Five Star Mind

Rating:
Summary: Five Star Mind is truly a five star book.
Review: As the author of "Thinkertoys (A Handbook of Business Creativity)," and "Cracking Creativity (The Secrets of Creative Genius)," I, generally, read most published books about creative thinking. I'm very familiar with Tom Wujec's work in the field and highly recommend Tom's book "Five Star Mind." The book is not only a solid book about creative thinking, but it's fun as well. In my opinion, it's one of the better books in the field and will help readers of all ages to become creative in business and life.

Rating:
Summary: GOOD CREATIVITY BOOK to complete your collection
Review: I bought a LOT of creativity books(at least i had 20+ on my collection), and i think this is one of the GOOD ONE, among other books.

I particulary like the chapter on Methapor, and some of the samples of GAMES/QUIZ that i even use for my creativity seminar/training.

A lot of GAMES and PUZZLES there that is fun, interesting and useful to generate creative brusts.

The whole book is set as a CREATIVE KITCHEN with chapters like Food for thoughts, Appetite, Gather, Cut, Mix, Cook, Spice, Taste and Digest.

This book can be useful even standing alone, being read by itself. Or if you are interested in creativity, it can stand tall along with all the classics like A whack at the side of the head (best classic creativity book), Orbitting the giant hairball, Jump start your brain, The Mind Map book, and all De Bono book.

This book's approach is fun and it explain in a good sense a lot of creativity stage and provide a lot of fun games.

Hope you can enjoy the book as much as i do.

Rating:
Summary: A Few Stars Short of a Constellation
Review: I recently purchased this book and was somewhat disappointed when I sat down to read it. The subtitle is "Games & Puzzles to Stimulate Your Creativity & Imagination". Actually, there are only some thirty such puzzles and many of them are 'old chestnuts'. However, my biggest complaint is the lack of accuracy. The very first puzzle (p. 20) has a mistake in it. Then in 'Mental Counting' (p. 161), the author claims that the letters O and U are not symmetrical about the vertical axis. As for 'Three-dimesional Dots' (p. 199) the text states "Below is a collection of random dots." Unfortunately, the random dots have been omitted. So much for "something remarkable" happening as the author claims. And how's this for one of the three (yup, only three) lateral thinking puzzles? What common word begins with IS, ends with ND, and has LA in the middle? I bet that really stretched your brain, didn't it? Sorry, but Mr. Wujec's editor should be fired. These glaring mistakes and omissions have scuttled any enjoyment I may have expected from this book. I suspect the author was motivated by the commercial success of his previous book. He should have waited until he had something of value before publishing this schlock.

Rating:
Summary: This book really works!
Review: I'm a copywriter for a national retail chain. I started to read this book at lunch one day, and i got through a couple of chapters. When I went back to the office, I continued working on one of my assignments that had a tight deadline. As I starting working, I could tell that my mind was more alert and I was coming up with more and different kinds of ideas.

If you feel like your brain has turned to mush due to daily routine or not venturing outside of your "thinking comfort zone," this book is for you!

Rating:
Summary: A description of the creativity process
Review: Now this is an interesting book! It describes how YOU can be more creative. Maybe you think you're not? Well, according to this book creativity is a process you can learn. And I must say that after having read this book I now understand why I sometimes are very creative and sometimes not. For instance, I play the guitar and are sometimes in a very spirited mood for writing new songs. This usually occurs after having spent a few weeks listening to new albums. When I don't - I rarely come up with some new and exciting riffs. You have to have the urge to get these impulses, but then again you need the impulses.

I think both the title and the subtitle (games & puzzles to stimulate your creativity and imagination) are a bit misleading. The focus is on the process and the author divides this creativity process into 8 "phases", drawing a metaphor to cooking food: Appetite - hunger for ideas, gather - collect ideas, cut - analyze ideas, mix - combine ideas, cook - concentrate on ideas, spice - season ideas, taste - evaluate ideas, digest - assimilate ideas. Within each of these he gives you valuable tools you can use.

It seems to me that when you gather information (e.g. listen to records or research a specific topic) you unconsciously cut and mix it with data and knowledge you already have, and thus forming new patterns which become new ideas. Knowing the process you can also do this deliberate. How wonderful!

There are lots of other books which describes methods for collecting thoughts and ideas (and does that better), but no one I have read or heard about describes the process as good as this one. Just think about what kind of preparation you should impose on your colleagues before they enter your next brainstorming session...