Books or art that fundamentally changed the way you think or feel?

We are influenced by everything that we read and see. But what are some works that really changed the way you think? Not just in a small way, but big, BIG.

1. The Essential Rumi is a book I found late in life that changed the way I think and write.
2. The short story "That Evening Sun" by William Faulkner has haunted me since I read it, and I've always wanted to create something that memorable. I strive to do that.
3. The paintings and drawings of William Blake are beautiful and strange, and a little frightening. They bring me to the edge of my dreams.

Books that have been life altering for me are mostly pop-sci.

The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bi-cameral Mind by Julian Jaynes
Chaos: The Making of a New Science by James Gleick
Order Out of Chaos: Man's New Dialogue with Nature by Prigogine and Stengers

These were all essential to developing my worldview and assumptions regarding the nature of existence and God. All of the ways I have answered the "Big" questions that make sense for me and give me a seamless background of existence in which to operate as a subject.

My American Heritage by Ralph and Lucile Pannell Henry.

This is one of the first books I remember reading myself. It's basically an anthology of high points of American letters arranged for children, young people and adults. It contains several poems by James Whitcomb Riley, excerpts of poems by Longfellow, patriotic sayings and writings such as Nathan Hale's one life speech and Travis' Letter from the Alamo. It was about 300 pages filled with wonderful stuff that gave me my sense of what it means to be an American. Unfortunately, as I've grown older I have become cynical toward the optimism embodied in this book. I personally believe every child in America should be required to read this book before age 13.

In a negative way, Looking for Mr. Goodbar by Judith Rossner taught me that everything popular is not necessarily good. This realization caused me to spend the next twenty years buried in the classics with only a necessary foray into popular fiction now and again which tended to reinforce what Rossner had taught me.

Joseph Campbell "The Power of Myth"

Karen Armstrong's "A Short History of Myth"

David Perrings

The First Circle by Aleksandr Solzehenitsyn, 8th grade personal read, changed my view of absolute ethics.

The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse, 12th grade English project, change my view of purpose.

Brother to Dragons by Robert Penn Warren mid 30's, made me more tolerant of those that weren't as firm in their philosophies as they advertized or professed.

When I was twelve, I read Sylvia Plath's Collected Poems over and over again. When I was twelve, Sylvia was the only one in the world who "got" me. My favorite poem, the first "grown up" poem I loved, was her little poem "The Mirror" . "The eye of God four-cornered": perfect.

At seventeen, I couldn't get enough of T.S. Eliot's Collected Poems, especially "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock." The poems were all so mysterious; reading them felt like wandering through Daedelus' labyrinth; reading them felt like being me.

When I was twenty-one, a senior in college, I decided I would be the next James Dickey. His poems are so tough; none of this hurt hurt moaning, they're all muscle, but they're all muscle the way a little boy desperate for attention walks into the room and shows everyone his bicep.

Now I just want Sylvia to feel my bicep.

I have listed two books, clearly i could list more books and other things.

The important aspect of these to books which make them BIG is that they expanded the boundarys of my inhabital universe beyound what it was before.

David Perrings

Most recently Children's Pat Lives, which I have - naturally! - lent to someone but hope to see again in due coursee. The book was an eye-opener, totally convincing me of the truth of reincarnation, through its accumulation of evidence.

Previously, I read Finding One's Way With Clay, by Paulus Berensohn, which taught me that "my life is my clay"

As far as art is concerned, the transitional paintings of Piet Mondriaan blew me away: those apple trees that are still apple trees but also abstract arrangements of lines. And then in the 50s I discoverd the paintings of Nicholas de Stael - great slabs of fairly flat but Vibrant colour, but, like the Mondriaans simultaneously abstract and clearly also landscapes or whatever...fifty years later I bought in Paris the illustrated catalogue of an exhibition of hs work. Naturally, I've also lent that to someone a year ago, but when I bumped into her recently, she invited me round to collect it...

I'm having trouble limiting myself. Books carried me through many stages of my life. If I think of something most recent, I would have to pick The Alchemist, because this simple story got me thinking again about following my dreams. It was the reason I returned to art (drawing my comic strip) and writing.

Is Children's Past Lives a recent book? I went through a big reincarnation period sometime around the early 1980s. I've never completely decided whether I believe in the literal truth of reincarnation, but the possibility of it offers answers to so many questions about life and so much reassurance about the meaning of suffering that I've decided to adopt it on at least the symbolic level.

Hmmm. Something big. I feel changed by almost any book or art I experience. But big. OK.

Crime and Punishment. The psychological power of that book has never left me and draws me back again and again.

Philosophy in a New Key. Enlarged my mind to consider what it really is to be a human, a symbol making animal.

Cat's Cradle. Vonnegut opened my eyes at 15 with satire and humor. Thanks, I needed that.

If I come back tomorrow it will be three different books. An oddity, memory.

I know just what you mean, scrivener, about different books resonating on different days.

I was just thinking about The Brothers Karamazov this afternoon: Ivan's story about the Grand Inquisitor "reluctantly" concluding that Jesus would have to be put to death once again if he came back to walk the earth again. It's a very odd story, because I don't know if any other Christian writer would have dared to make the Grand Inquisitor so persuasive. He links up with Hannah Arendt's insight about the banality of evil, I think.

This topic's been here for however-long and it's only just occurred to me what my answer is.

The Hotel New Hampshire. When the King of Mice jumps out the window with all his animals in a box that says "Life is serious but art is fun." And the whole city mourns for him. And then you get the whole "Keep passing the open windows" thing. But mostly what sticks with me is "Life is serious but art is fun."

It reminds me of this poem I loved when I was a kid:

The optimist fell twelve* stories
And at every window bar
He called out to his friends,
"All right so far!"

*Or some such number

The one book that made me stop & think about my life, my marriage & my relationship to my children was Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter It was the Charles Archer translation & came in 3 thick paperbacks & when I finished I wanted to pick the 1st one up & start reading all over again. If I had ever wondered what I, a 20th century woman living in Ohio could have in common with a woman in 14th century Norway, the answer is "everything."
Sigrid Undset won the Nobel prize, but her life was not happy. When the Germans invaded Norway in 1940, she had to flee the country. The only way she could get out was through Sweden, into Russia & then Asia where she flew across the Pacific to America. Her son, Anders, was killed in the war. The journey left her in ill health & she died in her late 40's.
I always said that I wanted to read Kristin Lavransdatter one more time before I died. Now there is a new translation by Tiina Nunnally. I've read her translations of Sigrid Undset's novelJenny & a collection of her short stories & I now have the new translation of Kristin from Amazon. I plan on reading it this winter. Not in any danger, but I do have some eye problems & prefer to read the book rather than hear it on tape. The first time I read it, my husband was still working, the 2 older girls were living in CA , the other 4 kids were in school, we were raising a grand-daughter & I was working part time at the library. As I read, I was able to become aware that letting things "just flow along" was also making a decision. But every person brings their own uniqueness to a work of art. To read this book will give the reader a good, exciting story. Even if it doesn't change your life.

I remember in a class at BGSU we read a book by D. M.Thomas about the holocaust. The book is called The White Hotel. I remember thinking that I didn't understand how the whole world couldn't be moved by that book to be more compassionate. I couldn't understand why a book like that wouldn't change the world.

Magritte's "Red Model" got me married off.

Sargent's "ambergris smoke" rripped my heart out in it's beauty, that life so simple could be so gorgeous.

Kundera's "The book on laughter and forgetting", a scene where a friend of the wife describes how giving in even when your partner is wrong is a part of loving.

all of e e cumming's dancable poems, and many of his somber poems.

and then there's Pablo Neruda. how did i live before he turned his hand, pal up,

and offered up his world of stone and wood and fire?

As a kid:
Cosmos by Carl Sagan
The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinsky
Papillon by Henri Charriere

As a teen, it was:
The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy
The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone
The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
J.B. by Archibald MacLeish

Most recently it's been:
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson
Hafiz’s poetry
Hart Crane’s poetry
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje

(* link fixes)

#17 Could you tell me what you like about Hart Crane's poetry? I'll be teaching him later this semester, so I'm very interested in your insights!

MarianV, I loved your post about Sigrid Undset. It's amazing that Kristin Lavransdatter was written by someone under 40. Her insights about life are so remarkable and deep.

In high school:
The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff

High school through college:
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig
Golden Wind, Zen Talks by Eido Roshi

Since college:
The Way of Aikido by George Leonard
And to a lesser extent: Jorge Luis Borges & H.P. Lovecraft

#20

I discovered Tao of Pooh and Zen and the Art... much later in life; I have greatly enjoyed them. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed Tao of Pooh. A colleague suggested it to me way back in 1989 or 1990 and I dismissed it. I finally read it just within the last two years.

I discovered Borges in my creative writing classes: remarkable stuff.

Some books that profoundly affected my views as a young teenager: Eric Hoffer's The True Believer: Thoughts On The Nature Of Mass Movements, Wilfred Trotter's Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War, and The Art of War by Sun Tzu.

Plus lots of romantic British, Breton and French adaptations of Arthurian literature. Mallory was (and is) a favourite of mine, with T.H. White being a natural second choice.

There are lots more, but those are the first ones that came to mind when I encountered this thread.

Theresa, I actually had a teacher in high school who assigned Zen and the Art... I think the first time I read it, I got like 20% of it. I'm surprised every time I go back to it how much I didn't get before.

Discovering Borges felt like learning to read all over again.

I read Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur when I was in college and was obsessed with the Arthurian tales for decades afterward. The chapter that really got me was the one describing how Tristan and Isolde's fell in love with each other - there was something at once naively romantic and brutally honest about the way these things happen to people, and somehow the naiveté seemed as genuine and true as the brutal honesty. They were all wrapped up together.

It also impressed me that Isolde was, in essence, a professional. She practiced herbal medicine, and not in a casual way.

I've been reading Leaves of Grass the last two days. It just keeps getting better and better, the older I get.

The beautiful imagery of Crane's poetry speaks to me. Take for example, this poem:

My Grandmother's Love Letters

There are no stars to-night
But those of memory.
Yet how much room for memory there is
In the loose girdle of soft rain.

There is even room enough
For the letters of my mother's mother,
Elizabeth,
That have been pressed so long
Into a corner of the roof
That they are brown and soft,
And liable to melt as snow.

Over the greatness of such space
Steps must be gentle.
It is all hung by an invisible white hair.
It trembles as birch limbs webbing the air.

And I ask myself:

"Are your fingers long enough to play
Old keys that are but echoes:
Is the silence strong enough
To carry back the music to its source
And back to you again
As though to her?"

Yet I would lead my grandmother by the hand
Through much of what she would not understand;
And so I stumble. And the rain continues on the roof
With such a sound of gently pitying laughter.

But more than beautiful imagery, i love Crane's attention to metaphor and the way he works science into his constructions.

For example, there are so many ways one could read the poem "Sunday Morning Apples" -- religiously, scientifically, sexually, etc. Here's a quick pass: i like playing with forms and the dedication to Somner tips me to look for ways that the poem is built like a cubist painting -- the words aren't only used for their external symbolic meanings, but for their internal meanings too which become building blocks of the poem.

Crane's words are sensual, organic, full of energy -- runs, toss, bursting. But they're also arranged to uncover and describe underlying structures in nature. For example, action words describe a leaf falling in a way that points to the the underlying structure of a still life which in turn points to renewal and more action. The leaves fall in "faithful strength of line" that evokes an underlying shape. Yet in this still, cold (literally) figure is a purple shadow (buds on branch tips) promising the renewal of spring bursting through winter's still life.

In Crane's poem, a boy and a dog run spontaneously while the poem also points to timelessness -- children and dogs running together through "perennials of light". Written in 1922, quantum mechanics was still just a sparkle in the eye of four year old Feynman, but i wonder ... with Crane's preoccupation with space, time and light, what might he have pulled out of his hat in our day of loop quantum gravity and m-theory?

My siblings and i ran around with dogs while growing up near the Brandywine. The name of that river -- Brandywine -- suggests intoxication with the beauty of the land. "Seasonable madness" and "aerial wine" intoxicate our imaginations so that in that state we can see the the lines, the structures, the "secrets" of the underlying Cubist forms that still burst with explosive energy.

SUNDAY MORNING APPLES
To William Sommer

The leaves will fall again sometime and fill
The fleece of nature with those purposes
That are your rich and faithful strength of line.

But now there are challenges to spring
In that ripe nude with head
reared
Into a realm of swords, her purple shadow
Bursting on the winter of the world
From whiteness that cries defiance to the snow.

A boy runs with a dog before the sun, straddling
Spontaneities that form their independent orbits,
Their own perennials of light
In that valley where you live

(called Brandywine).

I have seen the apples there that toss you secrets,-
Beloved apples of seasonable madness
That feed your inquiries with aerial wine.
Put them again beside a pitcher with a knife,
And poise them full and ready for explosion-
The apples, Bill, the apples!

Hart Crane, 1922

What a wonderful pair of poems! It's fun to read them one after the other, because they are equally good, and yet so different. Crane's poem has to be read slowly and softly; it almost whispers, like the rain. Sommer's, after the opening lines recalling gentle autumn, leaps and jumps with all those quick b's and s's!

I know that recently I read a few books that all had the same sort of theme but were all totally different. I didn't pick them on purpose but it seemed to be some sort of divine hand of guidance. I think the order you read books in is also important. The books were:

*The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac
*Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse
*Altered States by Paddy Chayefsky
*Teddy from Nine Stories by J. D. Salinger

All touched on the idea of Buddhism...has really got me thinking!

#29: Oh, what a cool reading list! You quite possibly have created an interesting college syllabus here. I bet you are thinking, indeed!

Like #20/CarlosMcRey
In high school:
The Little Prince, but mostly it was the book's illustrations that got my mind wandering off in class. I still go back to it and get insights that never dawned on me when it was read the firs time as required reading in high school.

In order as I got through college:
(Friends' recommendations) The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig
e.e. cummings's Hollow Men
Pabo Neruda's Isla Negra
Becket's Waiting for Godot

(Plays we mounted, reading both the English and the first Filipino translations)
Sartre's No Exit
Karel Capek's R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots)

(Required) Garcia Marquez's Hundred Years Of Solitude -- simply blew my mind and completely overwhelmed me.

#21/TheresaWilliams
"I discovered Tao of Pooh and Zen and the Art... much later in life; I have greatly enjoyed them. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed Tao of Pooh."
Doesn't it? It looks simple, yet The Tao of Pooh keeps me company whenever I think something about the world is wrong...

(EDIT/Oct 23: Theresa, I have recently discovered touchstone and made the necessary input on the titles above. I seem to not get a match on e.e. cumming's Hollow Men, though.)

I have had many awakenings through books. However, the ones that spoke to me the most were:

The road less travelled. I read this after a heartbreaking break up and it just opened my world to other ways of being. It helped me stay away from unhealthy relationships as well.

Franny and Zooey - where to start. Because of this book I have a significant detachment to anything and everything - which I think is the opposite of what Salinger probably wanted to achieve. Yet, Franny speaks for me about how I see the world - because really, whats the point of doing anything. I refuse to do something just because everyone does it. Yet, I don't like snobs. Even to be a snob is to be invested and I refuse to be invested - i know in the book Franny resolves this and I hope to - oneday.

The third book is a short story Mazes by Ursula K. Le Guin which is contained in my sociology book, The production of reality. It is very hard to describe the beauty and power of this short story, of a lab rat with intelligent thoughts who thinks of us as cruel aliens. The rat is trying to communicate by the means of his knowledge. It really taught me to examine any moment I am in and really ask myself - is this really what it looks like. Is there a solution I don't see.

Karen, I especially appreciate your thoughts on Salinger. We just went through a debate about him at this group: I'm definitely in your camp about Franny and Zooey. Cliff, however...

Keep the Aspidistra Flying is a work that influenced my thoughts on money and society and how each of us chooses to carry on.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love made me approach writing in a different manner and touched me with its sawdust minimalism.

Breakfast of Champions unmasked the omniscient author's voice and taught me the importance of playfulness.

War All the Time energized me to write free form poetry and motivated me to experiment with prose and examine what might be considered lazy or obscene writing.

The Zoo Story helped introduce me to a new medium with the power of stilted, but riveting dialogue.

Bird by Bird reassured me that I indeed was not alone in my struggles as a writer.

Krishnamurti taught me how to breathe.

Mere Christianity taught me how to forgive myself.

A beautiful list, dcafaro.

Keren, I love your thoughts on Mazes. I think Ursula LeGuin would be thrilled by the way it changed your perspective on things. This is what writers live for.

Roethke wrote in one of his notebooks: "To each his own labyrinth." Isn't that cool?

High School - "Crime And Punishment".
Graduate School - "The Denial Of Death". Ernest Becker
Maturity - "Der Ring Das Nibelungen". Wagner`s Operas

How did "Der Ring Das Nibelungen" change the way you think and feel, deabvt? I'm especially interested, because a related work, the medieval epic poem Das Nibelungenlied has had an impact on me.

DO TELL, deabvt! Margad, deabvt and I are friends from the blogging sphere. Oh the things he can tell us about opera! As for me, I've been getting into the works of Andre Dubus and he is teaching me a lot about third person narration. And margad, you and marian have really gone hog wild on the Culver Butts story: wow! You've left me in the dust! I have recently been busy finishing up school and now am getting some work done on what I HOPE is novel #2.

While going to university, my eyes and world were opened by the existentialists...

Nausea by Sartre

The Stranger by Camu

Out of My Life and Thought by Albert Schweitzer was a book I happened across on my parents' bookshelf when I was a teenager, and its approach to life has inspired me ever since.

End of the Affair by Graham Greene
Parsival by Wagner
A Bar at the Folies-Bergère by Manet
Chase the Buffalo by Pierce Pettis
Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus by Rainer Maria Rilke
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
Brothers Karamozov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Gulag Archipeligo by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Church Dogmatics II.2
Autumn Rhythm by Jackson Pollock

I am sure there are others.

#41: I have books by Albert Schweitzer, too. One I found at a library book sale, and I was very disappointed that it wasn't in the library anymore to inspire people.

#42: Duino Elegies and Sonnets to Orpheus are both kept within my reaching distance.

Which translation do you prefer?

I like Mitchell's which is in the collected work. I have about three others though, and dip into them frequently.

Of course there is the original.

I have two translations, one by David Young and one by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy. I like them both and read them both and my mood determines which one I pick up. Two examples. First, the Young (I can't write this as it is printed in my book, with the indentions; I don't know how):

If I cried out
who would hear me up there
among the angelic orders?
And suppose one suddenly
took me to his heart
I would shrivel
I couldn't survive
next to his
greater existence.

Beauty is only
the first touch of terror
we can still bear.

NOW THE BARROWS AND MACY (Barrows and Macy do not indulge in indentions)...

If I cried out, who
in the hierarchies of angels
would hear me?

And if one of them should suddenly
take me to his heart,
I would perish in the power of his being.
For beauty is but the beginning of terror.

Arctic, how did Parsifal change your outlook? I'm more familiar with the old British legend of Perceval than the story in Wagner's opera, but it's a wonderful tale. The story of the wounded Fisher King is very deep and mysterious and spiritual. Stories that consist entirely of metaphors can be really fun.

Dear all,
I find it very difficult to give a list of books that fundamentally changed the way I think or feel. Not that there are none - no, there are too many...
It happened so often I came out of a book with new eyes, a new heart and a transformed head.
But I don't want to have a too easy escape.
Here are some of the most important without a hierarchy intended - some have already been quoted:

- Ethics by Spinoza
-Faust & Poems by Goethe (and also a certain numbers of books about Goethe, to be frank)
-The Book of Hours & Duino Elegies & Sonnets to Orpheus& (New)Poems by Rilke(anything by Rilke, in fact, also the Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge)
-The Magic Mountain & Lotte in Weimar by Thomas Mann
-War and Peace by Tolstoy
-A Room with a View & Collected Short Stories by E.M.Forster
-Lost Horizons by James Hilton
-Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
-By the Open Sea by August Strindberg
-In Search of Lost Time(orRemembrance of Things Past) by Marcel Proust - I'm rereading this now.
-Art by Auguste Rodin
-Aby Warburg by E.H.Gombrich (and some other books about Warburg)
-Art and Myth by Ernesto Grassi
-Myths to live by by Joseph Campbell
-Small Souls and some other novels by Louis Couperus
-Vergeten Liedjes by P.C.Boutens (sorry, this is very important for me, but there's no translation)
-Phenomenology of the Spirit by Hegel
...

Well I think this has already been too much, so I will take leave here, without speaking of Gerard Manley Hopkins, Borges, Orwell's 1984, or Sartre's Nausea (which was fundamental but in a negative way).

As an Art historian I find it even more difficult to speak of paintings and sculptures, because
most of them change me in some way - hard to say which one is more fundamental than another.

So fundamentally, I'm changing every day, I'm afraid. This is what I call: Living

The artist I am most influenced by is Kasmir Malevich. And, Pablo Picasso.
Well, there's far too many artists that have really struck a cord with me and influenced me.

Books......well, the most wonderful book I have read was The Alchemist and I think I put this on every blog I belong to on LT. I can't believe I only read it for the first time a few months ago. This was an excellent book! It was the first time I had to take some time to ponder things during and after reading a book.

One of my favorite works of art is "Artist in his Studio" by Rembrandt. It's a small painting at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston that completely captures the daunting nature of the creative process.

Great thread. I enjoyed every entry. Didn't discover it till now. Not sure where to start.
1. Emerson "The American Scholar"--this address "found" me and defined me, during my rookie year of teaching, back in '88. I return to it about twice a year, and never let my Philosophy class go without it.
2. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance made me want to buy a Harley and tour the U.S. The Harley never happened, but I have never done a road trip the same since I first read this back in '86. And I've covered about 37 states since then as well.
3. Kerouac, On the Road (same as #2)--because of Kerouac, I always write prolifically on road trips.
4. Heat-Moon, Blue Highways (same as #2 & 3)--because of Heat-Moon, I take county roads and watercolor en plein air as a lifestyle.

I remember the first time I read Blue Highways. It was the first book that made me want to travel.

Yes. What bothers me is that I'm not comfortable interacting with strangers in small towns the way Heat-Moon obviously was. I have this fear that I will be regarded as "nosy" or "pushy." I love to observe small town life while I'm on the road, but the people have to come to me. That's unfortunate, as I know many, many friends who can approach strangers fearlessly and wholesomely and just find ways to draw them out. I feel that I'm more of the reticent kind, as Steinbeck appears in "Travels with Charley" (another favorite).

DMT: I know what you mean. My husband is more outgoing than I am. I'm more of an observer; he likes to interact. I think we need to be just the way we are. You paint because you are a quiet observer. I write for much the same reason, but my writing is much different than Moon's.

You certainly nailed that one, Theresa. When I paint (especially en plein air) I feel that I'm invisible (I laugh at Emerson's "Transparent eyeball" metaphor, but that describes it well--"I am nothing; I see all"). I'm more comfortable out painting small, quiet towns and vacant properties. By the way, are you still writing in that small studio/trailer out back of your property?

Haven't seen you on Facebook since forever. Wondered if you're still doing it. It's been a wonderful outlet for me, and drew me into the blogging world as well.

The books that have fundamentally affected the way I see myself and understand the world around me----there are so many----how could I possibly even begin to list them!

Books have been my companions, my best friends, my mentors, my teachers.....in every era of my life from childhood on to now, books have been a great resource and they continue to be. I recently picked up a book on pet therapy, just noticed it at the library, and now I am considering getting the training----well, first I need to get a dog!

I am becoming a painter. Currently there are a number of books on art and the creative process which I value:

The Art Spirit, Robert Henri
Art and Fear, David Bayles & Ted Orland
The Gift:Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World by Lewis Hyde
Free Play, Stephen Nachmanovitch
Wabi-Sabi:for Artists, Designers, Poets and Philosophers, Leonard Koren

I love Lewis Hyde's books. David, I am on Facebook more than I am here. But I think there's something about the settings that kept people from seeing each other's posts. It only generated posts of people with whom you were in frequent contact. I changed my settings, and now I see everyone's posts. Come to my profile for all my latest news! I've been writing and publishing. It's been great!