Great Gals: Inspired Ideas for Living a Kick-Ass Life by Summer Pierre
Great Gals: Inspired Ideas for Living a Kick-Ass Life is tricky to classify. Although there’s plenty of pages in it for you to scribble down your plans, plots and schemes, it’s much more than a traditional notebook or diary with a snazzy design.
As author and illustrator Summer Pierre explains in the intro:
What you have in your hands is not your regular ol’ feel-good book or diary. It’s a whole lotta greatness: greatness to be planned, greatness to be urged, and greatness to be inspired by. Use it as a daily planner, a diary, a depository for goals, dreams, experiments and ideas – or all of the above!
A cross between a scrapbook, school exercise book (complete with quotes, slogans and doodles of lovehearts, stars and flowers decorating the margins), journal and logbook, Great Gals features creative prompts, games and exercises alongside inspirational quotes from heroines such as Susan Sontag, Patti Smith and Erica Jong.
Also included are illustrated profiles of an assortment of iconic women, including artists, authors and musicians from Cyndi Lauper, Joan Jett and Dolly Parton to Betsey Johnson, Ingrid Bergman, Mary Gaitskill and Frida Kahlo, focusing on their courage, creativity, strength and individuality, and determination despite obstacles or circumstances.
There are sections to document books you’ve read, films you’ve watched, trips you’ve taken and projects you’ve started and finished, spaces to list characteristics of those you admire, or the situations which make you stressed and uncomfortable and suggestions of how to counteract them.
Other activities include an assignment to write a letter to a heroine, and a comic strip instructing you to flip a coin and wherever it lands on the page, follow that instruction, with options including ice-cream for breakfast, dropping a dollar on the ground (with the idea that it will make the day of whoever comes along and finds it) and getting up and dancing, no matter where you are.
In a similar vein to Keri Smith‘s Living Out Loud: An Activity Book to Fuel a Creative Life and Summer Pierre’s first book, The Artist in the Office, feminists, stationery fetishists and zine and illustration fanatics alike are sure to be smitten with it.
It was published earlier this month and can be yours from Amazon for £10.79.
And even better, we’ve got two copies to give away. To be in with a chance to win, leave a comment on this article telling us your favourite Great Gal, or a tip for living a kick-ass life. We’ll notify the winner next week, and you can enter via our Facebook page too.
Jane Bradley
P!nk is my great gal – never apologises for who she is – embraces imperfections and writes kick ass tunes!
Thanks Mandy, good choice!
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You know, the first Great Gal that jumps to mind is my grandmother. She speaks her mind, she’s hard-headed, and most inspirationally for me, she’s reinvented herself several times in her life. She’s now 87 and runs the lunch counter at a country drug store, and she single-handedly turned that place into a success. It was something she had never tried to do before, and only picked up after she had been retired for a few years and found the peace and quiet didn’t suit her. She’s a force of nature.
Thanks Janet, that’s an amazing story – she sounds like quite a lady!