Grade:  B

Okay, I must tell you right off.  While the content varies from pretty bad to fairly good, I have a hard time picking up Dummies books.  There’s just something about thinking of myself as a dummy, despite what my wife and daughters tell me.

So, for years I walked past Marty Nemko’s (a helluva career counselor) book, Cool Careers For Dummies.

And, shame on me. While I just can’t bring myself to make this one a Top5er (it’s the Dummies thing), this book is guaranteed to jump start you into a job-changing mood.

I especially like the “25 Most Revealing Questions” section that will take you through a guided exercise designed to help you uncover your passion.

However, what makes Cool Careers for Dummies genuinely cool is, well, and hey — we might as well stick with the cool theme we’ve got going here — it’s the Cool Career Yellow Pages.

This section is worth the price of admission alone.  Nemko (and his co-authors, home business gurus Sarah and Paul Edwards) list hundreds of jobs you’ve likely not considered or perhaps never even heard of, broken down into categories of how the work is performed– with people, with information, one-on-one, and so forth.

Definitely worth checking out — you’ll also find that most of the Dream Jobs To Go books fit into one of Marty’s categories.

One of the best ways I’ve found to uncover your work passion is to do a little self-brainstorming . . . and Cool Careers for Dummies is definitely geared to help you do that.

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