Books like Art Is a Way of Knowing — picked by fans

This book helped me release shame after a colleague of mine told me my work wasn’t “science.”

Here’s the truth: to create a healing platform, I needed to tap into ways of thinking that academia sees as “woo woo” and “savage.” I looked to the stars. I meditated. I did rituals and read myths.

Dr. Kimmerer, trained as a traditional botanist, realized that the Indigenous myths and stories she was told as a child contained scientific knowledge passed down for generations by her tribe.

She realized there were scientific truths her community knew for millennia that traditional scientists only discovered within the last 100 years. This is the power of Ancestral Intelligence, disregarded by the same science that ultimately created AI.

What stories, fables, and myths have taught you valuable lessons about the world?

Of all the creative self-help books out there, Twyla Tharp’s perspective stands out as one fueled by awareness and curiosity rather than grit and force.

For me, this gentler, more curious cultivation of creativity has proved sustaining as opposed to the conventional wisdom that suggests life must be pushed away or overcome to create. As a choreographer and dancer, her wisdom on building a life of creative expression is broad and encompassing, focusing on how one interacts with the world rather than the products one creates.

The inspiration in this book is followed up with practices that have changed the way I approach seeing the world, focusing my thoughts, and allowing the creative process to transport me to surprising places.

A great insight in my life has been realizing that the Western world has tricked us into believing there is only one way to know and understand the world.

What do stories of ancient cultures from across the world have to do with creativity and healing? Wade Davis has spent his life living intimately with other cultures and plants; the lessons captured in this book require us to take pause and realize everything we have taken for granted about what we know and how we know it.

As Davis says, "rediscovering the diversity of the human spirit" requires us to unshackle ourselves from our biases and recognize that some things can’t be explained or understood through the narrow lens of the Western world.

Creativity and the imagination are fundamental to being human; this book caused me to question what I was missing by not fully recognizing them as a way… show more.

I always seek to immerse myself in creative works like film, fiction, and music, and as a mother of three young children, I have now added children's books to this list.

The magic and simplicity of bringing together poetic voice and imagery in picture books have shown me the alchemy of weaving together mediums to convey emotion and meaning in a simple and powerful way.

Of the thousands of children’s books I have read (seriously!) this one struck me as a gem, exploring the vulnerability and enchanting realm of childhood, a place where creativity once roamed free within us.

This simple story of a mother and daughter and the beauty of the imagination and memory as one ages feels like an invitation made just for me asking me to reignite the spark of expression without all the added weight of adulthood.

There’s been a lot of research on how girls fall prey to diet culture, lose their self-confidence, disappear into disordered eating/eating disorders/low self-esteem at puberty. A lot of that is triggered by living in a culture that’s so messed up around food, eating, and body image. So I’m always looking for tools to give girls to help them navigate that treacherous time, and this is one of the books I like to recommend.

This was such a blast to read with my kids! I loved how interactive it was and the creative rhyming used. It didn’t just keep their attention, but it also included a fun activity to do together afterward with stickers (included in the book), which made the experience even more fun for us to do together!

The illustrations are playful and unique, really bringing the story to life in a way that keeps everyone engaged. Even after five years of having it on our shelf, it’s still my go-to book for storytime.

To achieve the things that matter to us, we have to know what they are.

We tend to think we know ourselves really well – certainly better than anyone else knows us. But in this book, psychologist Timothy Wilson presents fascinating evidence that we don’t know ourselves as well as we think we do.

In particular, we tend to rationalize our choices after the fact in ways that don’t actually reflect our deeper, emotional state.

This book opened my mind to the idea that we need to “look under the hood” to figure out what matters to us most. 

If you were to read one of Kundera’s novels, let it be this, Immortality! It’s the last of a trilogy (that includes The Book Of Laughter And Forgetting and The Unbearable Lightness Of Being), and Kundera’s masterful attempt to answer questions such as: What’s the meaning of life? And is immortality so unbearable as our brief existence?

Its plot is Kunderian, light, and poetical. The story initiates from a simple gesture by Agnes, one of the protagonists, but as it progresses the reader begins to feel the heaviness of mortality and the endless challenges of love. It’s a beautiful discussion on the nature of one’s legacy, and how one changes (or not) through the passage of time, and unfortunately can’t do much about it.

Mirror in the Sky is about what happens to a girl who’s just trying to navigate through high school and family situations when a planet incredibly similar to Earth is discovered–and news spreads that people may have doubles on the new planet, called Terra Nova. (The main character’s name is Tara, so there’s a play on words, and a riff on the theme, here.) Mirror in the Sky is more about reactions on Earth to news of the new planet and less a sci-fi adventure.

Readers wanting hard sci-fi–tentacled aliens with ray guns–may be disappointed, but readers who want a contemporary with another world as a backdrop might take a look.

This book was the beginning of my spiritual journey. 

Accepting that we are responsible for every aspect of our lives was a hard pill to swallow. Life happens for us, not to us. What is the purpose? The purpose (I believe) is to learn unconditional love and acceptance. 

Does that mean we have to be around people who hurt us? No. It means to accept people for who they are and move on.  

This book challenged me and my way of thinking. “Your thoughts create your reality” is explained in detail in this book. I’m grateful that this book was written.