What do you read when you're stuck? by t_winkler

I have three books that I go back to when my own writing stops making sense. Not for inspiration in the vague sense. More like recalibration. Essayists: Montaigne, in the Frame translation. Not the whole thing. I open it somewhere in the middle and read until something loosens. The complete absence of destination in those essays is useful for me when I'm trying to escape the documentation reflex. W.G. Sebald. Rings of Saturn, usually. The long sentences that fold back on themselves. The way he inhabits uncertainty without resolving it. And rather unexpectedly, Joan Didion's The White Album, which I came to late and which has taught me more about structure in one reading than fifteen years of technical documentation. I'm curious what other people reach for. Not what you think you should say. What actually works.