Inspiration comes from everywhere.
I love to read books. A good story, a good phrase can definitely inspire me. A few years ago I started writing down the titles and authors of the books I read, in case I wanted to remember it later, maybe reread even. Sometimes when I read I have to keep a sentence, so I write it onto my bookmark. I started compiling these too. Not every book, not even every sentence that snaps my eye. It isn't even necessarily an important sentence. But they are ones that speak to me. Call me a collector.
In high school and college I rarely read anything beyond the required reading for classes. When I got married my husband would read to me in the evenings while I knitted, things like The Brothers K and The Hotel New Hampshire. I was working full time, then the kids were born, husband went back for another degree, busy, busy, busy. My MIL (mother-in-law) would loan me lots of books. (Still does!) I remember reading Oryx and Crake and The Poisonwood Bible and some others. There was a short stint of being part of a book club sometime around 2006 and we read The Girl with the Pearl Earring, Memoirs of a Geisha , something by Anne Lamott, The Five People You Meet In Heaven and some others I don't remember. One woman of our group had twins and we stopped meeting.
In 2008-09 I led a book club in my daughter's 5th grade class. We were a small group - four or five top readers (including my daughter) needing a challenge. We read Shabanu, The Witch of Blackbird Pond, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, The Giver, and Farewell to Manzanar. All such great stories, for very different reasons. I loved discussing the books with the kids. Here's when I started recording the titles and authors. I also read Angels and Demons, Over Sea, Under Stone, Skipping Christmas, The Dark is Rising, The Midwife's Apprentice, Greenwitch, The Grey King, Silver on the Tree (My sister loaned the Susan Cooper books to me, incredulous that I never read them as a kid,) The Shack (curious to see what all the fuss was about,) Whatever It Takes (nonfiction about school polity, teacher organization, education theory etc), A.S. Byatt's fun Little Black Book of Stories, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (clever!), NPR's collection This I Believe II (that was a gift from someone,) The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards (good read!), and Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees.
I have always read to my children, especially at bedtime. Countless children's books, many over and over. Some of my favorites are Jamberry, Time for Bed, The Big Red Barn, The Baby BeeBee Bird, anything by Shel Silverstein, Open Wide - Tooth School Inside, Stellaluna. I had read all of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books to them, several in the Harry Potter series and even Little Women. But now I was writing down the titles. In 2009-10 I read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Flipped by Wendelin VanDraanen, Artemis Fowl, Anne of Green Gables and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to them. I love reading aloud to them still. Many nights, though, they're reading their own books. They both read a lot.
In 2010 I read A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley, The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood, Bel Canto by Ann Patchett (one of my all-time favorites!) and People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks and Carl Hiasson's Nature Girl. These are great stories, lots of inspiration there. In July I read Mrs. Kimble by Jennifer Haigh and Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol. Then I read a huge book that my MIL loaned to me (she is a book hound! I get lots of books from her) called Last Night in Twisted River by John Irving. Didn't finish it until October, but here began my quote collecting. Page 531: SixPack's philosophy "always to do without those things I didn't dare to lose."
Sometimes the turn of a phrase, even dangling all by itself, can make you pause.
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