In the Company of Women: Inspiration and Advice from over 100 Makers, Artists, and Entrepreneurs


Grace Bonney - 2016
    In the Company of Women profiles over 100 of these influential and creative women from all ages, races, backgrounds, and industries. Chock-full of practical, inspirational advice for those looking to forge their own paths, these interviews detail the keys to success (for example, going with your gut; maintaining meaningful and lasting relationships), highlight the importance of everyday rituals (meditating; creating a daily to-do list), and dispense advice for the next generation of women entrepreneurs and makers (stay true to what you believe in; have patience). The book is rounded out with hundreds of lush, original photographs of the women in their work spaces.

Craftivism: The Art of Craft and Activism


Betsy Greer - 2014
    With interviews and profiles of craftivists who are changing the world with their art, and through examples that range from community embroidery projects, stitching in prisons, revolutionary ceramics, AIDS activism, yarn bombing, and crafts that facilitate personal growth, Craftivism provides imaginative examples of how crafters can be creative and altruistic at the same time.Artists profiled in the book are from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Asia, and their crafts include knitting, crocheting, sewing, textiles, pottery, and ceramics. There's the Brooklyn writer who creates large-scale site-specific knitted installations; the British woman who runs sewing and quilting workshops for community building and therapy; the Indonesian book maker and organizer of a DIY craft center; and the Oxford, England, cultural theorist and dress designer. A wonderful sense of optimism and possibility pervades the book: the inspiring notion that being crafty can really make the world a better place.Betsy Greer is a writer, crafter, researcher, and the author of Knitting for Good!: A Guide to Creating Personal, Social and Political Change Stitch by Stitch. She also runs the blog craftivism.com and believes that creativity and positive activism can save not only the soul, but also the world.

This One Wild and Precious Life: A Hopeful Path Forward in a Fractured World


Sarah Wilson - 2020
    The climate crisis, political polarisation, racial injustice and coronavirus have left many of us in a state of spiritual PTSD. We have retreated, morally and psychologically; we are experiencing a crisis of disconnection - from one another, from our true values, from joy, and from life as we feel we are meant to be living it.Sarah Wilson argues that this sense of despair and disconnection is ironically what unites us - that deep down, we are all feeling that same itch for a new way of living. this one wild and precious life opens our eyes to how we got here and offers a radically hopeful path forward. Drawing on science, literature, philosophy, the wisdom of some of the world's leading experts, and her personal journey, Wilson weaves a one-of-a-kind narrative that lights the way back to the life we love. En route, she leads us through a series of 'wildly awake' and joyful practices for reconnecting again that include:- Go to your edge. Do what scares you and embrace discomfort daily. Use it to grow into your Big Life.- #buylesslivemore. Break the cycle of mindless consumption and get light with your life.- Become a soul nerd. Embrace poetry, deep reading, art, and classical music to light up your intellect.- Get 'full-fat spiritual'. How to have an active practice - beyond the 'lite' 'rainbows and unicorns' - and use it to change the world.- Hike. Just hike. Walking in nature reconnects us with ourselves, and with our true purpose.- Practise wild activism. If you can get 3.5 per cent of a population to participate in sustained, non-violent protest, change happens. We create our better world.The time has come to boldly, wildly, imagine better. We are being called upon, individually and as a society, to forge a new path and to find a new way of living. Will you join the journey?

Unspeakable Things: Sex, Lies and Revolution


Laurie Penny - 2014
    Unspeakable Things is a book that is eye-opening not only in the critique it provides, but also in the revolutionary alternatives it imagines.

Threads of Life: A History of the World Through the Eye of a Needle


Clare Hunter - 2019
    In Tudor, England, when Mary, Queen of Scots, was under house arrest, her needlework carried her messages to the outside world. From the political propaganda of the Bayeux Tapestry, World War I soldiers coping with PTSD, and the maps sewn by schoolgirls in the New World, to the AIDS quilt, Hmong story clothes, and pink pussyhats, women and men have used the language of sewing to make their voices heard, even in the most desperate of circumstances. Threads of Life is a chronicle of identity, protest, memory, power, and politics told through the stories of needlework. Clare Hunter, master of the craft, threads her own narrative as she takes us over centuries and across continents—from medieval France to contemporary Mexico and the United States, and from a POW camp in Singapore to a family attic in Scotland—to celebrate the age-old, universal, and underexplored beauty and power of sewing. Threads of Life is an evocative and moving book about the need we have to tell our story.

How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy


Jenny Odell - 2019
    Here, Jenny Odell sends up a flare from the heart of Silicon Valley, delivering an action plan to resist capitalist narratives of productivity and techno-determinism, and to become more meaningfully connected in the process.

The Desire Map


Danielle LaPorte - 2012
    Which is valuable. Getting results is what moves your life forward. Except that most goal-setting systems fail to harness the most powerful driver behind any aspiration: your preferred feelings; and they foster an uptight determination that can keep us from the vitality we crave.The Desire Map program is changing all of that. You could call it holistic life-planning. The inner meets the outer. The spirit drives the material.The purpose of The Desire Map is: - Ultimately, to help you remember your light, your true nature, your source. - To show you your heart’s longing — your core desired - feelings. - To help you use your core desired feelings as a guidance system for making choices. - To help you use your desired feelings as a way to access comfort and clarity during painful times. - To help you accentuate the positive aspects of your life, while still honouring, and not invalidating, the negative parts that you want to change. - To help you regard your feelings as road signs to your Soul.So that you can: - Plan your day, your week, your month, your year and… - Feel great, making a lot of awesome things happen in every area your life.

Modern Tarot: Connecting with Your Higher Self through the Wisdom of the Cards


Michelle Tea - 2017
    Infused with beloved iconoclastic author Michelle Tea’s unique insight, inviting pop sensibility, and wicked humor, Modern Tarot is a fascinating journey through the cards that teaches how to use this tradition to connect with our higher selves.Whether you’re a committed seeker or a digital-age skeptic—or perhaps a little of both—Tea’s essential guide opens the power of tarot to you. Modern Tarot doesn’t require you to believe in the supernatural or narrowly focus on the tarot as a divination tool. Tea instead provides incisive descriptions of each of the 78 cards in the tarot system—each illustrated in the charmingly offbeat style of cartoonist Amanda Verwey—and introduces specially designed card-based rituals that can be used with any deck to guide you on a path toward radical growth and self-improvement.Tea reveals how tarot offers moments of deep, transformative connection—an affirming, spiritual experience that is gentle, individual, and aspirational. Grounded in Tea’s twenty-five years of tarot wisdom and her abiding love of the cards, and featuring 78 black and white illustrations throughout, Modern Tarot is the ultimate introduction to the tradition of the tarot for millennial readers.

The Weaver's Idea Book: Creative Cloth on a Rigid Heddle Loom


Jane Patrick - 2010
    The Weaver's Idea Book presents a wide variety of patterns for the simple rigid-heddle loom, accompanied by harness drafts for multishaft looms. The techniques include leno, Brooks bouquet, soumak, and embroidery on fabric. Each chapter contains weaving patterns along with swatches illustrating the techniques, accompanied by step-by-step photography.The book is arranged by structure or type of weave, from variations on plain weave to doubleweave. With traditional patterns from around the world, bands, and fabrics woven on two double heddles, The Weaver's Idea Book brings together a variety of ways to create exquisite cloth. Weaving tips and tricks help weavers at all levels achieve their textile dreams. In addition to pattern drafts, Jane offers project ideas that guide the reader through creating functional woven projects, from wearables to home decor.Weaving, especially on rigid-heddle looms, is enjoying a resurgence, and contemporary weavers are in need of a book to bridge the divide between basic books and complex text designed for advanced weavers with sophisticated tools. Celebrating the immense potential for creativity possible with the simplest of tools, The Weaver's Idea Book opens new avenues for exploration on both the rigid-heddle and multishaft looms.

Good Vibes, Good Life: How Self-Love Is the Key to Unlocking Your Greatness


Vex King - 2018
    Vex overcame adversity to become a source of hope for thousands of young people, and now draws from his personal experience and his intuitive wisdom to inspire you to:  *  practice self-care, overcome toxic energy and prioritize your wellbeing  *  cultivate positive lifestyle habits, including mindfulness and meditation  *  change your beliefs to invite great opportunities into your life  *  manifest your goals using tried-and-tested techniques  *  overcome fear and flow with the Universe  *  find your higher purpose and become a shining light for othersWith this book, Vex will show you that when you change the way you think, feel, speak and act, you begin to change the world.

Quit Like a Woman: The Radical Choice to Not Drink in a Culture Obsessed with Alcohol


Holly Whitaker - 2019
    Either way, it will save your life.”—Melissa Hartwig Urban, Whole30 co-founder and CEOWe live in a world obsessed with drinking. We drink at baby showers and work events, brunch and book club, graduations and funerals. Yet no one ever questions alcohol’s ubiquity—in fact, the only thing ever questioned is why someone doesn’t drink. It is a qualifier for belonging and if you don’t imbibe, you are considered an anomaly. As a society, we are obsessed with health and wellness, yet we uphold alcohol as some kind of magic elixir, though it is anything but.When Holly Whitaker decided to seek help after one too many benders, she embarked on a journey that led not only to her own sobriety, but revealed the insidious role alcohol plays in our society and in the lives of women in particular. What’s more, she could not ignore the ways that alcohol companies were targeting women, just as the tobacco industry had successfully done generations before. Fueled by her own emerging feminism, she also realized that the predominant systems of recovery are archaic, patriarchal, and ineffective for the unique needs of women and other historically oppressed people—who don’t need to lose their egos and surrender to a male concept of God, as the tenets of Alcoholics Anonymous state, but who need to cultivate a deeper understanding of their own identities and take control of their lives. When Holly found an alternate way out of her own addiction, she felt a calling to create a sober community with resources for anyone questioning their relationship with drinking, so that they might find their way as well. Her resultant feminine-centric recovery program focuses on getting at the root causes that lead people to overindulge and provides the tools necessary to break the cycle of addiction, showing us what is possible when we remove alcohol and destroy our belief system around it.Written in a relatable voice that is honest and witty, Quit Like a Woman is at once a groundbreaking look at drinking culture and a road map to cutting out alcohol in order to live our best lives without the crutch of intoxication. You will never look at drinking the same way again.

Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad


Austin Kleon - 2019
    Keep Playing. Keep Creating. In his previous books Steal Like an Artist and Show Your Work!, both New York Times bestsellers, Austin Kleon gave readers the keys to unlock their creativity and showed them how to become known. Now he offers his most inspiring work yet, with ten simple rules for how to stay creative, focused, and true to yourself—for life. The creative life is not a linear journey to a finish line, it’s a loop—so find a daily routine, because today is the only day that matters. Disconnect from the world to connect with yourself—sometimes you just have to switch into airplane mode. Keep Going celebrates getting outdoors and taking a walk (as director Ingmar Bergman told his daughter, ”The demons hate fresh air”). Pay attention, and especially pay attention to what you pay attention to. Worry less about getting things done, and more about the worth of what you’re doing. Instead of focusing on making your mark, work to leave things better than you found them.Keep Going and its timeless, practical, and ethical principles are for anyone trying to sustain a meaningful and productive life.

Beyond Order: 12 More Rules For Life


Jordan B. Peterson - 2021
     In 12 Rules for Life, clinical psychologist and celebrated professor at Harvard and the University of Toronto Dr. Jordan B. Peterson helped millions of readers impose order on the chaos of their lives. Now, in this bold sequel, Peterson delivers twelve more lifesaving principles for resisting the exhausting toll that our desire to order the world inevitably takes. In a time when the human will increasingly imposes itself over every sphere of life—from our social structures to our emotional states—Peterson warns that too much security is dangerous. What’s more, he offers strategies for overcoming the cultural, scientific, and psychological forces causing us to tend toward tyranny, and teaches us how to rely instead on our instinct to find meaning and purpose, even—and especially—when we find ourselves powerless. While chaos, in excess, threatens us with instability and anxiety, unchecked order can petrify us into submission. Beyond Order provides a call to balance these two fundamental principles of reality itself, and guides us along the straight and narrow path that divides them.

The Story of Stuff: How Our Obsession with Stuff is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities, and our Health—and a Vision for Change


Annie Leonard - 2010
    Leonard examines the “stuff” we use everyday, offering a galvanizing critique and steps for a changed planet.The Story of Stuff was received with widespread enthusiasm in hardcover, by everyone from Stephen Colbert to Tavis Smiley to George Stephanopolous on Good Morning America, as well as far-reaching print and blog coverage. Uncovering and communicating a critically important idea—that there is an intentional system behind our patterns of consumption and disposal—Annie Leonard transforms how we think about our lives and our relationship to the planet.From sneaking into factories and dumps around the world to visiting textile workers in Haiti and children mining coltan for cell phones in the Congo, Leonard, named one of Time magazine’s 100 environmental heroes of 2009, highlights each step of the materials economy and its actual effect on the earth and the people who live near sites like these.With curiosity, compassion, and humor, Leonard shares concrete steps for taking action at the individual and political level that will bring about sustainability, community health, and economic justice. Embraced by teachers, parents, churches, community centers, activists, and everyday readers, The Story of Stuff will be a long-lived classic.

The Nesting Place: It Doesn't Have to Be Perfect to Be Beautiful


Myquillyn Smith - 2014
    It has everything to do with embracing the natural imperfection and chaos of daily living.Drawing on her years of experience creating beauty in her 13 different homes, Myquillyn will show you how to think differently about the true purpose of your home and simply and creatively tailor it to reflect you and your unique style—without breaking the bank or stressing over comparisons. Full of easy tips, simple steps, and practical advice, The Nesting Place will give you the courage to take risks with your home and transform it into a place that’s inviting and warm for family and friends.There is beauty in the lived-in and loved-on and just-about-used-up, Myquillyn says, and welcoming that imperfection wholeheartedly just might be the most freeing thing you’ll ever do.