Book of the Week for May 3 – May10
The Art of Asking:
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Let People Help
Why it’s interesting:
Another in my long line of audiobook recommendations, I have to admit, while this book was incredibly interesting, I didn’t love it. Had I not been listening to it, I don’t know if I would have made it through. But Amanda’s narration is personal and I felt like she was really talking to me. I got to hear about her music career, her marriage to Neal Gaiman and her incredible fan base. I admired her honesty, even in some unflattering details. I think it was the unflattering parts that made her seem more real and believable in the rest of it. Also, as a creative person, her drive is incredibly inspiring. She’s got an ability to ignore the status quo that I wish I had.
The blurb:
When we really see each other, we want to help each other.”
—Amanda Palmer
Imagine standing on a box in the middle of a busy city, dressed as a white-faced bride, and silently using your eyes to ask people for money. Or touring Europe in a punk cabaret band and finding a place to sleep each night by reaching out to strangers on Twitter. For Amanda Palmer, actions like these have gone beyond satisfying her basic needs for food and shelter – they’ve taught her how to turn strangers into friends, build communities, and discover her own giving impulses. And because she had learned how to ask, she was able to go to the world to ask for the money to make a new album and tour with it, and to raise over a million dollars in a month.
In The Art of Asking, Palmer expands upon her popular TED talk to reveal how ordinary people, those of us without thousands of Twitter followers and adoring fans, can use these same principles in our own lives.