Books on the Bookshelf

[Dirty Kitten]

I was perusing my newest catalog for the Writer's Digest Book Club and got curious about what other authors have on their bookshelves.

For fun, list your three favorite writing resource / writing help books. Go ahead and exclude "The Writer's Market" (and "The Erotic Writer's Market) since I'm sure almost all of us have a copy and consider it invaluable.

My three favorite are:

1) The Weekend Novelist
2) Flip Dictionary (huge, but well worth it when I need a few thousand words)
3) Word Painting

What are yours?

DK

 

[slyc_willie]

Not actually on my shelf, more like on the floor next to my desk . . .

1) Roget's 21st Century Thesaurus (ironically printed in 1998)
2) Summer edition, 1994, of the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction including an essay by Isaac Asimov about 'Writing For The Future.'
3) My very first dictionary, given to me by my 8th-grade English teacher, Mrs. Purser. Her name is still written on the edge. *sigh* My first muse

 

[Dirty Kitten]

LOL... Okay, you have a point there. Mine are piled on the dining room table.

I bought a Thesaurus. When I got it home and started flipping through it, I couldn't find anything. It wasn't in alphabetical order (like I remembered them being). It was in some sort of really mixed up order by subject.

I put it down because I was too depressed that I couldn't use it. It made me feel dumb

 

[starrkers]

Currently, only my Dictionary.
Strunk and White is in a box somewhere along with my Roget's Thesaurus (no wonder my vocabulary is limited!) and all my other books.

*waaah* I miss my books!

 

[slyc_willie]

LOL... Okay, you have a point there. Mine are piled on the dining room table.

I bought a Thesaurus. When I got it home and started flipping through it, I couldn't find anything. It wasn't in alphabetical order (like I remembered them being). It was in some sort of really mixed up order by subject.

I put it down because I was too depressed that I couldn't use it. It made me feel dumb

I think I saw that thesaurus at a Borders one time . . . flipped through it, put it down, then realized why it was on the clearance table

I like Roget's. It's in alphabetical order and has an index for various subjects. Tres cool

 

[fcdc]

• Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell - Tells me how to write a story.
• An Underground Education : The Unauthorized and Outrageous Supplement to Everything You Thought You Knew About Art, Sex, Business, Crime, Science, Medicine, and Other Fields of Human Knowledge, Richard Zacks - Full of story fodder.
• The Mammoth Dictionary of Symbols, Nadia Julien - Tells me what to use within the story.

I don't often use a thesaurus. For my particular style, which I like brisk and simple, thesauri lead to overly complicated phrases. They work for some people, but generally not for me.

 

[starrkers]

Ah, but there is nothing to beat a thesaurus when you just can't quite think of the right word.
(and Roget's is the pick of 'em for mine, too)

 

[fcdc]

True, but generally if I think I need a different one, chances are that I'm wrong. I used to be overly reliant on thesauri as a teenage writer, thinking that the bigger the word (and the higher the Fleisch-Kincaid grade level), the better my writing. Currently, I'm still on the rebound from that.

 

[starrkers]

True, but generally if I think I need a different one, chances are that I'm wrong. I used to be overly reliant on thesauri as a teenage writer, thinking that the bigger the word (and the higher the Fleisch-Kincaid grade level), the better my writing. Currently, I'm still on the rebound from that.

I just suffer from oldtimers these days - can't remember a damn thing!

 

[fcdc]

I've got a few more years to go.

... not that I'm gloating or anything.

Honest.

Oh wait!

I lied.

(I suffer from smileyitis. Careful - it's contagious!)

 

[jomar]

Strunk and White
On Writing - Stephen King (it was recommended to me by a Lit author)
I use an online thesaurus when I need one.

That's it for now I probably should look into to some other useful resources.

 

[neonlyte]

The Writers Handbook 2007

 

[wehstar]

Books? I need a book to help? That's why I'm no good. And here's me thinking it was a lack of talent and motivation that was my downfall.

 

[Trombonus]

I don't use them at all. I just write for fun, and don't take it that seriously. Sure my pieces tend to have a few grammatical mistakes, and I sometimes have a bit of trouble figuring out how to say something, but every story I give to my editor has fewer and fewer mistakes in it. If I were to get serious about writing, I would go out and take some classes, and purchase books that will help me, but right now my shelves are filled with random books and magazines.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Did you know that Roget's is online?

Next to my desk, in the bookshelf that I hit with my head when I stretch- I have; My own copy of Roget's, Strunk and White, Ben Shahn's "The Shape Of Content"

And then I have a handful of ethnic baby-name books, a stack of history documents, a pile of National Geographic maps of the world during different eras, and a "History of Cursing"...

I wonder if any of it will make any difference?

 

[john-the-author]

Some versions of Roget's are a whole lot better than others. Can't stand Roget's II, for example.

For general online resources, I go to http://www.bartleby.com, which has a lot of resources under one roof.

On the shelf, some of my fave resources are:
1. The Chicago Manual of Style.
2. Clement Wood's Unabridged Rhyming Dictionary, which I use for song writing and occasionally for poetry (my favorite rhyming dictionary and very inexpensive, too).
3. The Cassell's German-English/English-German dictionary.

 

[jomar]

Did you know that Roget's is online?

That's the one I use. Didn't know it was Roget's. I noticed it when my daughter wanted me to look something up on dictionary.com.

 

[N0madS0uL]

Tin Tin, Asterix, Famous Five.... I had them since I was 13. They're personal so back off! LOL

 

[oggbashan]

Dictionaries, from a basic paperback one to the photographically reduced full Oxford English Dictionary.

A dozen dictionaries of quotations.

Roget.

Oxford books of proverbs, English Grammar, English Language.

About 100 baby name books.

Oxford Companion to English Literature, several editions,

Dictionaries of biography.

Foreign language dictionaries.

and last but not least, a personal library now reduced to about 2,000 books.

Og

 

[starrkers]

Did you know that Roget's is online?

Stella, I think I love you.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Stella, I think I love you.

Will you do something for me?

she's going to hit me, I know

 

[starrkers]

Will you do something for me?

she's going to hit me, I know

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y286/starrcats/smilies/sofa.gif
maybe...

 

[elsol]

Writerly books for ElSol

1. Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game
2. Jayne Ann Krentz's Absolutely Positively
3. Andrew Vacchs Burke Series

I've learned more from books that have made me stay up all night and call out of work (for re-reads) than from the 'manual' type books.

 

[Stella_Omega]

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y286/starrcats/smilies/sofa.gif
maybe...

Laugh- leaning forward, like your av... It's just got to be a beautiful thing

 

[starrkers]

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y286/starrcats/smilies/boobies2.gif
There you go!