My Books

I'm stealing an idea from Amber's site. I liked her picture of the books she brought home from the library, and I thought, why not post a photo of some of my books? So I gathered a few about writing, and here they are.

There are two books in particular that are the source of all my technical knowledge: On Writing Well, by William Zinsser, and The Little, Brown Handbook, Brief Version by Jane E. Aaron. The latter is an inexhaustible gold mine of grammar, sentence structure, punctuation, and a ton of other things and it's the textbook for my writing class. If I could keep only one of these books, this would be it. I'm big on the mechanics of writing. Like building a house, the framework is made up of parts that must be true and in their correct place.

The Grammar Bible has the basics, and got me to a level where I nearly aced the reading/writing part of the college entrance exam. As for the others, Writers [on Writing] is an interesting collection of essays from The New York Times. The light blue book, Writing Fiction by Janet Burroway, is a difficult book to find, but a must have for anyone wanting to write fiction. Wifey-Do has the same book in her collection, as it was the textbook for her creative writing class. She insisted I get my own copy for fear that I would dog ear her book.

I have read bits and pieces of Style by Joseph M. Williams. I don't know how to describe it except to say it's cryptic. Once I was able to remember some of the countless bits of grammatical trivia, I began to understand Williams' book. When looking at my collection of books on writing, I realize there is a hell of a lot to know, and I wonder if I can learn and remember a third of it. In my lifetime.