Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking
by David Bayles
Recommended by Derek Sivers
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Recommended by 1 source and appears in Art, Writing, and Art.
"This is a book about making art. Ordinary art. Ordinary art means something like: all art not made by Mozart. After all, art is rarely made by Mozartlike people; essentiallystatistically speakingthere aren't any people like that. Geniuses get made onceacentury or so, yet good art gets made all the time, so to equate the making of art with the...
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Why recommended
Recommended by 1 source and appears in Art, Writing, and Art.
People and public figures who have recommended this book.
Recommendation proof is sourced from public posts, interviews, reading lists, and cited references.
Derek Sivers
Author; founder of CD Baby
“For artists and musicians only: beautiful insights into the creative process.”
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Consider Accidental Presidents by Jared Cohen. Recommended by 10 sources.
“Accidental Presidents offers eight narrative portraits of men who succeeded to the U.S. presidency without election, using anecdote-rich scenes and readable context to show how personality and circumstance interact with office power. It’s strongest as a set of self-contained stories that make succession stakes concrete for non-specialist readers; it does not prioritize dense archival argument or exhaustive methodology, so expect some interpretive generalizations and repeated themes across cases. Use it for fast historical orientation rather than scholarly deep-dives.”
Each recommendation is collected from a public source — interviews, articles, or curated lists — and linked to its original URL. Books with many verifiable recommendations from respected people rank higher.
