General Books

The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition

William Strunk Jr., E. B. White

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 369 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Great Reference 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE is a great little pocket reference for all writers (creative, essay, or nonfiction).

What is most amazing is how it consolidates a wealth of information into accessible, bite-size chapters that are easy to search on and then easy to comprehend.

The sections that I have found the most helpful are:
1) Verb Subject Agreement for the exceptions, "one of" and "each and every".
2) Why using the Active Voice is better through exhibition and not b/c it's the general rule.
3) Putting statements into positive form (something I had not considered).
4) And the entire section on "Approach to Style".

I think that for the price, you can not go wrong with this one. I have GRAMMATICALLY CORRECT by Stilman and SOLUTIONS FOR WRITERS by Stein, both of which I recommend, but if you had to choose the order in which to buy: ELEMENTS OF STYLE, SOLUTIONS FOR WRITERS (as it's not just about writing but the craft of story telling), and then GRAMMATICALLY CORRECT.

Editorial Review:

Contains rules of grammar phrased as direct orders and provides the principal requirements of plain English style. Concentrates on fundamentals: the rules of usage and principles of composition most commonly violated. Softcover. DLC: English language--Style.

Fahrenheit 451 (Cliffs Notes)

Kristi Hiner

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1269 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The original CliffsNotes study guides offer a look into key elements and ideas within classic works of literature. The latest generation of titles in this series also features glossaries and visual elements that complement the familiar format.

CliffsNotes on Fahrenheit 451 explores a twenty-fourth century world in which books are considered evil because they inspire people to think and to question.

Following the story of a 30-year-old fireman who’s spent the last decade destroying books for a living, this study guide features a graphical map to show how the novel’s characters relate to one another. In addition, CliffsNotes provides character analyses that take you deeper into the minds and mechanical workings of Ray Bradbury’s famous social criticism.  Other features that help you figure out this important work include

• Personal background on the author
• Synopsis of the book and a look at major themes
• Summaries and commentaries on each part of the book
• Review section that features multiple-choice questions, quoted passages, and suggested essay topics and practice projects
• Resource Center with books, articles, and Web sites that can help round out your knowledge

Classic literature or modern-day treasure — you'll understand it all with expert information and insight from CliffsNotes study guides.

The Elements of Style: The Original Edition

William Strunk

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 20 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The print leaves much to be desired. 2 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

The book is great, I mean it's a classic but this version looks like it came right off the photo copier of the original print for 100 years ago. It's horribly fussy and the copy spacing is poor. I suggest finding a version by a different publisher.

Decent Desktop Reference for the Student / Professional 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Strunk's work is a solid baseline for grammar, punctuation, and composition. If your workplace tends to create its own standards for linguistics, it might be valuable to keep this readily available.

It is somewhat limited in terms of all the possible usages of punctuation, and admits as much in its first pages. While this is a valuable reference for most scenarios, it can't stand alone.

Continues to be the best 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This book is a wonderful reference for clear and concise writing. It has helped me improved my writing tremendously. One of the reasons why it is so effective is that it gives good examples of bad writing and lets you compare it with the better kind so that you can see the difference between them. The book has been used by many writers in the past, so it gives you the sense that it has truly helped many.

Editorial Review:

This book is the classic reference text for clear writing and is generally considered a must-have for any student or writer. In this most revered of writing books, Strunk identifies the necessary qualities of proper American English style; and he does it all with wit and grace. Compelling and timeless, this book is simply the best of its kind.

Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays

David Foster Wallace

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 48 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Smart, eclectic, and hilariously funny. 5 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

Full disclosure: I have a major intellectual crush on David Foster Wallace. Yes, yes, I know about his weaknesses - the digressions, the rampant footnote abuse, the flaunting of his amazing erudition, the mess that is 'Infinite Jest'. I know all this, and I don't care. Because when he is in top form, there's nobody else I would rather read. The man is hilarious; I think he's a mensch, and I don't believe he parades his erudition just to prove how smart he is. I think he can't help himself - it's a consequence of his wide-ranging curiosity. At heart he's a geek, but a charming, hyper-articulate geek. Who is almost frighteningly intelligent.

The pieces in "Consider the Lobster" have appeared previously in Rolling Stone, The Atlantic Monthly, the New York Observer, the Philadelphia Enquirer, Harper's, Gourmet, and Premiere magazines. Among them are short meditations on Updike's `Toward the end of Time', on Dostoyevsky, on Kafka's humor, and on the `breathtakingly insipid autobiography' of tennis player Tracy Austin. An intermediate length piece describes Foster Wallace's (eminently sane) reaction to the attacks of September 11th. Each of these shorter essays is interesting, but the meat and potatoes of the book is in the remaining five, considerably longer, pieces. They are:

Big Red Son: a report on the 1998 Adult Video News awards (the Oscars of porn) in Las Vegas.
Consider the Lobster: a report on a visit to the annual Maine Lobster Festival (for Gourmet magazine).
Host: a report on conservative talk radio, based on extensive interviews conducted with John Ziegler, host of "Live and Local" on Southern California's KFI.
Up Simba: an account of seven days on the campaign trail with John McCain in his 2000 presidential bid (for Rolling Stone).
Authority and American Usage: a review of Bryan Garner's "A Dictionary of Modern American Usage" , which serves as a springboard for a terrific exegesis of usage questions and controversies.

Here's what I like about David Foster Wallace's writing: I know of nobody else who writes as thoughtfully and intelligently. That he manages to write so informatively, with humor and genuine wit, on almost any subject under the sun is mind-blowing - it's also why I am willing to forgive his occasional stylistic excesses. (Can you spell `footnote'?) You may not have a strong interest in lobsters or pornography, but the essays in question are terrific. The reporting on Ziegler and McCain is amazingly good, heartbreakingly so, because it makes the relative shallowness of most reporting painfully evident. Finally, the article on usage is a tour de force - when it first appeared in Harper's, upon finishing it, I was immediately moved to go online and order a copy of Garner's book (which is just as good as DFW promised).

How can you not enjoy an essay that begins as follows?

"Did you know that probing the seamy underbelly of US lexicography reveals ideological strife and controversy and intrigue and nastiness and fervor on a near Lewinskian scale?

....... (several other rhetorical questions) ......

Did you know that US lexicography even *had* a seamy underbelly?"

And which later contains sentences such as:
"Teachers who do this are dumb."
"This argument is not quite the barrel of drugged trout that Methodological Descriptivism was, but it's still vulnerable to objections."
and - my personal favorite -
"This is so stupid it practically drools."

Not everyone will give this collection 5 stars, but I do.

Editorial Review:

Do lobsters feel pain? Did Franz Kafka have a funny bone? What is John Updike's deal, anyway? And what happens when adult video starlets meet their fans in person? David Foster Wallace answers these questions and more in essays that are also enthralling narrative adventures. Whether covering the three-ring circus of a vicious presidential race, plunging into the wars between dictionary writers, or confronting the World's Largest Lobster Cooker at the annual Maine Lobster Festival, Wallace projects a quality of thought that is uniquely his and a voice as powerful and distinct as any in American letters.

On Writing

Stephen King

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 820 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Don't wait for the muse...show up every day 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I don't even read Stephen King books. I don't like horror books as I have nightmares - but I know Stephen is a writing legend so this book was fantastic to read.

He writes in that "real person" way that makes you feel he is not some writing super-hero that just creates a bestseller out of nothing. He is to the point in his advice, but behind it is his story. How he and Tammy came from nothing, how his drug use crushed him, and how his accident changed the way he sees the world. He knows the power of story.

Some top pieces of advice from the book:

- Close your door and make a serious commitment to write. Don't wait for the muse to come. Show up every day and "sooner or later, he'll start showing up, chomping his cigar and making his magic"

- Write what you love to read. Don't write in a genre to make money.

- If you don't have time to read, you don't have time to write.

- He writes by finding some characters and then putting them in a situation. They often surprise him by what happens.

- Write your first full draft with no input. Then let it rest for 6 weeks or so "like bread dough between kneadings". You will find it much easier to kill your darlings after a rest

- Revise for length. 2nd draft = 1st draft - 10%

- "Do you need someone to make you a paper badge with the word "Writer" on it before you can believe you are one? God, I hope not."

Great book!

Editorial Review:

"Long live the King" hailed Entertainment Weekly upon the publication of Stephen King's On Writing. Part memoir, part master class by one of the bestselling authors of all time, this superb volume is a revealing and practical view of the writer's craft, comprising the basic tools of the trade every writer must have. King's advice is grounded in his vivid memories from childhood through his emergence as a writer, from his struggling early career to his widely reported near-fatal accident in 1999 -- and how the inextricable link between writing and living spurred his recovery. Brilliantly structured, friendly and inspiring, On Writing will empower and entertain everyone who reads it -- fans, writers, and anyone who loves a great story well told.

The Chicago Manual of Style

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 102 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The Fifteenth Edition is available in book form, on CD-ROM for Windows, and as a subscription Web site.  The same content from The Chicago Manual of Style is in all three versions.

In the 1890s, a proofreader at the University of Chicago Press prepared a single sheet of typographic fundamentals intended as a guide for the University community. That sheet grew into a pamphlet, and the pamphlet grew into a book—the first edition of the Manual of Style, published in 1906. Now in its fifteenth edition, The Chicago Manual of Style—the essential reference for authors, editors, proofreaders, indexers, copywriters, designers, and publishers in any field—is more comprehensive and easier to use than ever before.

Those who work with words know how dramatically publishing has changed in the past decade, with technology now informing and influencing every stage of the writing and publishing process. In creating the fifteenth edition of the Manual, Chicago's renowned editorial staff drew on direct experience of these changes, as well as on the recommendations of the Manual's first advisory board, composed of a distinguished group of scholars, authors, and professionals from a wide range of publishing and business environments.

Every aspect of coverage has been examined and brought up to date—from publishing formats to editorial style and method, from documentation of electronic sources to book design and production, and everything in between. In addition to books, the Manual now also treats journals and electronic publications. All chapters are written for the electronic age, with advice on how to prepare and edit manuscripts online, handle copyright and permissions issues raised by technology, use new methods of preparing mathematical copy, and cite electronic and online sources.

A new chapter covers American English grammar and usage, outlining the grammatical structure of English, showing how to put words and phrases together to achieve clarity, and identifying common errors. The two chapters on documentation have been reorganized and updated: the first now describes the two main systems preferred by Chicago, and the second discusses specific elements and subject matter, with examples of both systems. Coverage of design and manufacturing has been streamlined to reflect what writers and editors need to know about current procedures. And, to make it easier to search for information, each numbered paragraph throughout the Manual is now introduced by a descriptive heading.

Clear, concise, and replete with commonsense advice, The Chicago Manual of Style, fifteenth edition, offers the wisdom of a hundred years of editorial practice while including a wealth of new topics and updated perspectives. For anyone who works with words, whether on a page or computer screen, this continues to be the one reference book you simply must have.

What's new in the Fifteenth Edition:

* Updated material throughout to reflect current style, technology, and professional practice

* Scope expanded to include journals and electronic publications

* Comprehensive new chapter on American English grammar and usage by Bryan A. Garner (author of A Dictionary of Modern American Usage)

* Updated and rewritten chapter on preparing mathematical copy

* Reorganized and updated chapters on documentation, including guidance on citing electronic sources

* Streamlined coverage of current design and production processes, with a glossary of key terms

* Descriptive headings on all numbered paragraphs for ease of reference

* New diagrams of the editing and production processes for both books and journals, keyed to chapter discussions

* New, expanded Web site with special tools and features for Manual users at www.chicagomanualofstyle.org.

Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

Anne Lamott

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 307 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Touching and funny 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Anne teaches writing and this book is based on what she shares with her class. I love the personal stories she tells, especially about her son, Sam. Writers often talk of "voice", and I feel I know Anne through this book. I can hear her voice.

She makes the serious memorable, but also funny. Writing is important, but she does urge us to not take it all too seriously.
She talks about the thrill of seeing oneself in print, but then the raging doubt and the self-loathing that can come sometimes.
It is full of lessons, like seeing the world through a tiny window and just describing that bit - and then widening it. Don't start with a big project, just write a short assignment.
Writing is not just for publication - it is it's own reward. Commit to finishing. She is realistic, encouraging but without promising the world. Highly recommended!

Editorial Review:

"Thirty years ago my older brother, who was  ten years old at the time, was trying to get a  report on birds written that he'd had three months to  write. It was due the next day. We were out at our  family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen  table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper  and pencils and unopened books on birds,  immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my  father sat down beside him, put his arm around my  brother's shoulder, and said, 'Bird by bird, buddy.  Just take it bird by bird.'"

Mla Handbook for Writers of Research Papers

Joseph Gibaldi

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Total reviews: 83 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The Best of Class 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

The Modern Language Association has developed a crisp contemporary style with ready application well beyond the realms of modern literature. The style is an evolution of Chicago style. The reference format for the "Works Cited" in MLA-speak, are virtually indistinguishable from those in Chicago-style bibliographies. However, MLA has added a unique parenthetical "author-page" citation to reference sources in the text. This is easy for both scholars and non-scholars alike to comprehend and use, making this a good general-purpose style.

The MLA Handbook does an excellent job of representing the style, though with occasional foibles. These tend to be more a distraction than a nuisance, and are often ignored when the style is used in scholarly publication. For example, there is a marked predisposition for the use of abbreviations in references. This is unnecessary, and can present some rather unsavory phrases when sounded out, such as "U of Chicago P" for University of Chicago Press. Page space is rarely so confined as to make the parsimonious use of letters productive, so many authors and journal editors forgo this frugality. The handbook devotes an entire twenty-page chapter to the topic.

There is a tendency in the handbook expand features beyond their useful application. In the last edition the requirements for presenting quotations was elaborated far beyond the needs of most scholars. This was circumscribed in the current edition, but references to electronic sources were elaborated far beyond their credible application. Such references can have up to fifteen elements! An ephemeral online source cannot be made permanent and credible by elaborating the reference to it, and this appears to be an attempt to do just that. These features, too, can be employed as needed or safely ignored.

Missing from the handbook is any reference to the use of headings and subheadings in research papers. The handbook claims that most instructors discourage their use. However, an informal sampling of articles published in the MLA's own journal, PMLA, found that about half did make use of subheadings. This seems a bit hypocritical, especially in a handbook that gets a mite preachy about plagiarism. Do as I do, do as I say, or what? To be credible the handbook should reflect the style as applied in print.

These criticisms border on the trivial simply because there is nothing else to complain about. At its best, the style employs simple rules. For example, if a number can be written in one or two words write it out. Otherwise use numerals, and always use numerals for precise measures. In contrast, APA (American Psychological Association) style has elaborate rules requiring some small numbers to be written as words, others as numerals. MLA style is free of such exceptions. As long as the style and handbook are approached with a measure of tolerance for its idiosyncrasies, it is easy to use and adequately comprehensive for all the tasks of scholarship. Only if you have delved into other research styles such as APA, AMA (American Medical Association), and Chicago can you appreciate the simplicity of MLA style and the masterly way it has been documented in the handbook. There is elegance in ordered simplicity, and more so than any other research style, MLA style has achieved that elegance.

Editorial Review:

Since it was first published in 1977, the MLA Handbook has sold nearly four million copies worldwide. Now completely revised and updated, the guide contains detailed information on using computers for research and writing and on citing electronic publications. Features include two-color printing, lie-flat binding, and a complete subject index.

Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation

Lynne Truss

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Total reviews: 544 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

A bona fide publishing phenomenon, Lynne Truss’s now classic #1 New York Times bestseller Eats, Shoots & Leaves makes its paperback debut after selling over 3 million copies worldwide in hardcover.

We all know the basics of punctuation. Or do we? A look at most neighborhood signage tells a different story. Through sloppy usage and low standards on the Internet, in e-mail, and now text messages, we have made proper punctuation an endangered species.

In Eats, Shoots & Leaves, former editor Truss dares to say, in her delightfully urbane, witty, and very English way, that it is time to look at our commas and semicolons and see them as the wonderful and necessary things they are. This is a book for people who love punctuation and get upset when it is mishandled. From the invention of the question mark in the time of Charlemagne to George Orwell shunning the semicolon, this lively history makes a powerful case for the preservation of a system of printing conventions that is much too subtle to be mucked about with. BACKCOVER: Praise for Lynne Truss and Eats, Shoots & Leaves:

Eats, Shoots & Leaves “makes correct usage so cool that you have to admire Ms. Truss.”
—Janet Maslin, The New York Times

“Witty, smart, passionate.”
—Los Angeles Times Book Review, Best Books Of 2004: Nonfiction

“Who knew grammar could be so much fun?”
—Newsweek

“Witty and instructive. . . . Truss is an entertaining, well-read scold in a culture that could use more scolding.”
—USA Today “Truss is William Safire crossed with John Cleese’s Basil Fawlty.”
—Entertainment Weekly

“Lynne Truss has done the English-speaking world a huge service.”
—The Christian Science Monitor

“This book changed my life in small, perfect ways like learning how to make better coffee or fold an omelet. It’s the perfect gift for anyone who cares about grammar and a gentle introduction for those who don’t care enough.”
—The Boston Sunday Globe

“Lynne Truss makes [punctuation] a joy to contemplate.”
—Elle

“If Lynne Truss were Roman Catholic I’d nominate her for sainthood.” —Frank McCourt, author of Angela’s Ashes

“Truss’s scholarship is impressive and never dry.”
—Edmund Morris, The New York Times Book Review

On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction (On Writing Well)

William K. Zinsser

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 173 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Best of the best 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

William Zinsser's career as a nonfiction writer of over fifteen books spans decades. Among many impressive credentials, he taught writing at Yale and became general editor of the Book-of-the-Month club. He knows whereof he writes.

On Writing Well is worth going over and over because it's so packed with good information that it would be impossible to truly take in everything during the first read.

On every page, Zinsser urges writers to simplify and clarify, and he tells us how it's done. He never makes a point without supporting it with entertaining examples. He tells stories about his life and the lives of other writers, humorists, ball players, students, and politicians, mixing those stories with tales about adjectives, verbs, nouns, and phrases, until we feel affectionate admiration for the parts of speech.

Zinsser's book made me think of the subtitle: Everything You've Always Needed to Understand About Writing but Didn't Know Enough to Ask. Fortunately for the reader, Zinsser does know--and shares what he knows.

Editorial Review:

On Writing Well has been praised for its sound advice, its clarity and the warmth of its style. It is a book for everybody who wants to learn how to write or who needs to do some writing to get through the day, as almost everybody does in the age of e-mail and the Internet. Whether you want to write about people or places, science and technology, business, sports, the arts or about yourself in the increasingly popular memoir genre, On Writing Well offers you fundamental priciples as well as the insights of a distinguished writer and teacher. With more than a million copies sole, this volume has stood the test of time and remains a valuable resource for writers and would-be writers.