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As an artist and writer, I get inspired by reading. Reading is a simple form of escapism: with the flip of a page or the scan of a paragraph you can transport yourself to faraway cities or towering mountain ranges. I am a voracious reader and am always looking for new novels to add to my constantly expanding collection. Throughout 2019 I have read many books and wanted to share some of my favorites with you this week!! If you’d like to see other books I have blogged about in the past you can view those posts here, here, here, and here. Please be sure to comment below and let me know what books you’ve loved this year (:  📖 Hippie by Paulo Coehlo “Hippie” is a slightly auto-biographical account of Coelho's life during the 1960s. The story follows Paulo as he travels from Amsterdam to Nepal on a magic bus. The story is mostly told from Paulo’s perspective, but the supporting characters provide a lot of depth. While the main focus of the novel is on getting from one destination to the next, the journey taught me a lot about love, introspection, and the importance of finding purpose. My Rating: 8.5/10 📒 An Absolutely Remarkable Thing by Hank Green This book was a lot more intense than I had anticipated after reading the summary. “An Absolutely Remarkable Thing” was a fast-paced, action-filled novel that touched on a lot of hard hitting truths our world currently faces. When 64 unusual sculptures pop up in every major city on Earth, the protagonist (April May) becomes famous overnight for filming a YouTube video. What happens from then on is insane. My Rating: 7.5/10 📙 Fashion Forecasts by Yumi Sakugawa Fashion Forecasts was a concept, turned into a zine, turned into a book. In Sakugawa’s signature illustration style she predicts outlandish fashion trends. My Rating: 8/10 📗 Pocket Frida Kahlo Wisdom by Hardie Grant I love this mini book of wisdom full of quotes from Frida Kahlo. I keep this on my desk in my studio. My Rating: 8/10  📖 Fashion Legends Alphabet by Beck Feiner This picture book goes through the alphabet using the names of various famous designers and influential people from the industry. From Anna Wintour to Zuhair Murad, the minimalist graphics in this book are great. My Rating: 6/10 📒 Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill I read this novel for a class at The New School and it wasn't my cup of tea. It reads more like an author's notes and ideas rather than a fully fleshed-out story. Amazon describes the book as "a portrait of a marriage. It is also a beguiling rumination on the mysteries of intimacy, trust, faith, knowledge, and the condition of universal shipwreck that unites us all." My Rating: 2/10 📙 Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguri I read this book in a novel writing workshop and I have been trying to block it out of my mind ever since. Ishiguro's dystopian science fiction style was haunting and incredibly disturbing. The novel was shortlisted for the 2005 Booker Prize, the 2006 Arthur C. Clarke Award, and the 2005 National Book Critics Circle Award but despite critical acclaim, it really freaked me out. If you enjoy novels that instill a sense of psychological fear or gravitate towards the creepier side of sci-fi—this book may be better suited for you!! My Rating: 0/10 📗 The Bookshop by Penelope Green "In 1959 Florence Green, a kindhearted widow with a small inheritance, risks everything to open a bookshop - the only bookshop - in the seaside town of Hardborough. By making a success of a business so impractical, she invites the hostility of the town's less prosperous shopkeepers. By daring to enlarge her neighbors' lives, she crosses Mrs. Gamart, the local arts doyenne. Florence's warehouse leaks, her cellar seeps, and the shop is apparently haunted. Only too late does she begin to suspect the truth: a town that lacks a bookshop isn't always a town that wants one (GoodReads Description)" My Rating: 6/10  📖 I Might Regret This by Abbi Jacobson "From the co-creator and co-star of the hit series Broad City, a "poignant, funny, and beautifully unabashed" (Cheryl Strayed) bestselling essay collection about love, loss, work, comedy, and figuring out who you really are when you thought you already knew," (GoodReads Description). I thoroughly enjoyed reading this and always love collections of personal essays like this!! I find writers like Abbi Jacobson inspiring for my own work and would definetly recommend this book (: My Rating: 9/10 📒 See Your Way to Mindfulness by David Schiller "See Your Way to Mindfulness is a gift book of inspiration and instruction to help readers open their eyes--and their "I's." Written by David Schiller, author of the national bestseller The Little Zen Companion, it's a collection of quotes, prompts, exercises, meditations--married with photographs and drawings that bring the words to life,"(GoodReads Description). My Rating: 8/10 📙 The Friend by Sigrid Nunez "Elegiac and searching, The Friend is both a meditation on loss and a celebration of human-canine devotion," (GoodReads). My Rating: 2/10 📗 Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwige Danticat "At the age of twelve, Sophie Caco is sent from her impoverished village of Croix-des-Rosets to New York, to be reunited with a mother she barely remembers. There she discovers secrets that no child should ever know, and a legacy of shame that can be healed only when she returns to Haiti--to the women who first reared her. What ensues is a passionate journey through a landscape charged with the supernatural and scarred by political violence, in a novel that bears witness to the traditions, suffering, and wisdom of an entire people," (GoodReads). This was another book I was assigned to read in school and it was beautifully written (think Toni Morrison or Jamaica Kincaid) but incredibly sad. My Rating: 2/10  📖 Now, Now, Louison by Jean Frémon My friend Alé selected this book for our book club. "This brilliant portrait of the renowned artist Louise Bourgeois (1911–2010) shows a woman who was devoted to her art and whose life was also that of her century. The art world’s grande dame and its shameless old lady, spinning personal history into works of profound strangeness, speaks with her characteristic insolence and wit, through a most discreet, masterful writer. From her childhood in France to her exile and adult life in America, to her death, this phosphorescent novella describes Bourgeois’s inner life as only one artist regarding another can," (GoodReads). My Rating: 5/10 📒 Bring The Funny by Greg DePaul If you are interested in screenwriting this book is a great resource!! I read this for school and my professor is the author. GoodReads describes Bring The Funny as "A sharp, funny book about comedy screenwriting from a successful screenwriter that uses recent - as in this century - movies you've actually seen as examples." My Rating: 7.5/10 📙 The Rosie Result by Graeme Simsion "Hilarious and thought-provoking, with a brilliant cast of characters and an ending that will have readers cheering for joy, The Rosie Result is the triumphant final installment of the internationally bestselling series that began with The Rosie Project," (GoodReads). My Rating: 8/10 📗 Story of Your Life by Ted Chiang This short story is phenomenal. Ted Chiang is such a talented writer and his other short stories, like The Merchant and the Alchemists Gate are just as enchanting and captivating. Story of Your Life was the basis for the film "Arrival," so if you enjoyed the film it could be fun to read the story that inspired it. My Rating: 9/10  📖 How to Set Yourself on Fire by Julia Dixon Evans This was another book chosen in my book club and I really enjoyed it. It was a fast-paced story written by a local author. The novel focuses on Sheila, a woman in her mid-thirties living a turbulent life. "Her only friends are her mysterious, slovenly neighbor Vinnie and his daughter Torrey, a quirky twelve-year-old coping with a recent tragedy. When her grandmother Rosamond dies, Sheila inherits a box of secret love letters from Harold C. Carr―a man who is not her grandfather. In spite of herself, Sheila gets caught up in the legacy of the affair, piecing together her grandmother’s past and forging bonds with Torrey and Vinnie as intense and fragile as the crumbling pages in Rosamond’s shoebox. As they get closer to unraveling the truth, Sheila grows almost as obsessed with the letters as the man who wrote them. Somewhere, there’s an answering stack of letters―written in Rosamond’s hand―and Sheila can’t stop until she uncovers the rest of the story," (GoodReads). My Rating: 8.5/10 📒 Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates "Coates takes readers along on his journey through America's history of race and its contemporary resonances through a series of awakenings -- moments when he discovered some new truth about our long, tangled history of race, whether through his myth-busting professors at Howard University, a trip to a Civil War battlefield with a rogue historian, a journey to Chicago's South Side to visit aging survivors of 20th century America's 'long war on black people,' or a visit with the mother of a beloved friend who was shot down by the police. In his trademark style -- a mix of lyrical personal narrative, reimagined history, essayistic argument, and reportage -- Coates provides readers a thrillingly illuminating new framework for understanding race: its history, our contemporary dilemma, and where we go from here," (GoodReads). My Rating: 7/10 📙 Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens This was definetly my favorite novel I read this year!! GoodReads describes Where the Crawdads Sing as "an exquisite ode to the natural world, a heartbreaking coming-of-age story, and a surprising tale of possible murder. Owens reminds us that we are forever shaped by the children we once were, and that we are all subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps," (GoodReads). My Rating: 10/10 📗 A Feminist Manifesto in 15 Suggestions by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie I love Chimamanda Adichie and I bought this book as a gift for Katie. As I read it I left little notes inspired by what I read along with quotes from other feminists. The book serves as a guide on how to empower girls and it is wonderful and well written. My Rating: 9.5/10  📖 The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe "The Murders in the Rue Morgue is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe published in Graham's Magazine in 1841. It has been recognized as the first modern detective story; Poe referred to it as one of his "tales of ratiocination,"" (GoodReads). My Rating: 1/10 📒 Wieland by Charles Brockden Brown "Wieland, or The Transformation, was written by Charles Brocken Brown (January 17, 1771 - February 22, 1810). First published in 1798, it is considered the first Gothic novel written by an American author. Brought to America after the French and Indian war with their family, Clara Wieland and her brother Theodore are the children of a German immigrant. When their father dies in a mysterious manner, the children divide his property between the two of them. Clara's letters detail the dark events that follow," (GoodReads). My Rating: 1/10 📙 The Turn of the Screw by Henry James "A very young woman's first job: governess for two weirdly beautiful, strangely distant, oddly silent children, Miles and Flora, at a forlorn estate...An estate haunted by a beckoning evil," (GoodReads). My Rating: 0.5/10 📗 The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett "A coolly glittering gem of detective fiction that has haunted three generations of readers, from one of the greatest mystery writers of all time," (GoodReads). My Rating: 1.5/10 📖 The Glass Key by Dashiell Hammett "Paul Madvig was a cheerfully corrupt ward-heeler who aspired to something better: the daughter of Senator Ralph Bancroft Henry, the heiress to a dynasty of political purebreds. Did he want her badly enough to commit murder? And if Madvig was innocent, which of his dozens of enemies was doing an awfully good job of framing him? Dashiell Hammett's tour de force of detective fiction combines an airtight plot, authentically venal characters, and writing of telegraphic crispness," (GoodReads). My Rating: 1/10 📒 The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Riddle of Ages by Trenton Lee Stewart The Mysterious Benedict Society was my favorite series as a kid. Trenton Lee Stewart decided to create a fourth book in the series a decade after the third book had been released in which all of the characters had aged ten years. I loved this concept because I was able to enjoy the same books I had been obsessed with all over again. I felt like I'd really grown up with those characters and it was cool to revisit them (: His writing is excellent and the fourth book had just as much magic as the first three. My Rating: 10/10  📙 The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler "This work established Chandler as the master of the 'hard-boiled' detective novel, and his articulate and literary style of writing won him a large audience, which ranged from the man in the street to the most sophisticated intellectual," (GoodReads). My Rating: 0.5/10 📙 The Anatomy of Curiosity by Maggie Stiefvater, Tessa Gratton, Brenna Yavanoff This was a book I read in my Writing for Young Adults class. The book contained three stores from three different authors along with their notes and suggestions, mainly pointing out different devices they were using in their work. Of the three stories, I mostly enjoyed reading "Ladylike" by Maggie Stiefvater which GoodReads summarizes as: "In an unassuming corner of Brooklyn, a young woman learns to be ladylike, to love context, and to speak her mind from a very curious sort of tutor," (GoodReads). My Rating: 6.5/10 📖 The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain "Cain's first novel - the subject of an obscenity trial in Boston and the inspiration for Camus's The Stranger - is the fever-pitched tale of a drifter who stumbles into a job, into an erotic obsession, and into a murder," (GoodReads). My Rating: 1/10 📒 Calypso by David Sedaris "With Calypso, Sedaris sets his formidable powers of observation toward middle age and mortality. Make no mistake: these stories are very, very funny--it's a book that can make you laugh 'til you snort, the way only family can. Sedaris's powers of observation have never been sharper, and his ability to shock readers into laughter unparalleled. But much of the comedy here is born out of that vertiginous moment when your own body betrays you and you realize that the story of your life is made up of more past than future," (GoodReads). My Rating: 5/10 📙 Double Indemnity by James M. Cain "Tautly narrated and excruciatingly suspenseful, Double Indemnity gives us an X-ray view of guilt, of duplicity, and of the kind of obsessive, loveless love that devastates everything it touches. First published in 1935, this novel reaffirmed James M. Cain as a virtuoso of the roman noir," (GoodReads). My Rating: 1/10 📗 The Stationary Shop by Marjan Kamali I loved this novel!! It's heartbreaking and heartwarming and the novel takes you on such a compelling journey alongside the main characters. "The Stationery Shop is a beautiful and timely exploration of devastating loss, unbreakable family bonds, and the overwhelming power of love," (Amazon). My Rating: 9/10  📖 High School by Tegan and Sara I loved this autobiography by Tegan and Sara Quin (even though I wasn't very familiar with their music). It reminded me a lot of Just Kids by Patti Smith which is one of my favorite books. "High School is the revelatory and unique coming-of-age story of Sara and Tegan Quin, identical twins from Calgary, Alberta, who grew up at the height of grunge and rave culture in the nineties, well before they became the celebrated musicians and global LGBTQ icons we know today...Written in alternating chapters from both Tegan's and Sara’s points of view, the book is a raw account of the drugs, alcohol, love, music, and friendship they explored in their formative years. A transcendent story of first loves and first songs, High School captures the tangle of discordant and parallel memories of two sisters who grew up in distinct ways even as they lived just down the hall from each another," (GoodReads). My Rating: 9/10 📒 Nightmare Alley by William Lindsay Gresham "Nightmare Alley begins with an extraordinary description of a freak-show geek—alcoholic and abject and the object of the voyeuristic crowd’s gleeful disgust and derision—going about his work at a county fair. Young Stan Carlisle is working as a carny, and he wonders how a man could fall so low. There’s no way in hell, he vows, that anything like that will ever happen to him," (GoodReads). My Rating: 0.5/10 📗 The Big Clock by Kenneth Fearing "George Stroud is a hard-drinking, tough-talking, unscrupulous journalist working for tyrannical Earl Janoth's media empire. And he's involved with the wrong woman - his boss's mistress, Pauline Delos. One day, as Stroud escorts Pauline home, he spies his boss returning from a trip. The next day, Pauline is found dead in her apartment. Janoth knows someone saw him enter Pauline's apartment on the night of the murder; he knows it must have been the man Pauline was seeing on the side; but he doesn't know his identity. To get his hands on the man and pin the crime on him, Janoth assigns his best investigative reporter and most trusted employee to track him down: George Stroud..." (GoodReads). My Rating: 2/10 📖 Deep Water by Patricia Highsmith "In this complex portrayal of a dangerous psychosis emerging in the most unlikely of places, Highsmith examines the chilling reality behind the idyllic facade of American suburban life," (GoodReads). My Rating: 0.5/10 📒 Little Weirds by Jenny Slate This book is so funny and simultaneously heartbreaking. I felt inspired after reading Jenny's work because she breaks so many writing norms. Her short stories are as short as a few sentences and others stretch on for pages and pages. Her way of viewing and interacting with the world around her is so specific and I really appreciate that as well as her attention to detail and brilliant observational skills. If you haven't already watched her stand up special on Netflix I would also recommend that. My Rating: 9/10
 © Annie Fay Meitchik. All Rights Reserved. All content on anniefay.com is my own or credit is given when applicable, please do not use any of my images before contacting me above or @ anniefaymeitchik@gmail.com.  original illustration I spend the majority of my week generating creative content for class. Whether I am writing an essay, workshopping with my peers, submitting manuscripts, or analyzing stories there is always a focus on idea generation. Where do ideas come from? And how, exactly, do authors find their inspiration? When I’m not writing for a class, I gravitate towards creative nonfiction. This genre is fun because it’s based on facts, but you can also lie. For some reason, I hear that definition in John Mulaney’s voice, don’t you? This past week I have worked on consistently collecting material. I have been jotting down my observations whenever I can, treating my sentences like sketches. While what I am sharing today is by no means polished, this post is meant to demonstrate how I find inspiration and generate ideas. Blank pages are intimidating, but by simply recording the world as I see it, I can easily generate material to refine and explore further in the future. These little notes are like excerpts from a field journal—they are initial observations, judgements, and thoughts all jumbled together. This is just one example of my process as a writer. I am always curious to read about how artists come up with new ideas and I hope you’re curious too (: 
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