Another book made it onto my list for a reason I can no longer remember. I decided to pick up The War of Art and power through it because otherwise I should remove it from my list. Luckily it was a short read, but beyond that I found it to be quite good. I'm not a big fan of the self-help genre, but when someone verbalizes certain things that I have felt but couldn't quite put my finger on I am apt to pay attention.

This book is about the creative endeavor and those who pursue it. Resistance as a noun is what keeps us from doing all those things we dream of. I can't really summarize this book without disliking how I sound. There is something about the tone of the content that makes me not want to admit that it got to me. But at the same time, I really feel like it spoke to some inner feelings that I have been having. The first half of the book describes how Resistance manifests itself. A lot of that sounded familiar.

The second half of the book is about how to overcome this and become a real professional. It is filled with quoteable moments like:

Someone once asked the Spartan King Leonidas to identify the supreme warrior virtue from which all others flowed. He replied: "Contempt for death."

The book is certainly designed to be easy to digest and overly broad. It is the self help style where it is just vague enough that if you are susceptible to influence then you hear what you want. But nonetheless I still think it made me look hard at what I was doing and not doing. It does not matter what gets you to start thinking as long as you do.

I recommend this book to anyone who has grand ambitions but keeps feeling held back by themselves. To those who procrastinate by reading books about not procrastinating. The only downside is his agressive religiosity, but it is easy to gloss over that if it is not your thing.