Pride and Prejudice

It was the Academy Awards that got me started thinking about Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Colin Firth won (as expected) for best actor in The King’s Speech, but I kept thinking about him as the definitive Mr. Darcy in the 5-hour BBC television mini-series of the book.

The newer, shorter Keira Knightley version is frequently on television, and I’ve seen it several times. I think Keira Knightley made a sparkling Elizabeth and I loved Donald Sutherland as her father and Dame Judi Desch as the imperious Lady Catherine de Bourg. But Matthew Macfadyen just didn’t cut it as Darcy. No smolder, no inner turmoil. And the movie moved too fast. The viewer doesn’t get the same feeling of suppressed desire and frustration, wondering when Lizzie and Darcy will finally get together.

In short, it doesn’t have Colin Firth.

I ordered the BBC series from the library and spent most of Saturday watching it. It didn’t disappoint. I fell in love with CF all over again. When the series was over, I wanted to watch it again. Instead, on Sunday, I watched Becoming Jane starring Anne Hathaway as the wildly popular author.

Soon, I will want to reread the original book, but until then, I’m filling in with Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife, an audio download from my library. This “sequel” to P&P tells of life at Pemberly after the wedding.

Next, I’m planning to dive into one of the Austen biographies. Obsessed? Not me. I could probably spend the rest of my life studying Austen, but there are too many other books I want to read, too. So many books, so little time.

How Reading Improves Creativity

Creativity frequently comes from combining concepts from unrelated fields. A classic example is Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press, which was a combination of hand printing with the use of a wine press.

Variety is the Key

One way improve creativity is to solicit input from a wide variety of subjects. And an easy way to do that is throughout reading. Ideally, your reading will include a mix of both topics and media, that is, books, magazines, news articles, websites, blogs. You also need to deliberately choose subjects outside your areas of interest. This allows concepts to spill over into one another.

“Reading remains an unsurpassed vehicle for the transmission of interesting new ideas and perspectives” according to Listening to Steven Johnson, author of  Where Good Ideas Come From. You can get a taste for his ideas by watching his TED talk.

A Reading Sabbatical

Bill Gates is a person who understands the value of reading, “My confidence and sense of curiosity—you can trace it back to just that I loved reading.” He famously takes an annual reading vacation compressing a vast amount of reading into short period of time.  While most of us probably can’t or don’t want to take a reading sabbatical, reading one book at a time won’t cut it, if only because of the length of time that passes between reading different books.

Never read one book at a time.

I solve that by never reading just one book at a time.

Current reading:

CD in the car – Dancehall of the Dead by Tony Hillerman –part of a project to reread the Hillerman novels which I started reading 25 years ago. This time, I’m listening to the CDs.

Audio of Mary Ann in Autumn by Armistead Maupin.

Creative is a Verb by Patti Digh

How Clarissa Burden Learned to Fly by Connie May Fowler

Unmarketing by Scott Stratten

Every day, I also read many online articles, blogs, news stories, and an occasional ebook.

What I Did on My Day Off*

First thing this morning, I made my weekly trip to the Tattered Cover bookstore. I love stores that open early in the morning (M-F 6:30 a.m.). While there I sampled three books:

Where Women Create, a quarterly Stampington publication

I love looking at creative people’s homes. This one featured Mary Emmerling whom I have been following for 20+ years.

Art Journaling, a semiannual Stampington publication

Great ideas for art journal techniques from a variety of artists.

59 Seconds : Change your Life in Under a Minute by Richard Wiseman

I especially liked his formula for a perfect diary, focusing on gratitude and the positive things in your life. I’ll be trying some of these techniques in my journal. Friday’s assignment is to review positive events in your life.

Back home, I listened to the audio version of Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson (also available in hard cover, CD and Kindle). I’m just getting started on this one. So far he’s talking about complexity of things such as large cities and the Internet which exponentially increase the occurrence of creative ideas.

In the car, I listened to the CD book People of Darkness by Tony Hillerman. It’s been 25 years since I first read it and am enjoying my second trip through Navajo country.

Lunch at Chick-fil-A with a booth of screaming kids behind me. I read the ebook, Freedom, Money, Time and the Key to Creative Success by Mark McGuiness at Lateral Action. It’s basically a 34-page ad for his upcoming course in creative entrepreneurship that makes the point that artists and creatives have an unfair advantage at Internet marketing because they create original content. Good information. I was très relieved when the little brats behind me finally finished their chicken nuggets and moved on to the play area. I need to find a new place to have lunch.

I downloaded three podcast interviews and an ebook from Lateral Action’s ecourse in creative entrepreneurship.

Watched a short video of the living kitchen (tweeted by Leo at ZenHabits).

Reviewed four papers for the university writing center (my day job) and grew frustrated by the constant overuse and misuse of semicolons. There are only two legitimate uses for semicolons, people. If you don’t know what those are, just don’t use them at all, okay?

At 3 p.m. I joined an online master class on blogging with Leo Babauta of A-List Blogging. I appreciated the brief reviews of four websites, but found the “chat” annoying.

That’s it. *Surprise! My day off was remarkably similar to every other day.

Confessions of a Bookaholic

One of my goals this year should be to read less. Last year, I read 139 books, including audio books, but not including ebooks. I know this because I have kept a book diary since I read years ago that Louis L’Amour kept one all his life. Also, I read so many books that I don’t always remember what I’ve read. Occasionally, I will pick up a book that sounds familiar and I can check my book diary to see if and when I read it.

Like many bookaholics, I read more than one book at a time—usually three or four. Today, I finished a novel, Just Breathe by Susan Wiggs. I am also reading Un-Marketing by Scott Stratten and Creative is a Verb by Patti Digh.

In the car, I always listen to a CD book, currently The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver.

Inside, I listen to audio books that I download from the library. Last night, I finished listening to Ape House by Sara Gruen and tonight I will start either Room by Emma Donoghue or The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson.

In addition, I have 19 books checked out from the library and 16 requested on hold, three of which will be ready for pickup tomorrow. I’ve ordered Making Handmade Books by Alisa Golden from Amazon because I not only like to read books, I also like to make them. It’s a sickness. Somebody stop me.

Illustrated Ken Robinson on Creativity in Education

I’m not always impressed with videos on the internet. They are usually little more than talking heads. Too many people use video just because they can, not because the video adds anything to the presentation. When I run across these videos, I tend to treat them as audios and just listen. Sometimes, though, people understand that video is a visual medium and give us something more than a chance to see them on camera. Case in point: here’s a great new illustrated version of my favorite TED talk by Sir Ken Robinson about changing education paradigms. Ask me if I’m surprised that Ken Robinson “gets it.”

 

Why I’m Finally Reading Un-Marketing and Why it Took Me So Long

I just started reading Scott Stratten’s Un-Marketing: Stop Marketing. Start Engaging and I’m enjoying it very much. I think it may turn out to be one of my favorite books of the year, and it’s only the second week in January. So why, when I ordered it last September, am I just now reading it?

First, I need to explain that I am a bookaholic. Several years ago, after running out of shelf space, I resolved to stop buying books and instead check them out of the library. That decision has worked pretty well—not that I completely stopped buying books (let’s be honest: that will never happen). But I did start using the library and quickly became what most people would consider a heavy user.

Now, when I hear about an interesting book, my first instinct is to go to the library website and request that it be delivered to my local library branch. I don’t think I quite understood at the time how well this would work. It turns out that the library almost always has whatever book I might want. The only drawback is that sometimes I have to wait a few weeks to get it.

With some books, however, I don’t want to wait, and so I buy those books. That was what happened last fall with Un-Marketing. I’d heard good things about it and didn’t want to wait until it was available from the library, so I bought it. Unfortunately, when it arrived, I had all these books from the library and they had a DUE date when I would have to return them. Obviously, I had to read them first.

Every week, more requested books would appear on the hold shelf at the library, and I had to read them first, too. As the weeks passed, Un-Marketing got buried. I almost forgot I had it. Consider the irony here. I bought it so I wouldn’t have to wait for the library and then didn’t read it because I had to read library books first. I may have to reconsider my book buying strategy.

Then a funny thing happened. I read a tweet from Barbara Winter @joblessmuse pointing me to Scott Stratten’s blog. I learned that many people consider his book not only wildly useful, but also funny. As it happened, I had just finished a book and was looking for the next one to read. Funny as well as useful sounded good to me.

So far, I’ve only sampled a few chapters and have found much to love about this book. The ideas are outstanding, it is funny, and the chapters are short (that may be another post). It gave me several ideas for future posts, so expect to read more about it over the next several days.

Meanwhile, you might want to find a copy. No matter what your business, this book can probably help. Now, I’m going to stop writing and get back to reading.