Are you ready to steal?

Sailen Routray

Like any good book, when you read 'Steal Like an Artist' it feels as if it was written specifically for you. It is so good that when I am starting to write my impressions of the book now, I am making a mental note that as soon as I finish this post, I am going to start reading it again.

Although the superior kind of self-help (say, 'How Proust Can Change Your Life') and manual-like tomes (e.g., 'Bird by Bird') are a guilty pleasure for me, the bar that I have for such books is pretty high, despite the absolute rubbish that seems to be the norm in these genres. 

However, 'Steal Like an Artist' ticks all the boxes. The first thing that draws your eyes is its size. It is square - eight fingers wide, eight fingers long - and I just love square books, they look lovely when you open them. The cover is simple and striking too with letters in white, handwritten font on a pitch black page.

The volume is filled with sketches, photographs, doodles, comic book like panels and graphics that not only reinforce the points that Austin Kleon makes with the text, but are worth ogling at by themselves as well. 

But what is the book about? Well... The book is about how to steal like an artist. Exactly how? The book tell you how in ten pithy chapters, with each giving you one nugget of wisdom. Such as? 'Be boring!'

I do not know about you. But after living most of my adult life till recently as an extension of my adolescence with obsessive attempts at being interesting, this advice to be boring is exactly what the doctor ordered for me.

'Steal Like an Artist' is filled with practical and useful advice, culled from lived experience, and shared in a fun, engaging and anecdotal way about letting your creativity flow and channelizing it to do stuff that is useful for you and for others. And it is a fast read. What more could you ask from a book?

Details about the Book: Austin Kleon. Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative.