Appreciating Art and Untapping Your Creativity: A 10H Outside Reading Assignment

We've looked at the Renaissance and admired the well-rounded people who lived during that time. We're now exploring the Enlightenment, a kind of second Renaissance. As an outside reading assignment, make yourself more well-rounded by embarking on an interesting literary exploration or learning about a subject or person you've always wanted to study.

Suggestions:

Works of Fiction

Pride and Prejudice or Emma by Jane Austen
Wuthering Heights by Charlotte Bronte
Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier
The Kite Runner by Khaled Husseini
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
1984 by George Orwell
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Dracula by Bram Stoker
The Agony and the Ecstasy by Irving Stone
The Hobbit  by J.R.R. Tolkien

Biography

Renaissance-like Figure to Study

Alexander Graham Bell
Hildegard of Bingen
Michelangelo Buonarroti
Marie Curie
Walt Disney
Thomas Edison
Albert Einstein
Queen Elizabeth I
Benjamin Franklin
Steve Jobs
Isaac Newton
William Shakespeare
Orville and Wilbur Wright

Check out this list of inventors if you want to read a biography of a famous inventor.

History

If you like history, consider one of these books.

All this talk about invention and innovation perhaps has made you want to read a book about it. Try an amazing one, The Sorcerers and Their Apprentices by Frank Moss, or consider one of these on invention or one of these on innovation.

You can also read about innovative institutions or labs, such as the Technion in Israel or Bell Laboratories in America.

Building Creative Confidence

Watch these two videos about David Kelley, who knows how to unlock people's creativity. 

Assignment:

Due May 28

Choose one of the essays to complete about your book:

1) Explain how your book reflects the ideas of an historical era. What ideas does your book most prominently reflect?

2) Compare your book to another one we have read during the course of the year. What literary techniques does it share and how do those techniques advance the books' themes? Or -- what ideas do both works promote that are similar?

3) Chart the innovation and creativity that your person or institution displays. What major contributions did your person or institution make to the world, and how is our world different as a result?

4) What was most inspiring to you about the work? Name three ideas or habits you are now going to incorporate into your life because of the book you read. 

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