Reading Day

It's a cloudy, muggy day, and I haven't spent an afternoon just laying around and reading in months, so I'm declaring today a reading day. I have SO MANY awesome books I've been dying to read just waiting for me to pick them up. The hard part will be deciding which one. Here's just a few that are calling me:



What about you? What are you reading - or wishing you could take the time to read - today?

Reading To Write

Lately I've been feeling sort of stymied. The creativity just hasn't been flowing in my re-writes. Not to mention it's getting to the point where I need to start thinking seriously about what I'm going to write next. I have a few promising ideas, but no real inspiration to flesh them out.

As I've been laying around sick these last few days, unable to stare at my computer screen for more than a few minutes thanks to the sinus pressure, it finally hit me. I haven't been reading!

I've been spending so much time revising and thinking about revising and nitpicking sentences that I haven't read just for fun. And I need it. That's when I feel the most inspired, when I'm surrounded by exciting, interesting, absorbing stories. So yesterday, when actual reading was an impossibility, I started listening to an audiobook, and already I feel revived.



(Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare, read by Jennifer Ehle who is awesome at the multitude of voices and British accents in the book.)

So what about you? Do you read when you write? I can't read fiction that is similar in topic to what I'm writing but I like to read things that are similar in tone.