Book Review: Do The Work

Lately, I've been doing 4-5 books in parallel. A book in the gear bag, a book on the night table, one floating around the house, one on the iPad, and something lightweight on the phone.

The latter of these, my pick for the iphone, needn't be lightweight in sense of subject matter, but rather for phone use I tend favor books digestible in short chunks. Books by Seth Godin, Hugh McLeod or Guy Kawasaki come to mind. It was in this vein that I came across Do the Work by Steven Pressfield and thought I'd add it to my reading list.

I was really rather disappointed by the book.

It's a sort of motivational book about execution, and pushing through resistance (outside and self-inflicted) to complete creative works.

While this is a topic that can help many, the problem is that the book doesn't have a lot of substance to it. Unlike Godin, who draws many on-point analogies from experience, or McCleod's ability to cut through to tell-it-like-it-is fact, Pressfield's book is filled with labored rhetoric, repetitive truisms and the like.

I didn't find it of much use. YMMV.

Do the Work

Book Review: Evil Plans

I've been a fan of Hugh Macleod since I discovered his blog about five years ago. I also enjoyed his first book, Ignore Everybody. So, when he announced Evil Plans, I pre-ordered and waited for it to show up.

It's good material, but I can't recommend it as strongly as I did the first. Like IE, there's a lot of recycled material from his blog here, both in the writing and the comics. And that's ok. Even expected. Add to that that the book is very sparse (single paragraph pages in places, pages empty but for one comic, etc), and it's a very lightweight book. If you are a words-per-dollar person, this book isn't for you.

Now that said, many of his ideas are thought provoking; and what price can you put on a good idea. If the book gets you to think critically about ONE thing, that would be worth the price, no?

There were three such ideas in the book for me, and so I'm glad I bought it. One of those will be the subject of an upcoming post...

Evil Plans: Having Fun on the Road to World Domination

Book Review: Ignore Everybody

I finished up Hugh MacLeod's book, Ignore Everybody: and 39 Other Keys to Creativity the

othr day, but am only getting around to blogging about it now.

If you are a fan of MacLeod's, are a GapingVoid reader, and have read his How to Be Creative writing, then there's not a lot new here for you.

I recommend buying it anyway. The ideas are ones that are worth revisiting and reassessing from time to time. More than that though, the book is one you'll want to share with a friend or two. If his drawings are cube grenades, then the book is an Idea Bomb.

And on the subject of sharing it, the author had a nice promo going where for the first 1000 people to order the book on amazon and who sent him a copy of the receipt, he would mail a second copy, signed, free of charge. It's a great promotion, and now I have my nice signed/doodled copy to keep in ideal condition, and my Idea Bomb version to pass around to friends, blowing up their brains, hopefully. [Note: he appears to be doing another round of this]