5 Books to Expand Your Thinking in 2024

Plus 8 More About Art Making!

©Ann Mitchell 2021, The Five Elements, handmade accordion book, cyanotype on watercolor paper

You know the books that stay on your shelves no matter how many times you move or clear things out? The kind you’re continually telling your best friends about? The following books are in that category for me and, since they’re about how we think, I see these all as creativity books.

The usual creativity-related suspects that you might already know are: The War of Art by Steven Pressfield, Art and Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland, The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, Bird by Bird by Anne Lamotte, Austin Kleon’s Steal Like an Artist, Creative Quest by Questlove, Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit, The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin and even Atomic Habits by James Clear.

Here’s some new ones to add to the list:

1. Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why by Laurence Gonzales

   I figured I’d start with a surprising one, not something you’d expect on a creative thinking list. I can’t recommend this book enough, it’s super engaging and a fluid read packed with interesting information about how we process the world around us. Originally, I’d picked up the book for the title, but while it seems like it might just be about disastrous events, it’s really about the “Why” and that is all in the mind. It’s our daily assumptions, the mindmaps we create, that make us blind to what’s actually happening. After reading this book, I found myself applying its principles to every aspect of both my personal and creative life.

2. Daybook: The Journal of an Artist by Anne Truitt

   I’ve no idea how I missed this in Grad School - but I’m thankful I found it. The journal covers about seven years, during which she prepares for exhibitions (solo at the Whitney etc.), tries to figure out how to keep making art when she and her husband have to move to Japan, raises children, doubts, makes art, discusses art, discusses life, reads bedtime stories and generally figures out how to maintain an art practice while being a mother, wife and friend.

3. My Creative Space: How to Design Your Home to Stimulate Ideas and Spark Innovation by Donald M. Rattner

   Ok, this combines two of my loves, architecture and science! Using forty-eight “science-based” techniques, the book takes you through the process of maximizing your home space, covering everything from the type of music to play while making art, to what colors stimulate creativity - even getting into smell - “certain aromas are believed to improve mood, mental processing and idea formulation…” I just love this stuff.

4. Home: A Short History of An Idea by Witold Rybczynski

   The idea of “home” has been a touchstone for me and this book really helped me see it in a fresh way. When something is so intrinsic to our everyday life, we tend to just assume it’s always existed. But in the Middle Ages it wasn’t the norm to break domestic activities up into separate spaces. The author takes you on a very interesting trip through time, showing how domestic inventions had enormous ripples on how we live. He also foreshadows the rise of the Instagram influencer as he looks at how Ralph Lauren went from designing neckties to eventually becoming a life-style marketer in the 1980s through the development of his Lauren Furnishing Collections.

5. The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain by Annie Murphy Paul

   Years ago, I’d discovered Mario Martinez’s The Mind Body Code which looked at studies that found a direct correlation between our mental attitudes about aging and longevity - positive thinkers in general live 7+ yrs longer. This book flips the script to say that our body, our feelings and even our movements, all impact how we think. Think of it as they’re finally starting to take our “gut instinct” seriously and there’s a lot of emerging science to back up the importance of connecting on a deeper level with your inner senses.

So, that’s my list, hopefully some of them are new to you - I’d love it if you’d add to the list with your own favs in the comments. Also, if you haven’t already seen it, check out Ethan Hawke’s TED talk Give Yourself Permission to be Creative.

Next month I’ll be posting suggestions on entering photo competitions.