting just to think about how you learn about financial literacy.
00:26:08
Speaker
I used to run a financial literacy program in schools where I went to university and It is kind of amazing that something as basic as like compounding interest um just slips out of the imagination and knowledge of the general public.
Financial Literacy Reflections
00:26:23
Speaker
Or you know about it and then you forget about it and then you don't action it. And so ah definitely agree the wealth versus money thing was, I think, really important. And you know one of the things that I took away from it was if you are earning money,
00:26:39
Speaker
in a sort of standard job and you're basically paying for your mind to be rented or whatever but there you will you will always be constrained by the amount of time that you have to work and that will cap how much wealth you can make so then he talks about other ways that you can make wealth don't rely solely on that method obviously you and I still have full-time jobs so We haven't gone full naval yet. haven't gone full naval, but I wouldn't rule it out at some point.
00:27:08
Speaker
I think it's not enough people talk about financial literacy and personal wealth and those sorts of things. and There's a whole scale and spectrum of what people need and can do and can action. But I think this is a really, really helpful book from someone who has sort of done it and become extremely wealthy.
00:27:29
Speaker
And I suppose in the context of extreme wealth, it is even better that he still has a sort of Buddhist philosophy that sits behind him. As you were talking, had to do a quick Google just to make sure like he wasn't sort of bell-end Republican, but he's not. That would be way off piste. That's just what normally happens to really rich people, right? Yeah, you're right. But we're okay.
00:27:51
Speaker
So yeah, absolutely love this book. Want to make money while we sleep. Maybe one day this podcast will make money while we sleep. It's not today. course, SoulCycle. SoulCycle, we're waiting for you. Okay, we had a sort of quick fire round. Those are our deep dive ones of things that we didn't have time to talk about ourselves, but would definitely recommend.
Essential Literature Recommendations
00:28:12
Speaker
I'm going to start off with a sort of, I'd say, Core late 2010s slash 20s feminist writing. The Authority Gap by Marianne Seacart. Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez. Fix the System, Not the Women, Laura Bates. All very good books. Lots of facts.
00:28:31
Speaker
Lots of strong points. I would add some really core anti-racist non-fiction literature. So Why I'm No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Rennie Edo-Lodge.
00:28:43
Speaker
And How to Be an Anti-Racist by Ibram X. Kendi. And then I would add one last quickfire recommendation for the people pleasers, which I have recommended, I think, in season one. But I will do it again because it's Great to Please Yourself by Emma Reid Terrell. That's about stopping people pleasing. It's great.
00:28:59
Speaker
What else is on your quickfire? There's a very good book called The Great CEO Within by Matt. mockery and yeah this is like an instruction manual on how to run a business and it's super dry if you're not running a business but it's super useful if you are running a business for the first time so yes i found that an incredibly useful practical tool there we go you got one more I'm not going to say it. You're not going to say it. Okay, I'll say it.
00:29:30
Speaker
I really liked Michelle Obama becoming, but you didn't. So why didn't you? Did I shame you into not saying it? no, I just thought we might be running a little low on time.
00:29:41
Speaker
Should we get into it? Go on. Why didn't you like it? I'll tell you why I liked it. I actually just found it really boring and all the really exciting bits about being in the White House, she's obviously not allowed to talk about. So feel like I was really interested and I feel like, I think if I reread it now, having had kids, I might have a different take on it. But I was sort of sad when she was just talking about her program that she ran from the White House and it sort of just made me feel like she had minimized herself. But tell me tell me why you like it because I am definitely in the minority because... Everybody bloody loves this book, minus me. I liked it because I felt like she was kind of saying...
00:30:23
Speaker
There's no fucking way he could have done it without me. And that's just true. And I also thought it was a really clear like, and this is just the start from me.
00:30:34
Speaker
He's had his time and now I'm going to have mine. And that's how it left me feeling. it but It left me feeling like it was a very honest reflection of the sacrifices she had to make for him, which were so many. right you know There's no there's no question that she was and is exceptional in her own right, and that they chose him.
00:30:56
Speaker
And maybe that was right. But I thought she shared her resentment enough for me to feel really like... yeah, you know what? You're f***ing right. You are as much to thank for his impact on the world as he is, as far as I'm concerned. And i think that probably struck a chord with me because now I'm a bit older. I think there are sort of ebbs and flows in marriages and I'm not sure that I believe that everyone can go full tilt at the same time all the time because I just don't think it works.
00:31:26
Speaker
And so i liked this idea that he'd had his time and now it was... going to be hers. i found that very practical and inspiring.
00:31:36
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. i so I can definitely see your take on that. And I think at the time that I read it, I was probably like, well, I'm never going to sacrifice my career for my husband's. And actually, a really tell point that there's not a lot of literature about dual career households.
00:31:53
Speaker
I really think that's true. And there's a lot that we can and should learn from people about that. Have you got anything on your want to read list? Um, I actually feel like if we go through all the listener recommendations, that will become my want to read list.
00:32:07
Speaker
Yeah. And there are two there are two books coming out now, right now, that are on my list. Previously mentioned in another episode, Moral Ambition by Rutger Bregman. Loved his first book, Utopia for Realists. And Jacinda Ardern, like the the political powerhouse and lovely human being, former PM of New Zealand on a different kind of power. So that's excited about those. I'd be excited about that. She's right up my street.
00:32:34
Speaker
Yeah, she's the bomb. Okay, shall we go through one by one each? Yeah. Listener X. Okay, we've got one from Tim. How to Beat Everything by Emily Wapnick. He says, all of a sudden, a bunch of slightly odd looking career changes made complete sense. We will link a TED talk in the show notes, which explains in more detail.
00:32:53
Speaker
Amazing. Okay, how to avoid a climate disaster by Bill Gates. This is from Irving. Help me grasp the scale of the climate crisis in practical terms and what it would take to address it. It was a key reason I started taking the issue more seriously. i would recommend it as a starting point for anyone curious about climate change and unsure where to begin. What a great recommendation. Yeah, really good. We've got White Fang by ja lu Jack London, recommended by Druti. It's an amazing book to return to again and again. i first read it as a child and it just helped me understand humans a lot more.
00:33:28
Speaker
Great. That'll be on my list. Okay. East of Eden by John Steinbeck. That's recommended by Mike. I read East of Eden last year, which was pretty special. It made me realize that your problems aren't unique to you and the human condition is timeless. It's a beautiful book about people. ah That's on my list. When I when i got that message from Mike, I was like, yeah, okay, adding it. We've got a fiction wreck here, Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery, recommended by Janie. It was the book that taught me that being a strong woman isn't a two-dimensional pursuit. You can long for a puff sleeve dress, luscious auburn hair and still be top of your class and kick ass. It's a quietly feminist masterpiece of a young adult novel that I'd recommend to any young person.
00:34:12
Speaker
God, love that. Yeah, that's such a great take on Anna Green Gables. Okay, attached by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller. This was recommended by Iona. Totally redefined everything I knew about platonic and romantic relationships up to that point and transformed how I related to them afterwards as well.
00:34:32
Speaker
I know. that I was like, i i need to read that when when when I saw that one. Got a few recs coming up from Penny, previously mentioned, friend of the pod, Penny Jones, legend. The first one is If Women Rose Rooted by Sharon Blackie. All women should read this book, particularly anyone working through any sort of transition, but really just anyone. I recommend this to all my clients and most of my friends. Okay, next one is by...
00:34:59
Speaker
Herminia Ibarra, who we've mentioned on the pod before. It's called Working Identity and it's another one of lovely Penny's recommendations. For women particularly, what we do and who we are can become very tightly bound. Amen.
00:35:13
Speaker
And that can stop us from making change in what we do because we fear what it says about who we are. God. This is already profound. This helped me change my career after almost two decades and give myself permission to hold what my work and my life say about me a little more lightly. Next rec from Penny. and She came in hot with a lot and they were all good are all good they're all They're all in the show notes because she came in with some strong rationale. This book is by Linda Gratton and Andrew Scott. It is called The 100 Year Life.
00:35:44
Speaker
This book was also an eye opener for me in my career transition, understanding that our working lives look very different from those of our parents and that we need to create a career that does too. Amazing. Okay, we'll link the rest of Pennies just because they're absolutely great, but there's quite a few of them. So we'll move on Letty's recommendations, Brené Brown, The Gifts of Imperfection. So for Letty, the notion of vulnerability as a strength was almost alien to her as she'd been turned off by vulnerability her whole life, both her own and everyone else's. Realising that it was the secret to true connection and belonging was literally life changing for Letty and marked the beginning of a whole shedding of her own armour. Gosh, what a review.
00:36:27
Speaker
i mean, you've you've read Brene a lot, right? Yeah, she gets me in a mood. It's a good one. yeah Letty's final recommendation was the one we mentioned earlier, which was Man's Search for Meaning. We also had a couple of quick ones from Katie, who recommended Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, and Kat, who recommended The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. Eckhart Tolle is one of those people who I've never engaged with, but lots of people do. Just to say the same.
00:36:55
Speaker
Just about to say the same. So we should probably we should probably engage, at least one of us. We'll come back next season and talk about Eckhart Tolle. Yeah. Amazing. Well, I think that was all we wanted to cover today. yes But before we outro Annie, now that we've gone through all of those books, what are you putting next on your reading list? Oh, good question. I think I'm going to put East of Eden, John Steinbeck, but I'm also going to put If All Women Rose by Sharon Blackie.
00:37:27
Speaker
because I think I am always in some sort of transition. So um those are the two. What about you? I also put those two on mine and I'm obviously going to put Edith Eager on. That feels like a good book, but one that I need to just also be in the right headspace to engage with. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it might be a sort of chapter a week. Yeah, yeah. Dip in and out.
00:37:49
Speaker
Dip in and out. at light Keep it light. you keep fresh Keep it fresh. I like having like two to three books on the go so I can sort of sub in. interesting. I'm about to finish a fiction book, so it's maybe time for a nonfiction.
00:38:01
Speaker
Nice. Okay, well, that's it. Thanks for joining us today. As always, if something in today's episode resonated with you, spread the magic. Share it with a friend, post it on your socials, in your group chat, or leave a rating review on your favorite podcast platform. That's how the Coven grows. Until next time.
00:38:19
Speaker
Bye. Bye.