Reads.

On the shelf

Twenty-two books I keep coming back to — on creativity, the mind, habits, time and the body. Each month one comes off the shelf for the Book-Review Club. Tap any cover for a short take and where to buy it.

• How to Be an Artist Jerry Saltz A working critic's field manual for actually making the work.
• Steal Like an Artist Austin Kleon Nothing is original — and that's the permission you've been waiting for.
• How to Have a Beautiful Mind Edward de Bono Being interesting is a skill — and it can be learned.
• Normally Weird and Weirdly Normal Robin Ince A warm, funny tour of a neurodivergent mind that creates anyway.
• Hyperfocus Chris Bailey Your attention is the whole game — here's how to protect it.
• Eat That Frog! Brian Tracy Do the hardest, most important thing first — every day.
• The Power of Habit Charles Duhigg Cue, routine, reward — the loop that runs more of your life than you think.
• Four Thousand Weeks Oliver Burkeman You will never get on top of everything — and that's the liberating part.
• How to Do the Work Nicole LePera The patterns you bring to the easel were set long before you picked it up.
• Humankind Rutger Bregman Most people are decent — and assuming so changes how you teach and lead.
• What I Talk About When I Talk About Running Haruki Murakami On the long, unglamorous discipline that sits under any creative life.
• Why We Sleep Matthew Walker Sleep isn't the thing you sacrifice for the work — it's where the work consolidates.
• Creativity, Inc. Ed Catmull How Pixar built a culture where good ideas survive contact with reality.
• Hello World Hannah Fry A clear-eyed look at the algorithms quietly shaping our choices.
• Think! Edward de Bono We're taught what to think, rarely how — de Bono goes after the how.
• Before the Coffee Gets Cold Toshikazu Kawaguchi A gentle novel about second chances, and the time you actually have.
• Atomic Habits James Clear Tiny changes, repeated, are how a creative practice actually gets built.
• The Key to Happiness Meik Wiking What actually moves the needle on a good life, from the people who measure it.
• The Achievement Habit Bernard Roth Stop wishing, start doing — design-school thinking applied to your own life.
• Weird Ideas That Work Robert Sutton The counter-intuitive practices that actually grow innovation.
• Braving the Wilderness Brené Brown On the courage to stand alone — which every honest maker eventually needs.
• David and Goliath Malcolm Gladwell Your disadvantages might be doing more for you than you realise.