100 books like How to Do Nothing

I love, love, love this book. What a gem, a prayer of love to plants and nature, a dense but light book of ‘indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge, and the teachings of plants’ as it says in the sub-title.

Robin Wall Kimmerer is a decorated Professor of Botany, a mother, a writer of grace, power, and elegance, a keeper and sharer of indigenous wisdom, and an overall generous human being. If there is one book you read this year, let it be this. It filled my heart with joy, hope, and wonder. I loved her other book, Gathering Moss, too.

So much to learn about trees!

After reading this novel, I discovered Powers’ list of 25 (out of many more) books that influenced him while he was writing the book. Now I have read a significant share of these books too, and I have incorporated fascination and facts in my own writing. This novel, perhaps more than any other I have read, has led me to examine the vast and disturbing question that seems to haunt Powers—our alienation from nature, why? To question this, I feel, suggests a search that may lead to the “new story” our culture needs.

Powers is a brilliant writer, and I admire his ability and finesse to weave together an extraordinary cast of characters, factual and historical material, and a reverent feeling for another form of life: trees.

This book was introduced on the first day of art school. Then, it was reintroduced and repeated by each professor for the duration of my education. As such, it's fair to say that it's an enduring force within academic circles. 

The book touches on major points essential for any informed artist and the need for modern artists to subvert our viewers' hidden biases. It eloquently teaches artists to dive beneath the surface of a work to understand the unseen, the context, and the subtext. Ways of Seeing skillfully inspires a new lens through which to view the world and urges its readers to peel back the layers of meaning from even the most minimal artworks.

For me and so many other artists, this book was an awakening and is one that I turn back to often and am doomed to cite for eternity. It's a transformative journey that challenges and… show more.

Emergent Strategy draws lessons from both the natural world and science fiction (inspired by Octavia Butler’s work) to provide guidance and wisdom for organizing and movement work.

adrienne maree brown offers a smorgasbord of principles, concepts, quotes, and stories to support organizers and leaders to solve complex problems, instigate social change, and create lasting impact. This book is a great source of inspiration for managers and leaders feeling stuck in the face of great uncertainty.

Kelsey builds an air-tight case for why the planet needs us to get more in touch with our emotions. Emotions dictate all our behavior and action in the world, and so we ought to know which emotions are most effective and in what situations to catalyze actions for climate justice. Because Kelsey is a scientist herself, she buttresses her case about the role of emotions in saving the planet with powerful data. We don’t need more books on “ten things you can do to save the planet.” What we do need is more books like this, which show us why doom and gloom isn’t the only game in town.

If I’m being completely honest, I bought this book because of my very large professional crush on both of the editors. I work in climate science, so I have signed up to have my heart destroyed over and over again. I read about all the species that are dying and threatened, the ecosystems collapsing, the fishermen fighting for their livelihoods, and the coastal communities slammed by storms.

This book covered all these topics, but if you’re going to learn about this, (as we all should), we also have to be given the reasons to keep at it. We have to not lose the will to fight or the ability to see beautiful, generative, and imaginative solutions and outcomes. This book helps with that, too. 

Until I discovered this book in my early twenties, most of my reading about the natural world had come from male writers who encountered that world in a spirit of discovery and domination.

Dillard’s relationship with the creek she visited seemingly daily was a different approach entirely—she came as an acolyte, ready to watch, listen, and learn what the wild things of that stream had to teach her. Her writing is introspective and contemplative, and it swings wildly between esoteric readings and embodied experiences on the ground, creating a breathless, mind-body reading experience.

Although it is now a well-known fact that many actors are fighting for our online attention, and will do just about anything to get and keep it, Wu puts it all in historical perspective by going back to the 1800’s and the beginning of print advertising. 

He then traces our relationships with ads across a century and four screens: movies, television, home computers, and finally the cell phone. For the same reason that I enjoy reading history books to try to make some sense of the world’s current political chaos, this masterpiece by Wu should ensure you that nothing about human greed has changed in any major way: the tools of exploitation just get more powerful and more addictive.

A hugely ambitious mix of text and graphic design, in which typography is used in bold and disarming ways. It is also a genuinely compelling sci-fi novel about very, very, big ideas. Filled with meta-narratives, in-jokes, artistic references, and mixed media, it’s an interesting alternative to that other oft-cited cult classic House of Leaves. As someone who has worked as both designer and editor, I was blown away by Hughes’s ability to combine a good story with such avant-garde design. The themes communicated will give you much to contemplate – or ramble on about to any friends you successfully corner. A staggering achievement destined to be a future cult classic.

A bit dated, but fun.

“Advertising” used to be considered a good field for English majors, because they have “a way with words.” But advertising has morphed. It’s become “marketing” or “public relations” or “publicity”—more about graphics now, than words. Different.

Lord Peter Wimsey however still has “a way with words” in this cozy, so he goes undercover in a London advertising agency to investigate a suspicious death. With PG Wodehouse-like verbal hi-jinks, he ingratiates himself into the copywriting department, composing jingles about cleansers and such.

Silliness ensues. Then an interesting question arises: are there ethics in this business where people are rewarded for telling lies to sell what nobody actually needs? In such a culture, can Peter discover the truth? Can the words of any advertiser be trusted?