Referee Reading

Ideas for the Game
Kurt Wiegel on his Game Geeks Youtube channel recently expressed the opinion that GMs/referees should read a lot. I agree. Reading is a great way to collect ideas that can later be used in whole, in part, or just as inspiration for a game session you are running.  The more one reads, especially history or fiction, the more useful material one is exposed to. Plots, characters, and events can all be used as fodder for your imagination mill. Re-skinning a story by changing the setting, the names of the people involved and some of the insignificant details can be one of the best ways to quickly come up with a game scenario. Where you draw that story from can vary quite a bit.
I find old western movies to be a great source of story. They don't even have to be very good movies, in fact often the weaker film plots turn out to be more useful as a game template than the more complex, better movies. Simple is good. Characters can be lifted and their hat and six-gun exchanged for medieval garb and again the most simple, stereotyped ones are often the best. Another source I frequently mine for story and character is comic books. The plots are often straight-forward and the villains and supporting cast iconic and easy to understand. Very complex plots or complex characters are difficult for me to successfully translate onto the gaming table. Music is often an inspiration for my gaming as well. Lyrics can suggest characters and story while the sounds inspire mood and atmosphere elements. Pictures often enter my imagination as I listen to music and the music can become a backdrop to an idea I work out mentally while listening.
Reading exercises the imagination. Being able to picture, in one's mind, the setting and action being described in writing is using one's imagination.  The imagination, so essential to tabletop gaming, is like a muscle. it responds to exercise by getting stronger. The more we use our imagination, the stronger our imagination becomes. Imagining the possible is helpful in life as well as gaming. An active imagination allows us to think outside the box and be more creative. I am a big fan of the imagination. 
Having just finished Glen Cook's excellent The Black Company series and looking for my next fantasy read, I took the advice of Sean Patrick Fannon who in his excellent Shaintar: Legends Arise setting book recommends The Fionavar Trilogy by Guy Gavriel Kay and the Belgariad novels of David Eddings (among others) and ordered the trilogy and the first three Belgariad volumes. They are older '80s fantasy which means the stories are likely heavily Tolkien influenced and rather epic in nature. I am hoping to find them fertile ground for picking up ideas for use as referee as well as an entertaining read.