Daily Rituals

Disjointed bombardment

This book will document a famous creative person by choosing there quirky traits, they would only write standing up/lying down or something, and then writing maybe a page or half a page about them, and then moving on. It was like top trumps for artists. There was absolutely no structure/curation that I could comprehend. Imagine it takes 2 mins to cover one persons quirks. Now imagine the length of the book decided by 2mins and thats how the book is structured. Its torture. I think you buy this book in its paperback copy for your daughter who is studying art and like a magazine they can flick through and find interesting facts but reading from start to finish is unpleasant. so it doesn't work on audio. Even then you think they would put sections of writers, sections of musicians or categorise it creatively. but its just hours and hours of disjointed un related bombardment. The author has no function. They don't even introduce or draw out lessons, or themes, or contextualise anything. They just report the stats exactly as they researched them and move on the next. Avoid.

6 of 6 people found this review helpful

Eek! Quality check please!

Great collection of the quirky behaviours and habits of our heroes and heroines spanning many centuries. Only problem being the DIRE pronunciation throughout! Audible: please get a good quality checker! Ruins an otherwise perfectly good, informative listen.

5 of 5 people found this review helpful

Is there an editor in the house?

The premise of this book is great. It is however not very consistent in its research. The publishers should have considered the subject matter more before they chose the narrator. It clearly called for someone who can pronounce French words... And don't get me started on some of the British names that were absolutely slaughtered. Still, this is a little light listening gem.

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

Nothing of value

This book contains a lot of small anecdotes about famous writers and musicians and how they planned and managed their creative efforts. This sounds interesting but each anecdote is only 2 to 5 minutes long and often based on testemony of friends and family. This book will not help or inspire you to establish or improve your own creative cycle and after having listened the first hour the book gets boring and reptetive. 2 to 5 minutes equals to a lot of uninteresting chapters. No analysis or philosophic contemplations but just matter of factual descriptions of daily schedules like "he wroke up around 8.30, had breakfast with his family around 9 oclock, played or wrote for 3 hours and had lunch with a friend around 12.30, etc." Some of the stories has been spiced up with information about the artists vices and homosexual relationships but nothing that will help ypu understand the creative cycle or add value to your own creative efforts.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Excellent insight to the "creative class"

Where does Daily Rituals rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Definitly in the top two.

Would you recommend Daily Rituals to your friends? Why or why not?

Yes. This audiobook cmae just at the right time. I was just going part time and freaking out a bit about not having a stable routine. I learned fom rthis book an idea of how to set out on a day of writing.

Which character – as performed by Adam Verner – was your favourite?

Twyla Tharp

Did you have an emotional reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

Beethovans habits made me Laugh!

Any additional comments?

Any creative person or curisous person wanting to know what the "greats" did? Buy this audiobook.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Difficult to take away from

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

I would recommend this to a friend who struggles with finding the time to write. It provides a lot of reassurance to the aspiring writer that successful writers throughout history have struggled with, and worked around the same difficulties.

Would you be willing to try another book from Mason Currey? Why or why not?

Its hard to take away from this book any great observations about the writer, beyond my feeling that this is a lovely theme upon which to base a book.
I would have liked the book to go into more depth on certain writers and artists, to give more psychological analysis, to work out the deep reasons behind their work methods.

However I wouldn't have thought this was an inadequacy of the writer, but more a lack of available evidence about each author.

I think he could have tried to organize the writer profiles into his own themed chapters as it was difficult to identify any particular themes, as there was no coherent order to the way in which the book way laid out.

What does Adam Verner bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you had only read the book?

I found his voice quite hard to follow, but i think this could be due to the repetitive layout of the artist profiles.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Reassuring and Brilliant

There is something very comforting in knowing that all artists arre different, strange and beutiful. There is no right way to be an artist... I totally love this book.

pleasant but somewhat superficial

A pleasant and interesting read but the author just reports the stories and biographies without much further analysis.

Would make a great coffee table book imo.

On first listen I had to stop because it got a bit dull, in a people watching way. Like endless pictures of friends meals on FB. Came away thinking that there was no special way for encouraging creativity by schedule only that many prodigious persons self medicated with various types of intoxicating or stimulating consumptions.

Inspiring stuff!

A great listen for any aspiring artist who feels there aren't enough hours in the day! This book will make you realise all you need is to discover the routine that is suited to your personality and daily habits. Has helped me to push my composition time from 10 hrs to 30 hrs per week.