Writing guides, grammar books, punctuation how-tos . . . do you read them? Not read them? How many writing books, grammar books, dictionaries–if any–do you have in your library?
According to my LibraryThing tags, I have 11 dictionaries and 3 books tagged "writing"; I have a feeling that I have other books about writing that haven't made it in to my LibraryThing account but I'm away from home today and can't check. The dictionaries come from my foreign-language background (I was a French major in college and have taken Italian, Hebrew, Russian, Latin and Irish language classes at various times) and the fact that I like to collect dictionaries of local dialects when I travel. I'm most proud of my Occitan-French dictionary from the Languedoc region of France. I also have 16 grammars and other kinds of language reference books not classified as dictionaries.
I actually have a lot of writing books since grammar is my passion and copywriting my job.
ReplyDeleteElements of Style
Lapsing into a Comma by Walsh
The Copyeditor's Handbook by Einsohn
AP Stylebook and Libel Manual
Artful Sentences: Syntax as style by Tufte
Words that work by Luntz
Plus a ton of books on advertising copywriting, a ton of books about writing children's picture books, and a ton about writing fiction (favorites being Stephen King's On Writing and Reading like a Writer by Francine Prose).
And foreign language dictionaries and books - have a whole shelf of those. Even an English-Danish one I got when I went through my Denmark loving period. I have this great reference book about languages called The Dictionary of languages. It's an awesome reference!
I guess I need to get these all up on LibraryThing soon!