A random walk through  a very creative mind
925807
A collection of short stories with very little to tie them together.  But most of them quite engaging on their own.
49790
400+ drawings, created by an artist who gave herself the exercise of drawing a picture every morning over coffee. The sometimes very imaginative drawings show a whimsical, stream-of-consciousness, childlike style with lots of animals morphing shapes, the occasional snippet of philosophy (wealth does not simply equal money), tips about horseback riding, a 12 days of Christmas theme with horses, but more often than not there is no continuity between them, which makes sense considering this is one person's drawn version of Morning Pages. Some of the drawings are very engaging, others look like the product of someone who just had to draw something (and did). As an exercise it is very interesting, providing a window into the artist's imagination and people who want to be inspired to loosen up with their art will find it helpful and may want to try this themselves. At the beginning and end the artist writes about this project, about her philosophy, and about some of the specific drawings, but in the version I saw there were no page numbers so this last was not very helpful.
3386985
A clever, casually written walk through the mind of a deep thinker and successful entrepreneur. Lucas's approach is brilliant and honest. He's writing about his own experiences and has reversed engineered the pathway to success. This book summarizes it for us. I loved the concept of "negative knowledge" from Antifragile and Lucas applies it well in this work. Also, the personal stories that he shares are very touching, sincere, and memorable.
3114837
Creative thinking as defined by the author is "the ability to re-arrange, re-formulate, re-pattern, mix, merge and construct already known and new 'thought forms' in different combinations" and he aims to keep your creative mechanism humming along productively and enthusiastically.

Drawing from his knowledge of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), he offers simple mental strategies and keys to unlock your creative powers, your enthusiasm and a whole lot more in
"Creative Problem Solving Techniques To Change Your Life." Well done. Highly recommended.
3224861
This book will ultimately blog your mind!  I was absolutely shocked at how clever this book turns out to be once you start reading it.  Talk about having some real skill for creativity and humour.

I am not even sure I can fully describe what goes on in this book.  Half the time you're just baffled at the plot of the story and the way it's put together.  The other half of the time, I think was pulling at many subtextual metaphors.

To help with this review, it's best to read the quick Q/A from the author, and the excerpt from the book.  I absolutely loved this book.  I loved the creativity in this book.  It's pretty inspiring.  I love that there's so much to learn from all the things that hide behind the text and the plot.
3403607
Autistic, savant, synesthesia, gay, self-written.  Wow, what a unique mix.
I'm a bit of a nerd (although after calculus, I was lost).  I enjoy memoirs that offer a glimpse into a different world - without being too self-absorbed (this leaves most of Hollywood out!).  This was a delightful read.
The first-person approach helped a lot - it made much of the technical information much more approachable.  I especially enjoyed the description of how Daniel associates shapes, colors, patterns, movement with numbers.

I think many of us do this in ways we aren't aware of.  There's one Bach ditty that always makes me feel like I'm running down an open, grassy hill.  I think dimes are comforting - they're compact, simple - and a gallon jug of them is probably worth more than another gallon of quarters.  What's UP with this?  BOABD provides a glimpse of how these crazy associations........... well, they're not so crazy.  It's the brain at work.

He has had a remarkable life - and is just getting started! He's been very gracious in working with researchers who seek to learn more about the human brain by studying his!  He tells us what it's like in an easy conversation - you don't have to have a PhD in brain research to understand it.
1598646
This personal memoir traces a lifetime of fascination with irregularities.  Really enjoyable and sustained dip into the life of a truly creative mind.
2054709
George is a pastor who lives for the simple, Pennsylvania life. One morning, as hes 516G4t+MFlLsitting on his front porch and talking to God, George is granted an unusual vision about the reality around us. As he slips deeper into the vision, George is guided by a strangely familiar voice. This voice sends him on a journey beyond the imagination; one full of self-discovery, and the realization that things are much bigger than they appear.

I greatly enjoyed the fact that this book is written in a journalistic style, which makes it easier for the reader to get absorbed in Georges experience. I like the unique way that the real world is described, and the author does a good job of making us feel Georges wonder, confusion, and profound realization at how the world really works. The dialogue is great for moving the story along, and I especially loved the conversations between George and the voice that guides him.
The author also explains that George was practicing a form of visual meditation, and he gives us examples that can help us try it for ourselves. This can be useful for someone who is curious about having visions of their own
4865195
Within a deep ocean of books on creativity this collection of personal stories from some of the worlds more well known artists and thinkers stands apart.  Creators on Creating: Awakening and Cultivating the Imaginative Mind edited by Barron, Montuori, and Baron is an inspiring collection of accounts from public people such as Frederico Fellini, Michel Foucault, Ingmar Bergman, Isadora Duncan, Igor Stravinsky, and Frank Zapa, as well as 33 others.  The time span of these selections covers several centuries, including a short statement from Leonardo de Vinci.  The editors covered a cross section of many different fields and took special care to also include reflections from women and minorities.

The selections were chosen to answer questions about creativity from the perspective of the creators themselves.  Topics include intelligence, gender, genetics, personality, age, psychology, environment, and fear.  Each of them is unique, yet bound within a common theme.  Essentially, they all reveal an internal process of self revelation giving the excerpts a distinctly human dimension.  They go below the public persona and often reveal deep internal struggles as well as experiences of joy.

As a result of this the reader comes away with a sense of commonality, as each of us can identify with similar choice points within our own lives.  It is a positive and enlightened collection of viewpoints on creativity, as opposed to The Dark Side of Creativity by Cropley, Cropley, Kaufman, and Runco (2010) who wrote a compilation of essays revealing how creativity can also be seen as capable of producing harmful effects.  In comparison, this reviewer found that the Baron, Montouri, and Baron book left him with a heightened sense of hope and promise rather than despair.  Anyone exploring their creativity could well benefit from reading this selection, and it can be sipped in small doses, and enjoyed one story at a time.
2546568
This book (is it a book?) is as creative as the man. He always comes up with something new and fresh, and this is no exception. I like the way the mini-essays (the "things") appear in the "booklets" or whatever they are, mixed in with the work, the installations, and all the rest. And maybe the coolest thing of all is dropping the different booklets behind the die-cut cover to see what will emerge. It may sound weird, but I endlessly play with this. 5 stars baby!

Harald Johnson
1282365
In Idea-Links, the author has put forth a clear and deceptively simple framework for thinking about the business of creativity.  By referencing his own deep experience in creating new business ideas, and drawing from others' notable experiences, he articulates the anatomy of a big idea, and creates tools and language that others can use to become more systematically creative themselves.  It couldn't be more different than the standard fare of creativity books that focus on wacky exercises to liberate your mind.  Link's is a very disciplined, methodical approach that requires no magic or inspiration to be effective--he provides a step-by-step process for gradually building your capacity to recognize and gather the building blocks of ideas, and then put those raw materials together for the breakthroughs that look to all the world like a mysterious "eureka" moment.
4851340
The title of this book is a good summary of what it's about. It's about how the human brain could connect with other human minds through the Internet.

Chorost describes the book as a thought experiment about things that are conceptually plausible, though not yet in practice. He gives many examples of how his ideas about the future are based in technology that is already in use. There are chapters on the technology that is used to detect brain activity, chapters on nanowires and optogenetics - both mechanisms that can read and write brain activity, chapters on communications protocols for sending perceptions and memories from one brain to another, chapters on examples of what might result from linking humans to the Internet, and chapters on a possible future collective mind. The writing style is accessible and clear. In an age when people talk about neural pathways over the dinner table, the science discussions in the book are open and written for the average informed person.

Woven in with all this science reporting and speculation, is a personal narrative about Chorost's already wired brain - he has chochlear implants. He also uses stories about his personal life and relationships to introduce concepts about how the human mind works. The book is a surprisingly easy read.

Some of Chorost's examples are part of pop culture. He talks about The Matrix and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, for example. He doesn't mention Dollhouse, but I think it contains the best example of hive mind as he describes it. I don't mean the plot line in Dollhouse where new personalities are injected into people electronically and they can suddenly be doctors or kick boxing experts. Chorost's says that brains can't learn that way. But there is a particular episode of Dollhouse where the character Victor is linked to a group of soldiers, who all act with awareness of what the other soldiers are doing. Yet Victor can use his own will and thinking, even while being aware of what the others he's linked to are doing and thinking.

That Dollhouse episode is an example of Chorost's vision of the collective awareness that would come with linking the human brain to the Internet: an awareness, a perception, but not an abandonment of one's own thinking, one's own self. He thinks this would be a good thing.

The ways of making that a reality involve wiring the brain with tiny wires and/or devices, or possibly using genetically modified genes that are triggered into action with light (optogenetics). The part of the process that he accepts without comment is that people would be willing to step forward and allow these things to be done to their brains. That seems like a pretty big sticking point to me.

The book has notes, a bibliography, and an index for those who want to explore in depth.
3946377
My pre-order reminder from Amazon appeared in my email inbox this morning, and what started as a giddy exploration into a book who's arrival I anticipated happily grew into a daylong picnic during which time I enjoyed the entire book! Liz Gilbert's sharing of her take on creativity and the creative life is an accessible, insightful, amusing, and engaging treat. Given that we are all creative beings, I recommend this across the board  especially for those who have forgotten they are creative. Her ideas are useful and liberating for those who identify themselves as creatives as well as those whose brilliance is expressed in ways such as a banker, a teacher, the plumber, or a street sweeper. May each reader kindly bring along fear in the backseat of her life and engage a journey of unknown destination.
864389
"Imagine" follows a similar format to "How We Decide" (which, if you haven't yet read, is also very good). The author takes us into the lives of real people -- highly creative people like Bob Dylan and the technologists and storytellers at Pixar -- and examines the sources of their creativity.  Sprinkled into this examination are insights about creativity resulting from scientific research.  In Lehrer's hands, this format works well.

Some of what you will learn from this book is not particularly surprising, but there were actually a few things that really caught my attention.  For example, if you are under the impression that brainstorming sessions are productive, you may be interested in the research reported in this book.  And Pixar has many practices that most companies would consider quite strange, but the implications for creativity are interesting.

An interesting, enjoyable read.
1902708
WHAT FUN!! Any time you can use your mind in such a fun, but profound way as this is just.....well, magic.  It's like using your own voice to say "Wake up you lazy brain" several times a day.  I will let you know what is different in my life in 21 days.  Thanks for the "simple" method.
4340542
Beautiful...Food for the mind and soul of the creative artistic connoisseur
4485604
This book is a compendium of insightful and thought-provoking interviews with a dozen well-known authors.  The interviewer, Melissa Studdard, has asked excellent questions getting to the core thoughts of the interviewees, which results in absorbing conversations.  Questions from radio audiences are also included at times in the dialog between the interviewee and Ms. Studdard.  I found the discussions a journey into the minds of creative people, especially in the areas of how the authors create and how a person can be more creative.  It is a good read for anyone who wants to peek into the minds of imaginative authors.