Literary Inspiration

So this past week, my Nonfiction Lit class has been reading Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell, and I have to admit, I loved it. But the point of this post isn't to ramble about how awesome Vowell is (because she is) but it's more about a video we were shown in class.

Towards the end of the video, she talks about books she turns to when she has writer's block. And it got me wondering, what are my inspiration books?

There are the obvious choices, like Didion (the high priestess of too cool for school female authors) and Talese (who, in my opinion, made essentially stalking Frank Sinatra cool). But while I enjoy them and am often humbled by their talent, I can't say that they really help me get out of y writing funk. I mentioned reading Michael Paternitti's "The Long Fall of One-Eleven Heavy" which made me weep (in public, mind you) because it is simultaneously heartbreaking and beautifully written. Seriously, the detail is astounding.

But then I decided to branch out. For some reason, I always have trouble thinking of my favorite nonfiction reads (awful, both because I am a nonfiction writer and that this is ALWAYS the first question asked in nonfiction classes). So I decided to take a glance over at my bookshelf, which is mostly fiction.

There's Emerson, who's succinct sentence structure makes me giddy. And there's Austin, who's elegant and witty observations make me wish I was British. Pushkin for the same reason, just Russian. And there's Allende, just because her writing is like music to my eyes.

So, what are everybody else's go to books?