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Read Like an Artist Zine + Independent Bookstore Day 2022 events

To celebrate Independent Bookstore Day 2022 and the 10th anniversary of the Steal Like an Artist, my publisher Workman and I produced a free 12-page glossy zine called “Read Like an Artist,” with 10 tips for a better life with books.

Here is a very short list of the bookstores who ordered a ton (250+) of copies:

There are literally hundreds of bookstores participating, so check with your favorite local indie to see if they got copies!

If you live in Austin, Texas or nearby, on Saturday, April 30, I’ll be at two of my favorite bookstores here in town, signing and drawing in my books and hand-selling my favorites.

10AM-12PM – I’ll be at Bookpeople, our flagship store in town. Get there early — they should have around 100 zines.

2PM-4PM – I’ll be at Black Pearl Books, my hyper-local neighborhood shop. They’ll have about 25 zines, so they might be out by the time I show up.

Our friends at Bookwoman should have about 100 copies, too, so that might actually be your best bet for snagging one in the 512 area code. (If you’re down south, I just found out that Reverie Books has a handful, too.)

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Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics

My May pick for our Read Like an Artist book club is one of my all-time favorites and a bonafide classic: Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics.

Here’s my intro:

This a comic book about comic books. But it’s also much more than that: using the medium of comics, Scott McCloud explains a whole world of visual communication and teaches lessons that apply to anyone working in any kind of visual medium. To quote Art Spiegelman, the “simple-looking tome deconstructs the secret language of comics while casually revealing secrets of time, space, art and the cosmos!”  Originally published in the early 90s, this book has become a contemporary classic, and is in my top 10 all-time influential books on my own practice. Even if you’re not at all interested in comics, I promise that you will learn something from McCloud. And who knows? It might even open up a whole genre for you. I love this book because after you read it, you see the whole world differently. 

Nell Painter’s Old in Art School

My April pick for our Read Like an Artist book club is Nell Painter’s Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over. To join our discussion next month, sign up now.

Here’s my intro:

Is it ever too late to become an artist?

At the age of 64, Nell Painter, an accomplished historian and writer, best known for her acclaimed bestselling books, The History of White People and Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol, decided to go back to art school. This book is her “memoir of starting over” and details her time navigating a world that is predominantly young and white. Her classmates are shocked by her age and one professor tells her that she will never be a real artist. Despite it all, she finds meaning in the art and artists she loves, and investigates age and race in the art world. This book is a first for the club because… I’ve never actually read the book! It’s been recommended to me by countless people whose taste I admire, and I’ve been meaning to read it for years, so I’ll be reading it along with y’all.

To join our discussion, sign up for the club.

Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks

My March pick for our Read Like an Artist book club is Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks. To join our discussion next month, sign up now.

Here’s my intro:

What will you do with the rest of your time?

What sounds like a straightforward self-help book is actually a deep reflection on the nature of time and how humans have historically dealt with it. “The average human lifespan is absurdly, insultingly brief,” Burkeman writes. “Assuming you live to be 80, you have just over four thousand weeks.”

Burkeman gives us permission to be imperfect, to forget about little tweaks and life hacks, and focus on the big things that matter. Freelancers, or creative people with weird schedules, might find comfort, as I did, in how difficult it is to make time off count when that time off isn’t shared by others.

I love how Burkeman is able to pull off the magic trick of writing self-help books that are, at their core, deeply suspicious of their own genre.

Four Thousand Weeks was one of my very favorite books I read in 2021. (His previous book, The Antidote, one of my favorite reads of 2013, was a big influence on my book Show Your Work!, which is the first book I consciously wrote knowing it’d be shelved in self-help.)

Here are some notes I took on the “The Principles of Patience” section of the book.

Oliver has agreed to chat with me online about the book in late March, so stay tuned for that!

To join our discussion, sign up for the club.

Sarah Ruhl’s Smile

My February pick for our Read Like an Artist book club is Sarah Ruhl’s Smile: The Story of a Face. To get the book in time to join our discussion next month, sign up now.

Here’s my intro:

Sarah Ruhl is a playwright, a MacArthur genius, and two-time Pulitzer finalist. This book is about what happened after she survived a high-risk pregnancy and woke up with the left half of her face paralyzed by Bell’s palsy, losing her ability to smile. Ruhl transcends the genre of medical memoir: As she did in her wonderful book, 100 Essays I Don’t Have Time To Write, Ruhl weaves a tapestry of wit and wisdom out of her experiences with creative work, motherhood, and her reading life. I love the way this book made me think about beauty, asymmetry, and imperfection.

I’m also delighted to note that Sarah has agreed to chat with me online about the book in late February, so stay tuned for that.

To join our discussion, sign up for the club!

Tim Kreider’s We Learn Nothing

My January pick for our Read Like an Artist book club is Tim Kreider’s We Learn Nothing. To get the book in time to join our discussion next month, sign up now.

Here’s my intro:

“Fourteen years ago, I was stabbed in the throat.” So begins this collection of personal essays from the former political cartoonist, unfairly as gifted with words as he is with pictures. Krieder’s writing will not be for everyone, but I would like to assign everyone over the age of twenty “The Referendum,” a piece about how as we age, our peers give us a “glimpse of the parallel universes” that would have resulted had we made different life choices. I love this book because the essays only get deeper and richer with each year. Interspersed throughout are Kreider’s cartoons, which take their cues from biting satirists like Ralph Steadman and George Grosz. This is a contemporary classic.  

 

To join our discussion, sign up for the club!

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