Booked and Hooked

Who is a creative person? - well, anyone who can think is creative.

Think about it - every profession be it a banker, an analyst, a stock broker, an investment banker, a doctor, a cop, a pilot, a chef, a writer, a marketer - each one of these professionals have numerous tasks and issues they are faced with daily. The answers are not really inscribed in stone anywhere. They are forced to pull up all of their mental faculties and literally look for answers blowing in the wind. The solutions are more often than not, new and out of the box - that calls for the art of creative thinking.

These inspirations mostly arise from something , someplace, some sense that we have seen, felt, touched, watched, read, experienced somewhere sometime. It's pretty random actually and fascinating, how the brain pulls up  these fleeting moments suddenly and cause flashes that help us string theories together and voila come up with an innovative fix!

For me, personally, books have been a huge influence in my daily work. They keep me energized, active and alive. When I am stumped for an idea and my mind draws a blank, I often just shut everything out and read. It brings equilibrium to my mind and calibrates it to a clean slate on which I can start painting once more.



So, here is a mish mash of some of the books that have been great companions over the years:

1.     Sigmund Freud – The Interpretation of Dreams

2.     Mary Higgins Clark – All Around the Town

3.     Amish Tripathi – The Immortals of Meluha

4.     Arthur Conan Doyle – Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

5.     Jane Austin – Pride and Prejudice

6.     J.D. Salinger – The Catcher in the Rye

7.     Roald Dahl – The Complete Short Stories

8.     Jeffery Archer – Kane and Abel

9.     Anurag Mathur – The Inscrutable Americans

10. Robert Louis Stevenson – The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

11. Mario Puzo – The Godfather

12. Dan Brown – Digital Fortress

13. Enid Blyton – The Mystery of the Disappearing Cat

14. Paulo Coelho – The Alchemist

15. Ernesto Guevara – The Motorcycle Diaries

16. Robin Sharma – The Monk who sold his Ferrari

17. Malcolm Gladwell – The Tipping Point

18. D&AD - The Copy Book

19. Alan Fletcher - The Art of looking sideways

20. David Ogilvy - Ogilvy on Advertising

21.  George Martin - The Song of Fire and Ice

Reading is indeed the raison d'etre! Have a great weekend folks!