MKH asked three people working in different creative fields for book recommendations that inspire the most.

Dascha Nefedov (singer/songwriter) – Agua Viva by Clarice Lispector

I dream every night. My dreams are long, continuous, yet non-coherent. Often visceral, sometimes too confronting, but no matter how true they might seem, this truth soon becomes fleeting and transient. A memory lost between reality and the unseen world. Was any of it real? Occult, sensorial, inquisitive and feline – Agua Viva, by Clarice Lispector, is a fever dream of sorts. A meditation that demands a continuation of thought beyond the page.

I’d read her mostly in the mornings, after the shower, before my coffee. Awake – yes, but still vulnerable. I’d read until my mind would catch on to an image or a word, and as soon as I would feel the string of thought pull me up up up, I’d pick up a pen or brush and transfer this unto a page. She made me write and paint the love and cruelty inside me. My indifferences and passions. My spirit, my senses, that took in the colour and nature around me. This is a book written by a woman. That, through its elegance and chaos, made me feel seen and forced me to create.

Alex Bäuml (stylist) – What Artists Wear by Charlie Porter

What Artists Wear by Charlie Porter is a book I return to often, because he understands that the clothes we wear are an extension of the Self, the exemplification of how we exist in the world. As a stylist, I am always building characters. In any work — editorial, artist, commercial, costume — there is always a story, a presence that I want to bring to the surface. This book shows how different artists, from Francis Bacon to Cindy Sherman, used clothing as part of their identity, whether consciously or not. Rather than approaching fashion from a trend-based or commercial point of view, Porter treats garments as a language itself — subtle, complex, and deeply personal. Fashion not as surface, but substance.

I had always loved garments as a means of self-expression, but Porter gave me the vocabulary and nuances to correctly hold fashion as a tool for claiming identity and living with intention. In my work, I think often about how to give garments emotional weight, how a certain jacket, or a particular silhouette, can hold defiance or tenderness or contradiction, and this book captures that with such quiet and sensitive clarity. Reading it inspired me to commit to styling in a way that brings life, memory, and purpose into what someone wears — not just image.

Sofia Luna (imaginator, idea doula, writer, entrepreneur) – Finite & Infinite Game by James P Carse

Of course, the book I would recommend is Finite & Infinite Games by James P Carse.

The words in this book significantly reduced my suffering in the human experience, which is why I recommend it to everyone (I only consume information that simplifies life). It’s my personal Bible— I even wrote my bachelor’s thesis on it back in 2019. In my early years as an artist and creative entrepreneur, there was a lot of uncertainty — how, what, who, when — and it held all the answers I didn’t even know I was looking for. The nature of humans is infinite, which means there’s no obligation to be ‘one’ thing, no reason to compete, nothing to win, no need to compare ourselves… but there are many systems in place that deceive us into thinking otherwise—this book puts it in black and white. If you want to do your own thing — and have no one to look to for mentorship or example, it might be because you are pulling an infinite thread from the cosmos that hasn’t been pulled before. Finite and Infinite Games gives you the tools to walk your path — the unknown path — with certainty that it’s the right one. It launched me into a flow of creating for myself and for others that is priceless, and shaped me so deeply that everything I do today carries its influence. I aim to build lasting ideas, not winning things. Even my holding company is named Infinite Games, as a direct homage to it. This book is a radical intellectual and perceptual asteroid, and it remains the most revolutionary piece of writing I’ve read, and as with all genius pieces, it’s short and sweet.