Steal Like An Artist by Austin Kleon

I won this book in Erin Bowman's Giveaway.  This is what she said in her original post:

I bought it, took it home, read it in under an hour, and experienced the euphoria I had reading the original blog post all over again. I wanted to jump up and shout, “Yes! This! Exactly this!”
This book is a little piece of genius and I think that Every. Single. Person. leading a creative life ought to read it. Or at least flip through a couple pages.

Book: Steal Like An Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative by Austin Kleon

Summary: Steal Like An Artist is an illustrated list of 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative....Uh, the title is pretty self explanatory.  If you want more, check out the author's blog post about it.

My thoughts:  It's hard to put into words why I connected with this book so much.  It just had some great ideas, written simplistically.  One of the moments that really resonated with me was point two- "Don't wait until you know who you are to get started."  Often this is just an excuse not to start, but as Kleon points out, being creative is the best way to discover who you are.

For those of you who may be concerned by the title, this book is NOT advocating plagiarism and clearly defines plagiarism versus stealing like an artist.  If you are pursuing a creative life (and, really, to be human is to be creative) then this book is worth your time.

Steal Like An Artist Receives a FakeSteph rating of...