The Squirrel Rating System is my highly subjective, totally irrelevant rating system of how likely a book is to inspire creative thinking. If you’ve ever seen the movie “Up” or watched dogs in a park being distracted by squirrels, you’ll understand this system. The rating starts a One Squirrel, which represents a relevant and intriguing book. The maximum rating is Five Squirrels, which inspires flights of fancy so frequent that you have to back up and re-read, a number of times just to get through the book. This rating can also be applied to podcasts or any other source of commentary or reference. The following is a more thorough description of each rating.
The book is informative, relevant and contributes to the creative endeavor at hand. Many technical reference books fit into this category.
The book is intriguing and sheds a new light on what you once thought were hard and fast rules. These books tend to enlighten and change your perspective.
The book is inspiring and encourages you to think in new directions. You will explore new ideas and open up new doors of creativity.
The book excites your creative juices to the point where your mind occasionally wanders off on a creative journey. You often have to go back and re-read the part that sent you off on the latest journey of discovery.
The book is so full of creative distractions and fascinating ideas that it sets your mind reeling. I’ve had to listen to a few podcasts and re-read a couple of books so often, it seemed like I would never get through them. This is perfectly fine because the journey is much more important than the final destination which is, of course, the end of the book.
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