What I Wish I Had Known (And Other Lessons You Learned in Your 20s)


Marcella Purnama - 2017
    I will dream a new dream, a dream that’s totally my own, and I will work hard to get it.Ever since her acceptance letter to study abroad arrived at her inbox, nothing in Marcella Purnama’s life has gone according to plan. Instead of choosing Science, like her two older sisters did before her, she steered path to study Arts—a degree so alien to both her families and friends. But as she traveled thousands miles away, struggled with English, had her first byline and went back home to apply for her first job, Marcella realized that plans are meant to be changed. Full of relatable tales of horrific group work, falling in love, first job interview and quarter-life crisis, this illuminating account follows how a young adult grapples with life’s small and big questions, and the lessons learned along the way.

Drawing Lab for Mixed-Media Artists: 52 Creative Exercises to Make Drawing Fun


Carla Sonheim - 2010
    Her innovative ideas are now collected and elaborated on in this unique volume. Carla offers a year's worth of assignments, projects, ideas, and techniques that will introduce more creativity and nonsense into your art and life. Drawing Lab for Mixed-Media Artists offers readers a fun way to learn and gain expertise in drawing through experimentation and play. There is no right or wrong result, yet, the readers gain new skills and confidence, allowing them to take their work to a new level.

137 Books in One Year: How to Fall in Love With Reading


Kevin D. Hendricks - 2013
    It's about falling in love with books again and discovering the habits to help you read more. Author Kevin D. Hendricks read 137 books in 2012 without giving up TV, a day job or becoming completely antisocial. He shares what worked for him, including carrying a book everywhere (including church), reclaiming idle moments (software loading), and not being ashamed of genre (he's partial to post-apocalyptic sci-fi). It's a quick read so you can absorb the ideas, figure out what might work for you and fall in love with reading again.

Zenspirations


Joanne Fink - 2011
    The many decorative boarders, frames, shapes, and alphabet will appeal to a spectrum of tastes and styles. Use Joanne's techniques to create details, depth and beauty reminiscent of classical architecture, medieval block printing and manuscript calligraphy. Her passion for beautiful patterns is contaigious. Joanne makes it easy to turn simple lines into attractive designs while her doodled shapes inspire readers to embellish more and just have fun with the process.

Artful


Ali Smith - 2012
    Anne’s College, Oxford. Her lectures took the shape of this set of discursive stories. Refusing to be tied down to either fiction or the essay form, Artful is narrated by a character who is haunted—literally—by a former lover, the writer of a series of lectures about art and literature.A hypnotic dialogue unfolds, a duet between and a meditation on art and storytelling, a book about love, grief, memory, and revitalization. Smith’s heady powers as a fiction writer harmonize with her keen perceptions as a reader and critic to form a living thing that reminds us that life and art are never separate.Artful is a book about the things art can do, the things art is full of, and the quicksilver nature of all artfulness. It glances off artists and writers from Michelangelo through Dickens, then all the way past postmodernity, exploring every form, from ancient cave painting to 1960s cinema musicals. This kaleidoscope opens up new, inventive, elastic insights—on the relation of aesthetic form to the human mind, the ways we build our minds from stories, the bridges art builds between us. Artful is a celebration of literature’s worth in and to the world and a meaningful contribution to that worth in itself. There has never been a book quite like it.

The Mountain Is You: Transforming Self-Sabotage Into Self-Mastery


Brianna Wiest - 2020
    Why we do it, when we do it, and how to stop doing it—for good.Coexisting but conflicting needs create self-sabotaging behaviors. This is why we resist efforts to change, often until they feel completely futile. But by extracting crucial insight from our most damaging habits, building emotional intelligence by better understanding our brains and bodies, releasing past experiences at a cellular level, and learning to act as our highest potential future selves, we can step out of our own way and into our potential.For centuries, the mountain has been used as a metaphor for the big challenges we face, especially ones that seem impossible to overcome. To scale our mountains, we actually have to do the deep internal work of excavating trauma, building resilience, and adjusting how we show up for the climb.In the end, it is not the mountain we master, but ourselves.

Spilling Open: The Art of Becoming Yourself


Sabrina Ward Harrison - 2000
    Full color.

Liminal Thinking


Dave Gray - 2016
    

Make Art Make Money: Lessons from Jim Henson on Fueling Your Creative Career


Elizabeth Hyde Stevens - 2013
    How did he ever pull it off? And how can other creators follow in his path?In Make Art Make Money: Lessons from Jim Henson on Fueling Your Creative Career, journalist and educator Elizabeth Hyde Stevens presents ten principles of Henson’s art and business practices that will inspire artists everywhere. Part manifesto, part history, part cultural criticism, part self-help, Make Art Make Money is a new kind of business book for creative professionals: a guide for creating and succeeding thanks to lessons from the Muppet Master himself.NOTE: This book is a Kindle Serial. Kindle Serials are stories published in episodes, with future episodes delivered at no additional cost. This serial currently contains one episode out of an estimated ten total episodes, and new episodes will be delivered every week.

inGenius: A Crash Course on Creativity


Tina Seelig - 2012
    Innovative. Ingenious. These words describe the visionaries we all respect and admire. And they can describe you, too. Contrary to common belief, creativity is not a gift some of us are born with. It is a skill that all of us can learn. International bestselling author and award-winning Stanford University educator Tina Seelig has worked with some of the business world’s best and brightest, who are now among the decision-makers at companies such as Google, Genentech, IBM, and Cisco. In inGenius she expertly demystifies creativity, offering a set of tools and guidelines that anyone can use. A fantastic resource for everyone wanting to achieve their ambitions, and for readers of Jason Fried’s Rework, and Seth Godin’s Poke the Box.

The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs


Carmine Gallo - 2009
    Communications expert Carmine Gallo has studied and analyzed the very best of Jobs's performances, offering point-by-point examples, tried-and-true techniques, and proven presentation secrets in 18 "scenes," including:Develop a messianic sense of purposeReveal the Conquering heroChannel your inner ZenStage your presentation with propsMake it look effortlessWith this revolutionary approach, you'll be surprised at how easy it is to sell your ideas, share your enthusiasm, and wow your audience the Steve Jobs way."No other leader captures an audience like Steve Jobs does and, like no other book, The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs captures the formula Steve uses to enthrall audiences."--Rob Enderle, The Enderle Group"Now you can learn from the best there is--both Jobs and Gallo. No matter whether you are a novice presenter or a professional speaker like me, you will read and reread this book with the same enthusiasm that people bring to their iPods."--David Meerman Scott, bestselling author of The New Rules of Marketing & PR and World Wide Rave

1,500 Color Mixing Recipes for Oil, Acrylic Watercolor: Achieve precise color when painting landscapes, portraits, still lifes, and more


William F. Powell - 2012
    This user-friendly spiral-bound book is tabbed for quick and easy reference and includes two removable color-mixing grids—one for oil or acrylic, and one for watercolor.Follow these four simple steps to mix more than 1,500 color combinations:Look in the Color Guidance Index for the subject you want to paint—for example, “Broccoli.”Find the Color Recipe with the subject’s recipe number (“81”) and a photo of the actual paint mixture.Use the Color Mixing Grid to measure each paint color.Mix the color.It’s that easy! You’ll also learn about color theory, color value mixing, graying color naturally, mixing flesh and portrait colors, and rendering skies and clouds.   Also available from Walter Foster's best-selling Color Mixing Recipes series: Color Mixing Recipes for Oil & Acrylic, Color Mixing Recipes for Portraits, and Color Mixing Recipes for Landscapes.

Zen in the Art of Writing


Ray Bradbury - 1973
    The land mine is me. After the explosion, I spend the rest of the day putting the pieces back together. Now, it's your turn. Jump!"Zest. Gusto. Curiosity. These are the qualities every writer must have, as well as a spirit of adventure. In this exuberant book, the incomparable Ray Bradbury shares the wisdom, experience, and excitement of a lifetime of writing. Here are practical tips on the art of writing from a master of the craft—everything from finding original ideas to developing your own voice and style—as well as the inside story of Bradbury's own remarkable career as a prolific author of novels, stories, poems, films, and plays.Zen in the Art of Writing is more than just a how-to manual for the would-be writer: it is a celebration of the act of writing itself that will delight, impassion, and inspire the writer in you. Bradbury encourages us to follow the unique path of our instincts and enthusiasms to the place where our inner genius dwells, and he shows that success as a writer depends on how well you know one subject: your own life.

How to Break Up with Your Phone: The 30-Day Plan to Take Back Your Life


Catherine Price - 2018
     Is your phone the first thing you reach for in the morning and the last thing you touch before bed? Do you frequently pick it up "just to check," only to look up forty-five minutes later wondering where the time has gone? Do you say you want to spend less time on your phone--but have no idea how to do so without giving it up completely? If so, this book is your solution.Award-winning journalist Catherine Price presents a practical, hands-on plan to break up--and then make up--with your phone. The goal? A long-term relationship that actually feels good. You'll discover how phones and apps are designed to be addictive, and learn how the time we spend on them damages our abilities to focus, think deeply, and form new memories. You'll then make customized changes to your settings, apps, environment, and mindset that will ultimately enable you to take back control of your life.

How to Be Everything: A Guide for Those Who (Still) Don't Know What They Want to Be When They Grow Up


Emilie Wapnick - 2017
    While seemingly harmless, the question has unintended consequences. It can make you feel like you need to choose one job, one passion, one thing to be about. Guess what? You don't.Having a lot of different interests, projects and curiosities doesn't make you a "jack-of-all-trades, master of none." Your endless curiosity doesn't mean you are broken or flaky. What you are is a multipotentialite: someone with many interests and creative pursuits. And that is actually your biggest strength.How to Be Everything helps you channel your diverse passions and skills to work for you. Based on her popular TED talk, "Why some of us don't have one true calling", Emilie Wapnick flips the script on conventional career advice. Instead of suggesting that you specialize, choose a niche or accumulate 10,000 hours of practice in a single area, Wapnick provides a practical framework for building a sustainable life around ALL of your passions.You'll discover:•  Why your multipotentiality is your biggest strength, especially in today's uncertain job market.•  How to make a living and structure your work if you have many skills and interests.•  How to focus on multiple projects and make progress on all of them.•  How to handle common insecurities such as the fear of not being the best, the guilt associated with losing interest in something you used to love and the challenge of explaining "what you do" to others. Not fitting neatly into a box can be a beautiful thing. How to Be Everything teaches you how to design a life, at any age and stage of your career, that allows you to be fully you, and find the kind of work you'll love.