My 2015 reading

This is the time of year that the "Top [fill-in-the-blank] of 2015" lists abound.

For me it's booklists that always succeed in tempting me to click in. I love to see how many I've read or imagine which one will be the next great read. (Do you have a favorite book list? Send it to me!)

Inspiration

These are the lists that have inspired me lately...

• Elizabeth Gilbert's My favorite books of 2015 
• Popular books of 2015 on Goodreads
• The Best Children's Books of 2015 on BrainPickings (with links to the 5 previous years lists)
• The 15 Best Books of 2015 on BrainPickings
• The 10 Best Business and Productivity Books of 2015, Fast Company
• Gretchen Rubin's (The Happiness Project) book club board on Pinterest
• BrainPickings bookshelf
• Designers and Books website

So, inspired, I took a look at the lists of books I've read. I've been keeping lists for years and have read hundreds (but probably thousands) of books in my lifetime.

It's said that what you do every day matters more that what you do every once in a while.

Of all the daily habits that have defined my life, reading is near the top for most defining. (I don't count social media fluff-n-stuff, which soaks up so much time. This year less FB and more reading FTW! )

I do count the audio books that I listen to on my commute and while doing housework. Hearing a book read aloud is a powerful way to hear the author's voice or be transported back in time or into a new world.

I don't have a complete lifetime list, which makes me sad. There was a span of life where I didn't keep track...too busy, too tired, not reading much.

But I've started to add all the books I can remember reading to my Goodreads bookshelf. Some day I'll dig out all the old early lists and catch up...or not.

I have kept track faithfully over the last eleven years, though.

By the numbers

2005 Started to keep track again

32 Average books read per year over the last 11 

2010 Began listening to audio books regularly 

1-5 Ratings for each book: 1- hate it, 2 - didn't like it, 3 - OK, 4 - liked, recommend, 5 - loved it, must read. 

31% average for Rating 5 

In 2015...

41 books read or listened to (more if I had kept track of children's picture books)

11 books with Rating 5

66% Audio books compared to paper books 

Genres 21 fiction (11 sci-fi), 15 nonfiction (6 memoir/bio, 3 biz), 5 YA/children

Themes Creativity, sketch art and novels about art, Neil Gaiman, Ursala LeGuin 

Summer Reserved for light fluffy beach reads or YA/children's books or favorite book rereads...Crazy Little Thing, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Eat Pray Love

Overdrive App of choice for reading or listening, because it's free with a library card (I have 2). Downside, it's difficult to find recent books on audio, or you have to wait. Can now listen streaming on the web, though. I mostly download the books so I don't trash my data plan when I'm away from wifi. Sometimes I use Kindle, but finding good free books is harder.

I take notes or post gems of truth on my Twitter feed, @ellenking. I used to keep a notebook of notes and quotes and enjoy looking back through them, but it's very time consuming.

Yes, I read a real book with a yellow highlighter to catch the parts that ring true. No, I won't mark your book if you lend it to me.

I do love reading on my phone too. It's easier to read faster, just flicking through the screens quickly scanning the words. I feel like I'm making so much progress in less time. Downside, highlighting and bookmarking is possible by not convenient. And it doesn't have that book smell or weight in your hand.

Some of my favorites from 2015:

The Stoneheart Trilogy, Charlie Fletcher. Three books about a 12-year-old boy, Eddie, who runs for his life in London, and across time, to fight the strange powers that animate the statues and monuments. He finds friends and discovers his own power and strengths. This series would be a great read-aloud for your kids.

The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt, is about a tragic accident that allows teenage, Theo, to become obsessed with a work of art and risk so much for it. It drags a bit in the middle but listening to it on audio keeps it moving along and engaging. What part does fate play in our lives? How much can we shape outcomes? How do we handle tragic grief? What power can the love of art have in our choices? "A really great painting is fluid enough to work its way into the mind and heart, in ways that are particular to you. Yours, yours, yours."

The Element, How finding your passion changes everything, Ken Robinson, and The Crossroads of Should and Must, Find and follow your passion, Elle Luna, are two books about creativity, finding "flow" and discovering what your passion is. So inspirational and informative. Maybe I'm not unique in my fears and blocks, but I am unique in my combination of talents and passions. And so are you.

I was so motivated by these two books I ended up covering my wall with post-it notes in order to organize my ideas about where I spend my time and what I love and value. Highly recommended. (The books, not the post-it notes activity.)

We Were Liars, E. Lockhart, was such a page turner. Lie upon lie. It has a surprise ending that I didn't guess at all.  Couldn't put it down.

A Kiss Before You Go was a touching memoir of love and loss after the death of his wife, done by designer and artist, Danny Gregory. So honest, so vulnerable, so touching. Taking up sketching again helped him heal and move on. Sketching is good for the soul, just saying.

You Are Stardust, Kelsey and Kim, is a beautiful children's book that reminds us of our place in the universe and our relationship to the earth. Wonderful illustrations and poetic writing. A gem to share with your child and cherish yourself.

Currently I'm finishing up Big Magic, by Elizabeth Gilbert and loving it. I like her writing style and I'm really absorbing the ideas. We think creativity is reserved for a talented few, but if you're human you're creative. It's part of what makes humans human.

This has been fun summing up my 2015 reading. Every once in a while it's good to take inventory of the things you love. Now it's time to get back to reading.

What should I read this year?

Ellen

Quoteable:

 “A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic,” Carl Sagan asserted in his iconic Cosmos series, admiring the “funny dark squiggles” that have the uncanny power to transport us, across time and space, into the mind of another.

Also read, Galileo on why we read and how books give us superhuman powers, at BrainPickings.

I have never known any distress that an hour's reading did not relieve. ~Montesquieu

You shouldn't read about French cooking when you're hungry

I finished My Life in France, by Julia Child, today.

I'm extremely satisfied and a little sad. I've carried that book with me to the beach, twice, to Utah, twice and to Georgia.

I usually devour a book within a week or two, but not this one. It was to be savored.

The way she speaks, the way she describes her surroundings, her friends, her food and her cooking.

I would read a page or two and daydream about the experience, or imagine the taste of food.

I can almost taste her first meal in France:

It had arrived whole: a large, flat Dover sole that was perfectly browned in a sputtering butter sauce with sprinkling of chopped parsley on top. The waiter carefully placed the platter in front of us, stepped back, and said: "Bon appetit!" 

I closed my eyes and inhaled the rising perfume. I then lifted a forkful of fish to my mouth, took a bite, and chewed slowly. The flesh of the sole was delicate, with a light but distinct taste of the ocean that blended marvelously with the browned butter. I chewed slowly and swallowed. It was a morsel of perfection.

Of her country cottage, "La Peetch" in France, she says:

Bumping up the rutted driveway, we were struck, by...the shockingly fresh and inspirational jolt we got from our lovely hideaway. It was the cool, early-morning layers of fog in the valleys; Esterel's volcanic mountains jutting up out of the glittering sea; the warming Provencal sun and the bright-blue sky; the odor of earth and cow dung and burning grapevine prunings; the colorful violets and irises and mimosas; the olives blackening; the sound of little owls talking back and forth; the sea-bottom taste of Belon oysters; the noisy fun of the marketplace, the deeply quiet, sparkling nights with a crescent moon hanging overhead like a lamp. What a place! (p. 340)

I love that she was optimistic. In moving nine times from country to country she would first set up her kitchen, then take time to learn the language well enough to shop in the markets, and then build friendships through her dinner parties. She made friends with the market vendors, and got to know the local restauranteurs as well as ventured into the countryside.

She and her husband, Paul, valued their friendships. At a particularly busy time in their lives, she recalls:

"I just don't know if we have the time for a trip to France right now,"I sighed. Paul nodded. 

But then we looked at each other and repeated a favorite phrase from our diplomatic days: "Remember, 'No one's more important than people'!" In other words, friendship is the most important thing—not career or housework, or one's fatigue—and it needs to be tended and nurtured. So we packed up our bags and off we went. And thank heaven we did! (p. 329) [It was on that trip they decided to build a small house in France for a getaway.]

I love that she loved her work and threw herself into it, to a good old age.

As always, my work gave my life form, forced me to be productive, and helped me keep a good balance. (p. 406)

I love how thorough she was in her research of ingredients and the testing of recipes.

I knew my slow, careful approach drove my intuitive co-author crazy, but it was the only way I knew how to work. I was basically writing these recipes for myself. And I was the type of person who wanted to know everything about a dish—what worked or didn't, why, and how to make it better—so that there would be no unsolved questions in our master recipe. (p. 341)

The ingredients for bread were always the same: flour, yeast, water, and salt. But the difficulty was that there were ten thousand ways of combining these simple elements. Every little detail was important, we learned: the freshness of the yeast, the type of flour, the time of rising, the way one kneaded the dough, the amount of heat and moisture in the oven, even the weather. (p. 344)

I love that one of her proudest achievements was perfecting the French bread recipe. It ranks #2 on her list of 100 favorite recipes.

She thought good cooking should take time and care. She truly believed that good French food was an art.

But a careful approach will result in a magnificent burst of flavor and a thoroughly satisfying meal, perhaps even a life-changing experience. (p. 413)

I loved how real she was. She knew it sometimes didn't turn out. And she kept a sense of humor.

One of the secrets, and pleasures, of cooking is to learn to correct something if it goes awry; and one of the lessons is to grin and bear it if it cannot be fixed. (p. 327)

Hat tip to Carrie for suggesting I borrow her book to read. It's a little more dog-eared, sorry. It made me happy for a long time.

So hungry now for good, real French food.

e

Videos of Julia cooking

The French Chef - French bread
So informative. (I think I learned to make this in my 7th grade Foods class with Mrs. Fisher. Who knew.) Love the bit with the professional baker in France. "As soon as it thumps, you think that it's done. But it ain't. Turn the oven off and let it sit for 5 more minutes...It's just a matter of practice!"

The French Chef - Boeuf Bourguignon (black and white)
"I find these wooden spatulas awfully useful." "These wire whips are awfully useful." I think this is one of her very first episodes. The lighting has weird shadows, the camera angles are off, and there's a washer and dryer in the background. The studio scheduled for the taping burned to the ground beforehand, so the Boston Gas Company loaned them their demonstration kitchen to shoot those first shows. She had to work on an electric stove, which she detested.

The French Chef, the Lobster show (in color)
How to cook it and how to eat it. They must be lively because they go off so easily. (Holding a lobster flapping his tail) "He's a kinda a boy worth buying." About the lobster's stomach...it's called the lady because it looks like a little lady. Someone told us about it and sent one to us in an envelope.

The French Chef, Omelet
Use the right pan, 20 seconds, 2-3 eggs, a bit of water, hot pan. Swirl, jerking till it turns over on itself. "If no one is watching you can take you hands and push the edges together if it's not well formed." (Someone laughs in the the background.)

A&E Biography
"Groundbreaking for cooking shows." "She's a national icon.""She was incredibly optimistic. That goes a long way. You can get a lot done." "Incredible energy. That's her secret." ...BUTTER!

Book - Imagine: How Creativity Works

I have loved reading Jonah Lehrer's book Imagine: How Creativity Works.

Not too concerned
I'm not too concerned about recent controversy concerning a Bob Dylan quote. When I read, I don't take everything on face value. I look for the bits of truth that ring true.

I agree with Roy Peter Clark that it's worth reading despite the problems.

Rather than abandon it in its disgrace, you find yourself engaged and turning the pages, and suddenly your hand grabs for the highlighter to mark up this excellent paragraph about the origins of creativity, and then that one.

Okay, so Lehrer made up a quote and then lied about it. Not good, but doesn't taint the whole.

So he reworked some earlier work—big deal. If it's good, give it to me.

He simplifies neuroscience. Thank goodness, because I can understand it enough to urge me to further reading and study. (I searched out Geoffrey West and listened to his hour discussion about the dimensionality of cities.)

Application
I've been able to apply what Lehrer writes about to my life.

Here are a few examples, that I found interesting and true, in my experience:

On relaxing and indulging in distractions:

"Occasionally, focus can backfire and make us fixated on the wrong answers. It's not until you let yourself relax and indulge in distractions that you discover the answer; the insight arrives only after you stop looking for it." (p. 36)

This happens to me so often, it is ingrained in my work process. I stop, take a break, put it aside to work on something else, or just turn away from the computer for a few minutes. When I return, the answer (or the problem with the design) is obvious. Walks work, weekends work, vacations work even better. I always come back with a new perspective and a fresh look at the work.

On horizontal sharing and conceptual blending:

"The benefit of horizontal interactions—people sharing knowledge across fields—is that it encourages conceptual blending, which is extremely important part of the insight process...our breakthroughs often arrive when we apply old solutions to new situations." (p. 37-38)

This is why the best designers have a wide range of varied interests and a lot of different life experiences. They are better able to draw from ideas from these areas and recombine them in interesting and creative ways. The talented designers I know have full interesting lives with unexpected backgrounds and un-design-related talents.

On cities and creativity:

"It is the sheer density of the city—the proximity of all those overlapping minds—that makes it such an inexhaustible source of creativity." (p. 183)

I love going into Philadelphia because I always think new thoughts, talk to new people and find unexpected art. It's a scavenger hunt for new food, boutique shop finds, and interesting interactions...gluten-free peanut butter and chocolate "cake", brightly-colored rustic figurines from Peru, and a discussion with a parking attendant about the mural in his lot.

Other interesting truths
The stumped phase of creativity, the struggle, forces us to try something new. Because we feel frustrated, we start to look at problems from a new perspective. It's a normal part of the creative process. (p. 16, 17)

Imagination is unleashed by constraints. You break out of the box by stepping into shackles. (p. 23)

A relaxed state of mind allows us to look inward toward the stream of remote associations in our right brain...insights come in the shower, when we are in a positive mood, when we are not looking for an insight.  (p. 31-33)

Taking an idea, really seeing it, drawing it, making it real requires attention, focus and hard work. (p. 68-72)

Milton Glaser: Design is the conscious imposition of meaningful order. (p. 71)

Let go of the part of the mind that judges, the worry about doing it "wrong", so we don't constrain our own creativity. (p. 104)

Sleeping is the height of genius. [Love this one! It's the ultimate letting go, associations are free wheeling and the mind is relaxed.] (p. 107)

Travel: when you escape from the place you spend all your time, the mind is suddenly made aware of all those errant ideas previously suppressed. You start thinking about obscure possibilities. (p. 126)

Office conversations are so powerful that simply increasing their quantity can dramatically increase creative production; people have more new ideas when they talk with more people. (p. 153)

The most creative ideas, it turns out, don't occur when we're alone. Rather they emerge from our social circles, from collections of acquaintances who inspire novel thoughts. Sometimes the most important people in life are the people we barely know. (p. 204)

Worth the read
The publishers have pulled the book from the shelves, but if you get your hands on one, it's worth the read. Only if to wonder what all the fuss is about.

And, I agree with Roy...I'm busy learning. Tell me where the mistakes are in the book, and let me get on with it.

Other learnings
Critical insights into creativity

More about the controversy:
Controversy about a Bob Dylan quote
JL resigns from the New Yorker
Another false quotation found
A cautionary tale for today's overachiever

Videos, interviews
Captivating, accessible, never dull
How Creativity Works
How Creativity Works, an interview
The best way to learn at college: Be an outsider
The science of insight creation

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