In celebration of the launch of Reading the Sweet Oak we are so excited to dedicate this week’s Inspired By to the lovely, Jan Stites! Here, she shares the five books that have inspired her most as a writer.

The Complete Stories of Truman Capote by Truman Capote

This is the first book that really showed me how powerful figurative language can be. Passages such as this one describing winter birds: “Here, there, a flash, a flutter, an ecstasy of shrillings.” Capote uses such language not as a show unto itself but in the service of characterization and story.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

This book illustrates how powerful it can be to have voice, theme, language, and characterization all rolled into one moving story. It illustrates the power of a book with both gentle humor and dark reality, albeit one with a hopeful ending. I reread this book periodically just to look at how Lee manages to get so much across so economically.

The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein

This book really moved me with the power of its characterization. It especially showed how important and moving a sense of yearning can be. The protagonist and narrator, Enzo, a dog, yearns so deeply to be human. The book made me work harder on sharpening a similar sense of yearning in my own characters.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Schaffer and Annie Barrows

So much of this book is just plain fun, tho I kept the Kleenex close by. I loved the uniqueness of its shape, told through letters from over 20 characters, each with a distinct and usually humorous voice. That voice made the sad parts all the more moving. Made me strive to better capture both voice and humor in my own books.

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Reading this novel at an early age, with Jo wanting to be a writer, helped quicken my own impulses in that same direction. Little Women also helped make me an avid reader, which is essential to being an effective writer. This is a story well told that inspires me to revise and revise and revise again in the service of achieving a similar story, one with engaging characters and great heart.