book pickings

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advice

  1. Look Both Ways: Illustrated Essays on the Intersection of Life and Design Debbie Millman “If you imagine less, less will be what you undoubtedly deserve. Do what you love, and don’t stop until you get what you love. Work as hard as you can, imagine immensities, don’t compromise, and don’t waste time. Start now. Not 20 years from now, not two weeks from now. Now.” Debbie Millman’s fantastic illustrated essays of wisdom on the creative life – a timeless treat halfway between philosophy and design:

    Look Both Ways: Illustrated Essays on the Intersection of Life and Design

    Debbie Millman

    “If you imagine less, less will be what you undoubtedly deserve. Do what you love, and don’t stop until you get what you love. Work as hard as you can, imagine immensities, don’t compromise, and don’t waste time. Start now. Not 20 years from now, not two weeks from now. Now.”

    Debbie Millman’s fantastic illustrated essays of wisdom on the creative life – a timeless treat halfway between philosophy and design:
  2. Make Good Art Neil Gaiman “Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody’s ever made before.” Neil Gaiman’s fantastic commencement address, adapted by design legend Chip Kidd

    Make Good Art

    Neil Gaiman

    “Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody’s ever made before.”

    Neil Gaiman’s fantastic commencement address, adapted by design legend Chip Kidd
  3. How to Find Fulfilling Work (The School of Life) Roman Krznaric Fantastic read on the art-science of “allowing the various petals of our identity to fully unfold.”

    How to Find Fulfilling Work (The School of Life)

    Roman Krznaric

    Fantastic read on the art-science of “allowing the various petals of our identity to fully unfold.”
  4. How They Succeeded Orison Swett Marden “Genius is nothing more nor less than doing well what anyone can do badly.”

    How They Succeeded

    Orison Swett Marden

    “Genius is nothing more nor less than doing well what anyone can do badly.”
  5. Letter to My Daughter Maya Angelou I am convinced that most people do not grow up. We find parking spaces and honor our credit cards. We marry and dare to have children and call that growing up. I think what we do is mostly grow old. We carry accumulation of years in our bodies and on our faces, but generally our real selves, the children inside, are still innocent and shy as magnolias. 

    Letter to My Daughter

    Maya Angelou

    I am convinced that most people do not grow up. We find parking spaces and honor our credit cards. We marry and dare to have children and call that growing up. I think what we do is mostly grow old. We carry accumulation of years in our bodies and on our faces, but generally our real selves, the children inside, are still innocent and shy as magnolias. 
  6. Several Short Sentences About Writing Verlyn Klinkenborg “You can say smart, interesting, complicated things using short sentences. How long is a good idea?”

    Several Short Sentences About Writing

    Verlyn Klinkenborg

    “You can say smart, interesting, complicated things using short sentences. How long is a good idea?”
  7. Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar Cheryl Strayed “The useless days will add up to something….These things are your becoming.” When an anonymous advice columnist by the name of “Dear Sugar” introduced herself on The Rumpus on March 11, 2010, she made her proposition clear: a “by-the-book common sense of Dear Abby and the earnest spiritual cheesiness of Cary Tennis and the butt-pluggy irreverence of Dan Savage and the closeted Upper East Side nymphomania of Miss Manners.” But in the two-some years that followed, she proceeded to deliver something tenfold punchier, more honest, more existentially profound than even such an intelligently irreverent promise could foretell.

    Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar

    Cheryl Strayed

    “The useless days will add up to something….These things are your becoming.”

    When an anonymous advice columnist by the name of “Dear Sugar” introduced herself on The Rumpus on March 11, 2010, she made her proposition clear: a “by-the-book common sense of Dear Abby and the earnest spiritual cheesiness of Cary Tennis and the butt-pluggy irreverence of Dan Savage and the closeted Upper East Side nymphomania of Miss Manners.” But in the two-some years that followed, she proceeded to deliver something tenfold punchier, more honest, more existentially profound than even such an intelligently irreverent promise could foretell.
  8. Letters to a Young Contrarian (Art of Mentoring) Christopher Hitchens “Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the ‘transcendent’ and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others.” The Hitch condenses years’ worth of his advice “to the young and the restless” into a series of letters written as if to just one of them — a form borrowed from Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet.

    Letters to a Young Contrarian (Art of Mentoring)

    Christopher Hitchens

    “Beware the irrational, however seductive. Shun the ‘transcendent’ and all who invite you to subordinate or annihilate yourself. Distrust compassion; prefer dignity for yourself and others.”

    The Hitch condenses years’ worth of his advice “to the young and the restless” into a series of letters written as if to just one of them — a form borrowed from Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet.