Has it been a whole year already? Apparently, it has, because it’s once again time to vote for the Oddest Book Title of the Year!

Here are the six final contestants:

• Baboon Metaphysics
• Curbside Consultation of the Colon
• The Large Sieve and Its Applications
• Strip and Knit with Style
• Techniques for Corrosion Monitoring
• The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-milligram Containers of Fromage Frais

Click over to The Bookseller to vote.  The winner will be announced March 27th.

Those aren’t Working Girl’s words. 

They belong to Nicholas Nigro, author of “No Job? No Prob!: How to Pay Your Bills, Feed Your Mind, and Have a Blast When You’re Out of Work.”

Depending on your mood, the book’s breezy tone will either amuse or annoy.  Sure, the unemployment rate is over 7% and the economy is in general in a big fat mess.  Look on the bright side!  Joblessness can be uplifting, according to Nigro, who offers chapter headings such as “Every Ending is a New Beginning” and “Count Your Blessings-in-Disguise” and “More Time Than You Ever Thought You’d Have!” 

After all you’re not unemployed, you’re a “transitory retiree.”

Nigro does include useful info on unemployment benefits, severance pay, COBRA, and the like.  His advice on “How to Live on Less Than $20 a Day” is interesting, even entertaining.  Unless you’ve always been thrifty (like WG) and then it is a tad depressing (because you’re already doing all these things).

But some of the stuff is nonsensical: “Ten Ways to Modify Your Old Work Clothes,” “Ten Home Decorating Ideas You Can Accomplish Free of Charge,” and the like.  When you’re out of a job, do you really want to be told to cheer up because, after all, you’ll now have lots of time to make a voodoo doll out of your suits and dresses? 

Maybe not.  Nigro’s heart is in the right place, and he probably wrote this book when times were not quite so dire.  Still, there’s lots to take with a grain of salt here.

So yesterday’s post over at U.S. News talked about the best way to ensure your job security.  I.e., work like a freelancer.

If you want to learn more about how freelancers do what they do, Working Girl’s friend Michelle Goodman wrote a fabulous book on the subject:  “My So-Called Freelance Life: How to Survive and Thrive as a Creative Professional for Hire.”

Check it out!

It’s a funny and smart book on every facet of freelancing, from money to self-marketing to time management to making your clients happy.  Michelle makes it all seem doable, and even fun.  There’s a lot of seriously helpful advice in this book, for not only freelancers but for anyone who needs/wants to earn a decent living.

Bonus tip:  Are you thinking of trying the freelance life, but are maybe a little afraid to take the leap?  Then you should definitely check out Michelle’s first book: “The Anti 9 to 5 Guide: Practical Career Advice for Women Who Think Outside the Cube,” everything you need to know to successfully transform yourself from a corporate drone to an independent, creative, solvent, and fulfilled woman of the world.

This is long but our Internet connection seems to be working at the moment, so here goes……

Working Girl’s book group book this month was Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s (it was a novella before it was a movie).

In it, Capote gave career advice, if in a slightly misogynistic way:

[in this passage he's talking about Mag Wildwood, one of the book's minor characters] “She was a triumph over ugliness, so often more beguiling than real beauty, if only because it contains paradox.  In this case, as opposed to the scrupulous method of plain good taste and scientific grooming, the trick had been worked by exaggerating defects; she’d made them ornamental by admitting them boldly.  Heels that emphasized her height, so steep her ankles trembled; a flat tight bodice tht indicated she could go to a beach in bathing trunks; hair that was pulled straight back, accentuating the spareness, the starvation of her fashion-model face.  Even the stutter, certainly genuine but still a bit laid on, had been turned to advantage.  It was the master stroke, that stutter; for it contrived to make her banalities sound somehow original, and secondly, despite her tallness, her assurance, it served to inspire in male listeners a protective feeling.”

Okay, so Truman didn’t exactly like Mag.   

But his idea that we can take our weaknesses and turn them into advantages is inspiring.  In this example, the “faults” are physical.  But the trick applies at work, too.

The best example Working Girl can think of at the moment comes from her own life.  She’s done a lot of freelance editing and writing.  One day she was interviewing with a potential new client. 

“These documents concern marine habitat and oil spills,” said the client.

“Oh.” said WG.

“Do you have any background in these areas?”

“Not really.  Who is your audience for these documents?”

“The public.”

“So you need the documents to be easily understandable to the lay reader?” asked WG.

“Yeah.”

“That’s great!  It’s actually an advantage that I don’t know too much about your subject area,” WG said.  “I will do a better job of editing them for your audience.”

“What you’re saying is that your main qualification for the job is that you don’t know anything,” said the client (kinda sarcastically).

“Exactly!  I’m your ideal reader.  If I don’t understand the text, then the public won’t either.”

Long story short:  WG got the assignment.  Her “weakness” was, in this situation, actually a strength.

What do you think?  Can you think of any other cases where a shortcoming actually turned out to be an advantage? 

What’s a slash?

It’s when you are a lawyer/actor.  An engineer/pastry chef.  A biologist/photographer.  An executive/master gardener.  A teacher/dancer.  A technical writer/blues singer/community activist.

That’s right, kids.  You don’t have to have just one career anymore!  You can have two.  Or three. 

If you do, you get to exercise all the facets of your brain and personality.  You never get bored.  And you may be ensuring yourself a lot more job and financial security.

If this intrigues you, run out right now and get Marci Alboher’s great book, “One Person/Multiple Careers: A New Model for Work/Life Success.”

Working Girl reads a lot of career books (so you don’t have to).  Their tones range from self-congratulation to rah-rah to I-am-much-smarter-than-you-so-just-do-what-I-say.  What WG liked best about Marci’s book is its engaging and appealing and accessible and friendly voice.  She makes you feel that you can do it!  The many examples are fun to read and inspiring.  Bravo.

(Also, check out Marci’s blog, Shifting Careers, over at the NYT.)

Not the color black.  Cathie Black, head of Hearst Magazines, former publisher of USA Today, all-around media mogul, and corporate highroller high above the head of Working Girl.  And, probably, you.

Also author of a recent career-advice book, “BASIC BLACK: The Essential Guide for Getting Ahead at Work (and in Life).”

Black’s book is pleasant, chatty, has lots of anecdotes and advice and much name-dropping, and feels a bit like a victory lap for Black.  When she wins, she wins big.  And when she makes a boo-boo, well, it wasn’t such a terrible boo-boo—and you know what?—everything amazingly still turned out for the best.

A regular working girl may feel she has nothing to learn from Black.  Her world feels out of reach.  But Black has some insightful things to say about a topic she’s very familiar with: power.  The chapter titled “Power” is worth the price of the book (or at least the wait getting it from the library).  Here’re a few tidbits:

• Black contends that no matter what your position at work, you can develop your own power.  An important message for people who feel a bit short-changed in the power department.
• Key to developing your power is knowing where your strengths lie, which seems like a no-brainer, but Black makes the point that many people don’t truly know what their strengths are.  Figure them out.
• More good advice:  Identify those things you can’t control, and then don’t waste time & effort trying to control them.  Related to this is the not-original-yet-worth-repeating concept that you should pick your battles.  Save your political capital for fights truly worth fighting.
• Be able to laugh at yourself.  This involves admitting to mistakes, which contrary to what many people appear to believe, is actually a sign of strength.

There’s more.  A lot of the advice applies to managers (other chapters include “Drive,” “Attitude,” and “Leadership”) but it’s an easy read and the anecdotes dating from the inception of Ms. Magazine are interesting.  If you enjoy insider anecdotes about media personalities such as Oprah, Rupert Murdoch, Tina Brown, et al., you also will enjoy this read.   

Before there was the book “Odd Jobs” by Abigail Gehring (reviewed here last November), there was another book “Odd Jobs” by Nancy Rica Schiff.

The original “Odd Jobs” is a nifty little gift book, depicting 54 peculiar jobs with lots of photos, not so much text. 

Among them:  condom tester, coffin maker, potato chip inspector (the lady who does this is wearing a big smile and, yum, why wouldn’t she?), artificial inseminator (he wears gloves), foot model (she puts make-up on her feet!), funeral parlor cosmetologist, scoreboard operator, earthworm farmer, pet cemetery owner, knife thrower’s assistant (it is what you think), and 55 more occupations you have probably never heard of.  

What?  No lipsologist?  Nancy must never have come out to Seattle, home of the latest in psychic science, lipsology.  Seattleite Jilly Eddy (who still does not have a web site) is the genius behind the art of analyzing people’s lip prints to reveal personality and potential.  Eddy invented lipsology way back in the eighties after she noticed how personal lip prints seemed to be.  She decided that lip prints and personality must be linked and here’s what she’s found:

Large lip prints:  means you don’t like to do things halfway
Small lip prints:  you’re detail oriented
Thin upper lip:  you’re picky
Cupid’s bow:  you don’t like to be told what to do
Round prints:  you like harmony
Vertical lines:  you’re stressed*

(This info from a recent Seattle Times article about Eddy.) 

Nancy Rica Schiff has produced a sequel, “Odder Jobs,” featuring 65 more weirdy jobs.  Maybe lipsologist is among them……

*Or, vertical lines indicate you’re just French.  Working Girl has long noticed that Frenchwomen have deep lines in their lips, as well as around their mouths.  It’s from making that little kissy face when they pronounce “ou.”   

If you are a woman in business, you probably act like one of the above, according to Christopher Flett, author of “What Men Don’t Tell Women About Business,” just out from John Wiley & Sons in December.

Working Girl had to wash her hands after reading this book because it actually dripped testoserone. 

Flett, who proudly informs us he is a “reformed” young alpha male, takes it upon himself to teach women how to be more successful in business.  How do we do this?  By becoming more like men, of course.

That’s the gist of this book, despite Flett’s claim that the business world needs the womanly skills of consensus building and good communication.  He’s far more concerned with our myriad “sins”:  taking things personally, wearing masks (bitch, geisha, etc.), being meek, making excuses, bringing personal problems to work, seeking external affirmation, accepting poor treatment, and expecting fairness.

He’s vitriolic about what he considers a female lack of ability to keep secrets.  “Men assume that women shouldn’t be told anything that we don’t want the whole world to know,” he writes.  Men, on the other hand, have “a code,” and never gossip “about things that matter.”  Good Lord.

We are not only gossips, we are vindictive, according to Flett. ”When women go after someone, they go after them full force, full steam ahead, emotional, taking things totally personally, and going for the jugular.”  A woman is “like a pit bull,” he adds, making WG wonder if Flett actually knows any women.

The publication date of this book is 2007 but it could just as easily have been 1957. 

Will reading it help your career?  It does give you insight into the mind of a certain type of male, which may be helpful.  But his devotion to furthering and reinforcing sexual stereotypes is not only alarming, it’s sort of depressing.  And it’s hard to get past his self-regarding, men-know-how-it’s-done attitude. 

Are ya happy?  Well, are ya?

If so, you may be bland, superficial, static, hollow, one-sided, bovine, acquisitive, deluded, and foolish.  Hey, don’t get mad at Working Girl.  That was a quote from Colin McGinn’s review of “Against Happiness” (by Eric G. Wilson) in the Wall St. Journal last Friday. 

The book challenges the notion that happiness is the ultimate good.  It says the Gloomy Guses among us are more honest, profound, and realistic.  Not to mention more perceptive, creative, and noble.  Suffering and pain lead us to our highest potential, says Wilson (and apparently McGinn, who takes an unholy glee in summarizing the premises of the book). 

Premises that Working Girl finds liberating.  Permission to be negative!  Yowie.  It’s practically un-American.  Our societal imperative to put on a happy face, every single day, is depressing at times. 

And unrealistic.  In yesterday’s Modern Love column in the NYT, Daniel Jones cited research that most people are happy when they’re young and happy when they’re old, but not too cheery in between. 

More permission to be crabby.  This is great!  Working Girl feels better already.  Maybe even……happy? 

Here’s a fabulous thought:

The skills a woman learns when raising children are directly transferable to the workplace.

Isn’t that great?  How refreshing to think of “time out” for motherhood as not just wasted time, a career killer, but actually a period when women become expert people managers, expert multitaskers, and expert leaders. 

Good mom=good boss:  it’s the central premise of Shari Storm’s forthcoming book, “Motherhood Is The New MBA,” all about how motherhood is a virtual boot camp for managers. 

“The techniques you use to get your kids to take a nap or eat their vegetables,” Shari says, ”are exactly the skills you can use at your company to make your team perform at a higher level.”  Smart!  Original!  Diabolically clever!

Check out Shari’s blog here. 

Oh, and for some pithy definitions of what constitutes a good, and a bad, boss, go to this recent NYT article—it’ll also lead you to a quiz you can take to see what kind of boss you are.