Finish This Book Author: Visit Amazon's Keri Smith Page | Language: English | ISBN:
0399536892 | Format: PDF
Finish This Book Description
Review
"Keri Smith may well be the self-help guru this DIY generation deserves."
-Believer magazine
About the Author
Keri Smith is a bestselling author, illustrator, and thinker. Her books demonstrate a 'learn by doing approach', and are being used in school curriculums all over the world as a way of fostering non-traditional methods of exploration. She also teaches and conducts workshops based on her non-traditional techniques across North America. Her books include: Wreck This Journal, How to Be an Explorer of the World, This is Not a Book, Mess - A Manual of Accidents and Mistakes, Finish This Book, and Pocket Scavenger. She enjoys spending time with her husband, experimental musician Jefferson Pitcher, and two children Tilden and Ida.
- Paperback: 208 pages
- Publisher: Perigee Trade; 1 Csm edition (September 6, 2011)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0399536892
- ISBN-13: 978-0399536892
- Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.3 x 0.6 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
My business partner and I (both branding & creative consultants) became super fans of Keri Smith when we cracked open her book, Explorer of the World, while on a business trip to Atlanta. So when we came across Smith's Finish This Book while on another branding adventure in Lawrence, Kansas we knew we had to pick it up. We didn't quite realize the creative adventure this book would take us on as we road-tripped back home. My 11-year-old self would have flipped out over how cool Finish This Book is - okay who am I kidding, the creative professional I am today also flipped out (and learned a lot) over Smith's newest book.
Here's how it goes - on a dark and stormy night (the way all good stories begin) Keri Smith stumbles upon scattered pages from an abandoned instruction manual in a park. And now she is counting on you, the reader, to help her solve this mystery. Finish This Book is broken up into four interactive sections including Secret Intelligence Training, Documenting and Observing Methods, Artifact Examination Techniques and finally The Instruction Manual. You are instructed to complete an exercise on each page - it is up to you to populate Finish This Book with the necessary content in order for it to be a book at all.
What Keri Smith does with Finish This Book is give you permission (and resources) to be a creative problem solver while finding your own unique voice and creative authority. She facilitates a creative process that takes something huge - like writing a book - and breaks it down into small but powerful exercises. Smith holds you accountable and empowers you with the responsibility of making choices and putting them down on paper - so when you do get to the end you're not back-pedaling or doubting yourself.
I'm a big fan of Keri Smith's other books, Mess: Manual of Accidents and Mistakes and Wreck this Journal. Really I know I shouldn't have purchased this book without at least completing "Mess" but I couldn't help it. I was simply too curious about "The Mystery."
So far a major difference of "F*nish Th*s B**k" is that the assignments are not as open ended as the two books I just mentioned. The book must be finished IN ORDER, which means that since I just got the B**K today I have completed four missions or so. I can tell you guys that so far seems much more "story" based than either Mess or Wreck, and as a co-creator of "Finish" I am discovering its story and hunting down clues as a sleuth. I can only imagine what some of these prompts will be. However, I really can't tell you much more than this without possibly spoiling something and this book is all about the JOURNEY.
Perhaps it is a good thing Mrs. Smith is enforcing the rule that each page must be completed in order-- or give the book to someone else-- because maybe I won't find myself struggling to finish the last ten assignments in it like I am with Mess in particular. Well, more than ten. Mostly the ones with photography prompts or the "get your buddies to join in" prompts.
Why should you buy this book? 1. If you like her other books. 2. If you don't mind acting silly (I'm assuming!) 3. If you do not mind not knowing what is coming up 4. If you are curious and 5. want to stretch yourself a little mentally. Most of Mrs. Smith's books are about thinking outside the box. I'm assuming this book is rather the same in that regard. Don't worry about what art supplies you may need.
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