Books like Creative Resilience and COVID-19 — picked by fans

One of the first novels set in COVID times, The Fell, by British author Sarah Moss, is presented from the perspective of four neighbours living in an English village over the timespan of a single night in the winter of 2020. The narrative charts their experiences and reflections on life as they struggle with boredom, loss of employment, having to work and learn from home, and feelings of isolation and claustrophobia. One of the characters simply can’t take it anymore and leaves her home during a period of mandated quarantine. These people care about and watch over each other as best they can, but the feelings of being under surveillance are strong. A dark but compelling read, masterfully written.

Life Without Children is a collection of ten short stories by Irish author Roddy Doyle. Nearly all the stories are set in Dublin and feature characters who are middle-aged or older men who are struggling to find a sense of purpose in their lives while confined to their homes during lockdowns. Some men lash out in anger at their partners. Others make the best of things, finding moments of intimacy and connection and forging stronger relationships with their adult children and wives. One of the few stories to be written from the perspective of a woman features a nurse who is shattered by the deaths from COVID of her patients. The stories in this collection are often bleak, but there are many poignant and even droll moments.

The COVID Chronicles is an anthology of graphic fiction about COVID life. The dozens of contributors are mostly based in the US but also come from Australia, Canada, the UK, Europe, and Asia. There are a dizzying array of art styles and tones across the collection, from humorous to darkly grim. Together, all the graphic narratives reveal the ups and downs of pandemic life in the early months of COVID: from dealing with loneliness, unemployment, illness, and death, transitioning to working from home, racism, and the Black Lives Matter protests to seeking opportunities to show love, care, connection, and hope.

This book presents hundreds of photographs taken by Agence France Presse around the world in the first 18 months of the COVID pandemic. The images span the full range from the mundane (people exercising at home) to the bizarre (weird home-made face masks) to those that are frightening and tragic (mass coffins and graves). Over 150 countries are represented in these images, which are arranged chronologically, thereby presenting a visual global timeline of the major events occurring during this crucial early period of the continuing pandemic, when this disease was still a mysterious threat. This book helps us to remember the feelings of urgency, confusion, panic, and fear that were part of this period, as people came to terms with the upheavals wrought by the pandemic.

I grew up reading Svetlana Chmakova’s work back when she was releasing the manga series Dramacon and I am beyond thrilled that kids and teens today still get to read her work!

Awkward is all about kids exploring their differences in the arts and sciences and it feels like a page ripped out of my childhood. It is so relatable, so charming, and full of emotion and wit to boot. Her work inspired me when I was drawing comics in my sketchbook for fun all the way until today, when I do it for a living. I think her work will go on to inspire many generations to come!

Lady Oracle was one of the novels I read in the several years after first having the vague notion that I might like to write a novel akin to Steppenwolf but that would be set in the approximate present day and have a female protagonist. As Lady Oracle’s main character is a writer who, after periodically reinventing herself, now fakes her own death, flees her intellectual, non-dancing husband, and holes up in an Italian village, I saw possible avenues for my own husband-leaving Kari. Would Kari flee to another country? Would she have secret lovers or a history of being fat? Would she, too, fake her own death? Kari ultimately didn’t follow many of Joan Foster’s paths, but she might have.

This book is a compilation of chapters written by (mostly) psychology professors who have dealt with creativity extensively throughout their careers, and I highly recommend it. The topics cover psychometric approaches to creativity, experimental studies in creativity, the history of creativity, biological bases of creativity, the development of creativity, relationships between creativity and intelligence, the types of motivation necessary to produce creative outputs, cultural aspects of creativity, computer modeling in creativity, the development of prodigies, and significant research into creative processes. I gained valuable insights into domains and areas that I never would have considered otherwise.

Nigel Cross was one of the first design researchers to express the notion of ‘designerly’ ways of thinking and knowing – “the application of scientific and other organised knowledge to practical tasks…” – as means of addressing ill-defined and ill-structured problems. 

The attention to ‘messy’ problems, and to the iterative and fluid nature of the design process, is what first drew me to his work; what kept me coming back was a combination of Cross’s clarity of thought, and the way he grounds his perspectives in studies of outstanding designers and real-world examples. 

In this compilation of key lectures and essays, he reflects on the nature of design and discusses what sorts of cognitive skills, strategies, and abilities effective designers bring to bear.  

This book is a powerful read for anyone ready to reclaim their creativity and heal their inner wounded child.

Jacob skillfully guides us through exercises that bring us home to ourselves. I include this as recommended reading in my book, and I love that Julia Cameron (another favorite author of The Artists Way fame) provides the foreword.

Full disclosure, this book brought me to healing tears. I’ve read it and listened to it many times and I had the pleasure of meeting Jacob at his Heal and Create Writer’s event along with SARK. 

Another one of his books that you won’t want to miss is Blessed Are the Weird.

Here is a book that I found to be highly engaging. The Greek philospher Plato was quoted as saying that "you can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation." If so, he has offered us a valid rationale for taking a stroll with someone whom we've just encountered, versus meeting at, say, a restaurant. The authors discuss one study where up to 90% of 5-year-olds tested as being highly creative. Yet by age 7, this figure declines 10%, and then declines to 2% after age 8. Hence, creativity seemingly declines as structured education begins.

Creativity involves the pressure to 'keep up' along with a bombardment of information. The accelerating pace of environmental damage is symptomatic of damage to the human spirit. One centurion said, “I lived my life" so that I would exceed age 100. For nearly all of his life,… show more.