It’s winter again. Time to cozy up with some relaxing and inspiring creative books. Here’s the 2022/2023 winter reading list for creative minds.
Do you suffer from the winter blues? Does your creativity and healthy lifestyle take a dip in the colder weather? Winter can be tough for creative minds, but there are many habits to help you through the season, including reading. Winter is a great time to improve your creative reading habit and learn new skills to support and inspire creative living.
This winter reading list is packed with creative books, from biographies about famous creative minds to new science and methods for supporting creativity and well-being. If you’re looking for something to read that supports your creative life, this winter reading list is for you.
How to Be Weird: An Off-Kilter Guide to Living a One-of-a-Kind Life by Eric G. Wilson is the perfect book to start your winter reading. This guidebook is the creative’s guide to being weird to escape the monotony of everyday life and start living more creatively, purposefully, and joyfully.
It’s too easy to get caught up in the monotonous nature of our day-to-day lives, moving from task to task like a robot. Creative living requires weirdness and is the antidote to escaping the rat race and the creative blocks it creates.
In How to Be Weird, Eric G. Wilson offers 99 fun and philosophically rich exercises for embracing all the weird in the world around us. Take aimless walks, create a reverie nook, explore the underside of bridges, make tombstone rubbings, find your own Narnia, and more.
Embrace the weird and start living a unique and creative lifestyle.
The Imagineering Story: The Official Biography of Walt Disney Imagineering by Leslie Iwerks expands on the highly acclaimed and rated Disney+ documentary series of the same name to explore the fascinating creative history of Walt Disney Imagineering.
The entire legacy of WDI is covered from day one through future projects with never-before-seen access and insights from people both on the inside and on the outside. So many stories and details were left on the cutting room floor―this book allows an expanded exploration of the magic of Imagineering.
Fabric: The Hidden History of the Material World by Victoria Finlay is already a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice that unravels the unique history of textiles and cloth—how we make it, use it, and what it means to us.
Victoria Finlay shares stories about fabric from around the globe and throughout history that people have made, worn, invented, made symbols out of it, and sometimes even fought for it. Our relationship with cloth is a fascinating creative tale that continues to evolve today. Victoria Finlay began her research just after the deaths of her parents. Fabric is not just a material history of our world but Finlay’s own journey through grief and recovery.
Explore the history of fabric as well as unique stories like:
- How is a handmade fabric helping save an ancient forest?
- Why is a famous fabric pattern from India best known by the name of a Scottish town?
- How is a Chinese dragon robe a diagram of the whole universe?
- What is the difference between how the Greek Fates and the Viking Norns used threads to tell our destiny?
Dickens and Prince: A Particular Kind of Genius by Nick Hornby is a unique and creative perspective on two amazing creative geniuses.
From the bestselling author of Just Like You and High Fidelity comes a short, warm, and entertaining book about art, creativity, and the unlikely similarities between Victorian novelist Charles Dickens and modern American rock star Prince.
Creativity is all about making unique connections to create novel ideas, which Nick Hornby has done with his trademark humor and wit to admire two great creative minds, each with their own differences and similarities.
When Prince’s 1987 record Sign o’ the Times was rereleased in 2020, the iconic album now came with dozens of songs that weren’t on the original— Prince was endlessly prolific, recording 102 songs in 1986 alone. In awe, Hornby began to wonder, Who else ever produced this much? Who else ever worked that way? He soon found his answer in Victorian novelist and social critic Charles Dickens, who died more than a hundred years before Prince began making music.
Examining the two artists’ personal tragedies, social statuses, boundless productivity, and other parallels, both humorous and haunting, Hornby shows how these two unlikely men from different centuries “lit up the world.” In the process, he creates a lively, stimulating rumination on the creativity, flamboyance, discipline, and soul it takes to produce great art.
My Hygge Home: How to Make Home Your Happy Place by Meik Wiking is another inspiring book about creative living from another culture.
From the bestselling author of The Little Book of Hygge comes another exploration into the Danish concept of Hygge to help you transform your home this winter into a space to fit your needs and comfort and inspire a happy, creative lifestyle.
Now more than ever before, our homes need to be a place of comfort. With Hygge (pronounced hoo-ga), discover the art of surrounding yourself in comfort to create happy spaces.
Our homes are where we can truly be ourselves, unwind, and create special memories with our family and friends. With simple tips based on new research from The Happiness Institute in Copenhagen, this book reveals what makes a happy home: including the difference between space and size, the importance of lighting, and how to foster better connections with our loved ones.
No matter how much space you have or what your budget is, Meik explains how you can use color, light, and space to create your happy place and celebrate coziness the Danish way.
Marie Kondo’s Kurashi at Home: How to Organize Your Space and Achieve Your Ideal Life by Marie Kondo is sure to be another wonderful book to help you transform your creative home and spaces into calming and inspiring places.
Inspired by the Japanese concept of kurashi, or “way of life,” Marie Kondo invites you to visualize your best life by applying a mindset to find what sparks joy in your home and how you can curate your environment by imagining what your life could look like full of connection and free from any limitations. Learn how to embrace what you love about your life and then reflect it in your home, activities, and relationships, like creating a calm nook for creative work, scheduling time with family or friends, or having relaxing nighttime rituals that promote restful sleep.
The Burnout Challenge: Managing People’s Relationships with Their Jobs by Christina Maslach and Michael P. Leiter explores one of the leading causes of creative health and work challenges.
Christina Maslach and Michael P. Leiter are two pioneering researchers that have identified key causes of workplace burnout and revealed what managers can do to promote increased productivity and health. Citing a wealth of research data and drawing on illustrative anecdotes, The Burnout Challenge shows how organizations can change to promote sustainable productivity.
Learn the tools and knowledge to identify the signs of burnout and how to create environments and changes to support well-being and productivity. As priorities and policies shift across workplaces, The Burnout Challenge provides pragmatic, creative, and cost-effective solutions to improve employee efficiency, health, and happiness.
Endless Flight: The Life of Joseph Roth by Keiron Pim is a biography about the mercurial, self-mythologizing novelist and journalist Joseph Roth, author of the 20th-century masterpiece The Radetzky March and is considered one of the finest observers and chroniclers of his age.
Learn about the life of Joseph Roth from childhood in the town of Brody on the eastern edge of the Austro-Hungarian Empire to an unsettled life spent roaming Europe between the wars, including spells in Vienna, Paris, and Berlin. Explore his chaotic creative life with his restless search for home that speaks powerfully to us in our era of uncertainty, refugee crises, and rising ethnonationalism.
Endless Flight delivers a visceral yet sensitive portrait of his quest for belonging and a riveting understanding of the brilliance and beauty of his creative work.
How to Meet Your Self: The Workbook for Self-Discovery by Dr. Nicole LePera is a revolutionary guide, a kind and encouraging companion, and a comprehensive masterwork of self-understanding that will radically transform your inner work and outer world.
Coming off her amazing book, How to Do the Work, Dr. Nicole continues to offer a revolutionary, holistic framework for self-healing. Explore an interactive workbook designed to help every reader uncover their Authentic Self. Learn how to objectively and compassionately observe the physical, mental, and emotional patterns that you do not wish to carry into the future. This is a must for creative winter reading lists and healing.
Winter is the perfect time to do some deep work. As we spend more time inside and in solitude, it’s important to build healthy habits to fight back winter blues and discover new ways to grow and appreciate your creative self.
Kaffe Fassett: The Artist’s Eye by Dennis Nothdruft, Kaffe Fassett Mary Schoeser, NJ Stevenson, Suzy Menkes, Zandra Rhodes, and Sarah Campbell is the first major publication to explore the prolific career of Kaffe Fassett, one of the most recognized names in contemporary craft and design.
This book explores Fassett’s career and works in context for the first time, highlighting and widening the scope of his output over more than five decades. Drawing on original artworks, photographs, and archival material, it illuminates the work of this distinctive, influential artist and designer. Essays from design and fashion historians sit alongside striking visual material and insightful interviews with Fassett that provide additional context about this prolific artist.
Wild Maps for Curious Minds: 100 New Ways to See the Natural World by Mike Higgins and illustrated by Manuel Bortoletti is a creative book about maps sure to inspire curiosity and wonder.
The natural world has never been wilder. Discover 100 fiercely fun, curiously captivating, and amazingly adventurous maps answering questions you’ve never thought of learning through maps. Which nations have launched animals into space? Where are the world’s cat people? How many humans live in high-risk zones for natural disasters? How far do you have to travel to hug all fifteen of the world’s oldest trees? Where in the world do snakes live—or better yet, where can you avoid them?!
Find the thought-provoking answers to these questions and many more in Wild Maps for Curious Minds. This infographic atlas of nature’s most impressive wonders and eye-popping oddities is bursting with discovery, whimsical insight, and startling revelations that will change the way you see the natural world—and that celebrate our planet and the plants and animals with whom we share it.
The Waste Land: A Biography of a Poem by Matthew Hollis is a unique look at the making of T. S. Eliot’s celebrated poem The Waste Land on its centenary.
Renowned as one of the world’s greatest poems, The Waste Land has been said to describe the moral decay of a world after war and the search for meaning in a meaningless era. It has been labeled the most truthful poem of its time, as well as branded a masterful fake. A century later, it remains one of the most influential works ever written and yet one of the most mysterious.
In a remarkable feat of biography, Matthew Hollis reconstructs the intellectual creation of the poem and brings the material reality of its charged times vividly to life. A wonderful creative book for your winter reading list, this book presents a mosaic of historical fragments, diaries, dynamic literary criticism, and illuminating new research to explore the story behind this poem.
Learn about Ezra Pound, who edited it; Vivien Eliot, who sustained it; and T. S. Eliot, whose private torment is woven into the seams of the work. The result is an unforgettable story of lives passing in opposing directions and the astounding literary legacy they would leave behind.
Write for Life: Creative Tools for Every Writer by Julia Cameron is a 6-Week Artist’s Way Program that continues her creative teachings first shared in the seminal book, The Artist’s Way.
In Write for Life, Julia Cameron turns to one of the subjects closest to her heart: the art and practice of writing. Over the course of six weeks, learn new tools, methods, and inspiration to work through the creative process of writing. This creative book is perfect to support a new writing habit this winter or discover new ways to overcome procrastination, doubt, deadlines, and other creative blocks.
With the learned experience of a lifetime of writing, Cameron gives readers practical tools to start, pursue, and finish their writing projects. Write for Life is an essential read for writers who have completed The Artist’s Way and are looking to continue their creative journey or new writers who are just putting pen to paper.
The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin is a creative book about what to do to make a great work of art
From the legendary music producer, Rick Rubin comes a creative book dedicated to helping people connect with the wellsprings of their creativity.
The Creative Act is a course of study that illuminates the path of the artist as a road we all can follow. Great for a creative winter reading list, this book distills the wisdom gleaned from a lifetime’s work into a luminous reading experience that puts the power to create moments within closer reach for all of us. Learn how to transcend self-imposed expectations in order to reconnect with a state of innocence from which the surprising becomes inevitable.
The Good Life: Lessons from the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness by Robert Waldinger M.D. and Marc Schulz Ph.D. explores the question, what makes for a happy, fulfilling life?
According to the directors of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, the longest scientific study of happiness ever conducted, the answer to these questions may be closer than you realize. What makes a life fulfilling and meaningful? The simple but surprising answer is: relationships. The stronger our relationships, the more likely we are to live happy, satisfying, and overall healthier lives.
This creative book is perfect for winter reading, especially with winter blues (SAD) hitting. Creatives need strong relationships to support happiness and creative well-being. The Good Life shows us it’s never too late to strengthen the relationships you have, and it’s never too late to build new ones. With warmth, wisdom, and compelling life stories, The Good Life shows us how we can make our lives happier and more meaningful through our connections to others.
Zach is an international writer, photographer, filmmaker, martial artist, and creator of Creative Enso, the Zen art of creative living. His goal is to empower and inspire creatives to live healthier, happier, and more creative lifestyles.
