Marcus Buckingham and Donald Clifton - Now Discover Your Strengths

Non Fiction: Why are workplaces, employers, schools and teachers obsessed with concentrating on and trying to improve your weaknesses?  This book describes your strengths as your best assets, and gives you guidelines as to how to discover your talents so as to give world class performance at what you are good at.

My rating 9/10

I am not affiliated with this book in any way, I normally shy away from psycho-babble self-help books, but this book could well change my life.  In fact in some ways, it already has, by helping me recognise that just because I am not good at the stuff I want to be good at, it doesn't mean I'm a failure, my strengths can totally over-ride my weaknesses, and I can be a success by building on what I do have (but maybe not become what I think I want to be :-) ).  This book can help you in life choices, not just work choices.  I read this book in conjunction with a course from work, and the encouragement, tips and inspiration you can get from it are more than I have read from most "secular" material (although this book does not deny the existence of God).  I cannot recommend this highly enough, it doesn't get 10 as I felt there could have been a little more detail on the strengths.  Get a brand spanking new copy if you want to get the best from it, as there is a code at the back of the book that can only be used once, to help on a website to identify your strengths.  As a further tip, if you get an "older" copy of the book (i.e. first edition, but unused) the website is not as stated in the book, it is http://sf1.strengthsfinder.com/.

Next: Malcom Pryce - From Aberystwyth With Love. I've been avoiding it so long, it's about time I read it.