Book Review: The Icarus Deception by Seth Godin & Make Good Art by Neil Gaiman

This type of book thrives by stating the obvious emphatically.  Advice tomes, self-help manuals, life & business inspiration.  Have a taste, and see if you can guess which quotes are from Seth Godin ("one of the most popular business bloggers in the world") and which are from Neil Gaiman ("one of the creators of modern comics").

1. "If you don't know it's impossible, it's easier to do."
2. "An artist is someone who uses bravery, insight, creativity, and boldness to challenge the status quo."
3. "Something that worked for me was imagining that where I wanted to be ... was a mountain.  A distant mountain.  My goal."
4. "When you speak your truth, you have opened a door, allowing others to speak to you, directly to you, to your true self."
5. "Life is sometimes hard.  Things go wrong, in life and in love and in business and in friendship and in health and in all the other ways that life can go wrong."
6. "Art has no right answer.  The best we can hope for is an interesting answer."
7. "So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can."
8. "Artists fail, and failing means that sometimes you need to change your mind about what you thought the best path might be."

The odd numbered ones are from Gaiman; the even from Godin.  But they all sound like they came from the same barrel of platitudes, from the shelves of AphorismMart.  They're all true and yet like keys you find on the street - they don't open any doors you have to open.  I like that metaphor: these self-evident truths are someone else's keys that don't work on your locks.

And yet I just read - eagerly - both of these works, and paid close attention, searching for ways to move closer to my distant mountains.  I suppose there is something of a useful thrill, then, in finding someone's keys on the street, knowing that they open some door somewhere, taking hope that your keys must also be somewhere around here.

Book Review: Point Your Face At This - Drawings by Demetri Martin

Demetri Martin is mainly a stand-up comic, which explains the breed and brand of humor in his new book.  Comics excel at examining the everyday expressions and behaviors we fail to examine, the phrases we hear and utter regularly without thinking, the things we do automatically, and, thus, the days we spend - the lives we live - without thinking.  A good comic makes us think.

Take one of Martin's drawings in the book: it's a simple number line, running from -2 to 12.  A bracket identifies the number set 5, 6, 7, 8 as "choreography."  Think about it for a moment ... get it?  Another drawing depicts, wordlessly across two pages, six drinking vessels that accompany our passage through life: baby bottle, fast food drink cup, beer stein, martini glass, tea cup, and little water cup with meds.  I know the jokes probably don't work as well when described, but it is a book of drawings.

A section of the book includes charts and graphs such as this one.  There's something inherently funny about turning something as non-mathematical as family guilt into a mathematical graphic that is, in its way, precise and insightful, more than most data-based charts.  Other drawings take common expressions and look at them in a uniquely comic way.

Martin's book of drawings makes for hilarious but quick reading, so I recommend checking out his book of mostly writing, This Is a Book by Demetri Martin (yes, the title includes the attribution), which came out in 2011.  Perhaps you already know him from his work on Comedy Central with The Daily Show and his own program, Important Things with Demetri Martin?  If not, search out some video and take in as much of this wise guy who is quite a wise guy, whose dry, subtle humor might make you laugh out loud, but will more likely make you laugh - and think - in your head.