The books that influenced Rebecca Wood
ARTISTS ON ART, Goldwater and Treves
i read through this book in art school, gripping with both hands, reading what my most inspiring artists of old had to say about what art is. i was looking everywhere for direction and clarity in my drawing and painting, and i often looked to this book. i either agreed or disagreed, but i learned what was true for me.
NO WORK GARDENING METHOD, Ruth Stout (or any of her gardening books)
where i learned how easy gardening could be
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A YOGI, Paramhansa Yogananda
a book that opened my mind up to new possibilities for being a human
JOURNEY TO IXTLAN, Carlos Castaneda
i never have found anything i enjoyed reading as much as this book and the whole series of books. these stories fed and taught me on so many levels, showing me so many avenues and possibilities and ways of thinking. lots of spiritual and reality insights here.
WALDEN, Henry David Thoreau
diary of a simple life, full of riches.
MUTANT MESSAGE DOWN UNDER, Marlo Morgan
a big reminder to trust your intuition
ALEX STEWART, John Rice Irwin
years worth of questions and interviews with alex stewart, a man raised in the mountains of east tennessee in a log cabin. he was a man who had many skills. his tales of the primitive conditions they lived in, isolated and remote, with no electricity, plumbing, roads or currency, is fascinating and mind blowing to consider today. and it wasn't that long ago.
1491, Charles Mann
it's shocking to read about whole chunks of history we had no idea about. did you know at the time of the pyramids in egypt, that peru had the largest and most advanced cites on earth?
MY STRUGGLE, series, Karl Ove Knausgard
if you stack this series up, it's about 9 inches tall of reading, but i never got tired of reading them. about 2/3 of the way through the first tome, i realized nothing was happening. there was no plot, no dramatic arc, no protagonist, just a man living in each moment of an ordinary life.
BOOK OF HOURS, Rilke
really anything by rilke. he tends to the ecstatic, and i like that. he also wrote LETTERS TO CEZANNE, which is some of the best writing about art i have read.
ONE STRAW REVOLUTION, Matsunobu Fukuoka
early 70's promoter of 'doing nothing' in the garden. working with nature and not against it. a guide to new thinking. i wonder if ruth stout knew about him? probably not. she was just some granny living up north on her own, but at the same tine figuring out the same stuff.
