Book Review: It’s About Time
Marney Makridakis invented the land of Artella in 2002, both as a magazine as as cyber-stop for creativity. She’s been working creatively before and since then. Now she is tackling the tricky topic of time and tipping it on its ear through her new book, Creating Time: Using Creativity to Reinvent the Clock and Reclaim Your Life.
The first thing I notice about a book is the organization, and this gets high marks for excellent organization–three sections, 16 chapters, with titles that explain what you are going to read. The material is followed by notes, acknowledgements, contributors’ notes and more. I read it front to back, but that doesn’t happen with creatively-written books, and this one is prepared. If you read it section by section, the excellent table of contents will help you re-find it. There is also an index. For all of you who are too young to know how to use an index—heavy sigh—it’s what we used before there was a search engine in every blog.
You will not wind up with 28 hours in a day by reading the book, but you will get any number of new ways to see time, feel time, experience time and tell time.
Reading the book is like visiting with Marney herself. She chats about her life, using events in her and her family’s life to illustrate points. You get to know her struggles with a genetic bone disorder and the wonder of her son’s experiencing life. She uses the stories and artwork from the coaches she trains, and she invents words like Wellativity and Artsignment. The book is pure, authentic Marney from first page to last. She never abandons you on a single page of the book.
You can use the book as a workbook–there are step-by-step how-tos and assignments to help put to use what you have just read. I have a big weakness for books written for kinesthetic readers, and this is fully one of them. You learn by doing. She doesn’t tell, she shows. You can’t stay grumpy and you can’t avoid participating. It is a personal tour through her vision of time. Even better, through her experience of time. You come away with new ideas and new experiences you want to repeat. And you feel like you’ve been to the mental gym. That’s what a kinesthetic book will do for you.
The book is richly illustrated and designed to keep you moving, reading, empathizing and making time bend to your will. Marney wouldn’t have it any other way.
Disclosure: Marney sent me a review copy at no cost to me. My curiosity (and need for more time) would have driven me to pay for it, but I’m thankful for the generosity.
–Quinn McDonald is a creativity coach and writer who looks at time in a different way after reading the book.
Filed under: Book Reviews, Reviews Tagged: artella, Marney Makridakis, time, workbook
