Austin Kleon - 10 good books 📚

Happy fall, y’all!

Here are 10 things I thought were worth sharing this week: 

1. A list of books that got me through the summer.
    
2. I uploaded a free, printable PDF of my zine, “What Does A Seed Look Like?” and a video tutorial showing how to turn a single sheet of paper into a 12-page booklet onto my new zine page. 
    
3. I’m reading Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals and listening to Robin Wall Kammerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants on audiobook.
    
4. One of my favorite writing tips is to keep a paper dictionary on your desk. “Dictionaries heighten my senses… They make me wonder what other things I’m blind to because I haven’t taught myself to notice them yet.” (For an example of how you can spin looking up a word into a piece of writing, see this recent Seth Godin post.)
    
5. Interviews: I talked to Brit Morin about creativity, I interviewed Rob Walker about The Art of Noticing, and my friends at Creative Mornings highlighted my conversation with Edward Carey.
    
6. Some eye-popping trailers: Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cure and Joel Coen’s The Tragedy of MacBeth. (I love Frances McDormand’s backstory for Lady MacBeth.)
    
7. Michael Azerrad on his time with Kurt Cobain. (I haven’t read Come As You Are, but Our Band Could Be Your Life is one of my all-time faves.)
    
8. I love my raunchy comedy: we enjoyed This Way Up on Hulu and binged the 3rd season of Sex Education on Netflix. (Their music budget must be humongous because the soundtrack is fantastic.)
    
9. RIP Richard H Kirk of Cabaret Voltaire (love this clip of him from Synth Britannia) and RIP Julz Sale of Delta 5 (my kids used to go nuts when I played “You” in the car).   
    
10. Advice from an Emmy winner: “Don’t be afraid to disappear.”