Things that ought to be read, a few recommendations.

An interesting curse of being a writer, is reading.

It gets harder to read some things, the words and phrases mismatched and grating against my mental ear. Screeching like the breaks of a great train, its track so rudely disturbed.

Another, is to read and have it stir the call in my own heart. To start the siren song of writing calling me back and ruining me enjoyment with its longing. This is the worse when I am tired, and there is no energy to write, but no relaxation to be had in reading, either.

Perhaps the worst, and perhaps the best, is to read the words of those who came before me. Who strode as giants, or perhaps more accurately, as tiny pixies, crafting each word with such precision that it makes my heart ache with the beauty of it.

I found myself reading Ray Bradbury again, and my soul was burning with it, so I thought I ought to offer a few recommendations:

If you find yourself with nothing else to read, go read them. Go read Ray Bradbury, whose mastery of imagery is unsurpassed, and who is so often only remembered for unhappy forced readings of Fahrenheit 451. That book is a masterpiece, but I truly love his short stories. Go read The Martian Chronicles, go read The Illustrated Man.

If, you crave something with greater literary oomph, there is none greater than Ursula K. LeGuin. She is a master of fantasy and science fiction, both. She wrote The Wizard of Earthsea, and was perhaps the first person ever to write the concept of a wizard school, long before Harry Potter made it ubiquitous. Many other things has she written, and the well of her linguistic mastery and grappling with complex ideas run deep indeed. Perhaps her most famous work is The Left Hand of Darkness, a science fiction which won too many awards to name and delves deeply into what gender actually means.

If you want some of the best science fiction out there, I recommend Isaac Asimov. His I, Robot short story collection is a gem, and he brought us the idea of the three laws of robotics. There is a movie called Bicentennial Man, based on a short story, which became a novella, which features Robin Williams. It is one of my favorite movies, though sadly under appreciated. Asimov's Foundation Trilogy is a masterwork.

Alan Dean Foster mostly has less serious works, and those can be quite fun, but I recommend reading his Catechist Series. They are strange but profoundly beautiful.

Terry Pratchett, just... read his work. I recommend starting the Discworld novels, preferably with book 3 or 4.