There are a few authors whose books I will always buy. I don't even need to know the subject. I've read enough of their work to know that their topics and their style of writing will be interesting, illuminating and fun.
On the fiction track, I include Stephen McCauley (The Easy Way Out), Anne Tyler, (Digging to America), Michael Chabon (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay), Meghan Daum (The Quality of Life Report) and Elinor Lipman (The Family Man).On the nonfiction front, I include Malcolm Gladwell (Blink), Po Bronson (Why Do I Love These People?), Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love), Stephen Levitt (Freakonomics), Julia Cameron (The Artist's Way) and of course Daniel Pink.
Pink, the author of A Whole New MInd, is so inspirational to me that I'm not even envious. A former political speechwriter, he's managed to transform himself into a seer of trends and writer of useful, brillant books. So it will not surprise you that when I heard he had written a book called Drive, which I believe is about motivation, I bought it without a second thought.
By the way, Dan Pink is a creative lawyer, too. He went to Yale Law School, and like nearly every Yale Law grad I know, left it all behind. In fact, as far as I can tell, Yale Law is the nation's leading creators of non-lawyers, but that's a whole separate blog post.
As a Boalt grad and current associate who is getting ready to leave the law, I suspect that Boalt may be up there with YLS in creating non-lawyers. Solidarity in creativity!
Posted by: JF | January 13, 2010 at 03:50 PM
Michael, If you enjoy Elizabeth Gilbert, definitely check out her TED presentation on creative genius. It's a wonderful perspective that I think you'll enjoy.
http://feeds.feedburner.com/TEDTalks_video
Best,
Pete
Posted by: Pete Berridge | February 14, 2010 at 04:03 PM