Adam Savage
Adam Savage, of Mythbusters fame, has written a combination memoir and maker advice book. With decades of experience making props and sets for major studios like Industrial Light and Magic, then 20 seasons of the incredibly popular Mythbusters show, Savage knows what he is talking about. Always a …
Alison Bechdel
Cartoonist Bechdel’s The Secret to Superhuman Strength is the story of her life-long fascination with fitness and strength. Interwoven in this memoir are her experiences coming out, various obsessions with types of physical fitness, and her grinding anxiety over the need to perform and produce. Gripping, sometimes funny, …
Everyone from professional fine artists to the occasional weekend crafter knows how incredibly expensive supplies can be. It’s not just the materials you need to create the piece itself, but also all the supporting supplies, be it it rulers, mats, easels, scissors etc. If you are just starting a new …
Danny Wallace
Micro-nation
founder, comedian and author of Friends Like These Danny Wallace is the British equivalent of AJ Jacobs (or perhaps vice versa?). He’s happiest when he’s on a quest, a self-created adventure to achieve something. Wallace comes up with a set of self-created rules, then strives to follow …
Joshua Foer
Journalist Joshua Foer had no idea he’d being going down the rabbit hole himself when he first covered the U.S. Memory Championships. The contest, not one to draw large headlines or ecstatic crowds, is still an intense competition. Participants must memorize the order of a random decks of …
Penn Jillette
Yes, that Penn, of Penn and Teller. One has a first name, one has a last and together they’re magical. *ba-doom-ching*
Jillette, a man prolific in many things – writing, magic, acting, opinions – was also quite prolific in the weight area. After a nasty health scare, he …
Marie Kondo
This is by far the most useful decluttering book I have ever read. “Decluttering” may not be quite the right term. I think “divesting” would be better. Rather than buying a new set of plastic bins, adding shelves, or finding clever ways to nest one item in another, …
After years of reading other authors, I finally decided to take the plunge and write my own book. The Devil’s Advocate’s Guide to Planning Your Business Website is now available from Amazon.com in print and kindle.
Save yourself time, money and aggravation!
Do you need to build a business …
Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner
The third in their wildly popular Freakonimics series, Dubner and Levitt once again turn conventional wisdom on its ear. If you listen regularly to their free and awesome Podcasts, much of the content will be familiar. Unlike their previous books, which seek to disprove …
David Bayles & Ted Orland
This is the book that should be given to every freshman art major, to anyone who wants to start making art but can’t seem to get started and to every artist who is stuck. While it may seem deceptively short, the content packs a wallop. …
Gretchen Rubin
Though not as profound as her wonderful book The Happiness Project, Rubin still manages to mine some excellent life truths. Narrowing her focus from general life happiness to happiness at home and with family, Rubin looks at our attitudes toward our stuff, house-mates and local environs. In …
A.J. Jacobs
Like his other other fantastic books, The Year of Living Biblically and The Know-It-All, Jacobs uses himself as a guinea pig to run a series of tests to improve himself. While other writers have undertaken this in a more serious vein (Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project being …
Hugh MacLeod
Macleod has done a marvelous job of distilling the basics of being successful at being creative. This is not the same this being monetarily successful at being creative. Like The Happiness Project, Ignore Everybody makes you take a good long look at your perceptions and how outside …
J
eff Yeager
Lesson number one rule in Yeager’s amusing and instructive books: cheapskate is a GOOD word. I couldn’t agree more. Rather than going down the usual money-saving how-to roads, namely the “how to save money by reusing old string and cardboard boxes to make shoes” and the “just …
Gretchen Rubin
Rubin is a book-dork and I love her for it. Like me, when she has a problem to solve her first reaction is to find a book on the topic. After deciding that, on the whole, her life is good but there were areas that need work, Rubin …
Daniel Gilbert
…As long as your brain’s guess about the next word turns out to be right, turning black squiggles into ideas, scenes, characters, and concepts, blissfully unaware that your nexting brain is predicting the future of the sentence at a fantastic rate. It is only when your brain predicts
