Reading is an infinite activity.  Some books can help our writing by showing us how someone else has done it.  Some can be directly instructive   For a more leisurely read about reading, click here.

   On this page, I am including a list and description of books that writers involved with the school may find interesting and helpful.

   I am providing a link to amazom.com, not to be completely commercial, but because this can make the process of obtaining the books easier and faster.   There are all kinds of books that deal directly with the subject of writing.  Here, in no particular order, are some that I have found interesting and valuable.
 

Books about Writing

Becoming a Writer - Dorothea Brande     Gets to the heart and soul of it.

Aspects of the Novel - E. M. Forster   Characters, plot, and pattern, the whole ball of wax.

Elements of Style - Strunk And White   Also available online, click here.

The Sounds of Poetry - Robert Pinsky     How to hear better.

Women Writers at Work , Beat Writers at Work  - The editors of the Paris Review   Great interviews with great writers.

Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular - Rust Hills     How did he get that name?

A Poetry Handbook - Mary Oliver     Reveals the foundations.

A Writer's Time - Kenneth Atchity   How to organize, schedule and move forward.

The Writing Life - Annie Dillard   Has that great quote in it.

Woe Is I - Patricia O'Connor   Whoa!  An entertaining book about grammar.

The Deluxe Transitive Vampire
The New Well-Tempered Sentence
Paris Out of Hand
The Disheveled Dictionary   Karen Elizabeth Gordon    Yes, grammar can be fun.  And, sometimes, necessary.  The Paris book is not about grammar, but about a Paris of the imagination.

The Writer's Digest Guide to Good Writing   Writing advice from the past eight decades.

The Triggering Town - Richard Hugo    Wonderful essays on poetry and writing by a wonderful poet.

100 Things Every Writer Needs To Know - Scott Edelstein   Straight talk from a good guy from Minnesota.

Writing For Your Life - Deena Metzger    She goes deep and puts into words the healing aspects and possibilities of writing.

Writing Down the Bones
Wild Mind
Long Quiet Highway  - Natalie Goldberg     Natalie set me on the path and these books kept me focused.  Great, wise, and generous words.

One Continuous Mistake - Gail Sher   A directly Buddhist experience.

How To Read a Poem - Edward Hersch   Subtitled - And Fall in Love with Poetry.

Bird by Bird - Anne Lamott    She's been there and retained her sense of humor.
 
 
 

Books for Fun

Cosmicomics- Italo Calvino  Recreates the world.

The Little Sister, The Big Sleep, The Simple Art of Murder - Raymond Chandler   The master of simile.

3 Plays - Thornton Wilder     A great American voice.

A Moveable Feast - Ernest Hemingway      Mais oui!

Harold and the Purple Crayon - Crockett Johnson     One of the first and most influential books in my life.

A Prayer For Owen Meany - John Irving   Possibly a perfect novel.

Alba - Delacorta   Hip mystery.  Lean, but mean prose.

Sixty Stories - Donald Barthelme    The master of the form and formless.

Up in the Old Hotel, Joe Gould's Secret - Joseph Mitchell   Brilliant reporting by an elusive artist.

Wise Children - Angela Carter   A great book about the theater, acting, and celebration.

Hotel Eden - Ron Carlson   Short stories are usually too short for my attention span, but something wonderful happens in each one.

Transit of Venus - Shirley Hazzard  A beautifully written book about fate and coincedence.

Essays, Charlotte's Web - E. B. White   Mr. E. B. and his kind heart.

The Horse's Mouth, Herself Surprised - Joyce Cary  The Horse's Mouth was my 11th grade English teacher's favorite book.  Mine, too.  In it, the passion and humor of an artist rises above a world too busy to really notice.

Weather Central - Ted Kooser  A great, midwestern, insurance man poet.

Sex, Death, and Fly-Fishing - John Gierach  Like Mark Twain, but on smaller, more intimate rivers.

The Mezzanine - Nicholson Baker    The king of Specific Detail beguiles us with language and lunch.

My Family and Other Animals - Gerald Durrell  Lawrence Durrell brother reveals the secrets of a completely wacky English family.  Very funny.

Jumpers, Rosencrantz and Guilderstern are Dead,
Shakespeare in Love: a screenplay, India Ink, Arcadia - Tom Stoppard   The greatest living playwright plays with our minds.

Understanding Comics - Scott McCloud       A different kind of narrative,

Buddhism - Plain and Simple - Steve Hagan    The best book.

Sailor Song, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Sometimes A Great Notion - Ken Kesey    A real American hero who can also tell a great story.

Pigs Have Wings - P. G. Wodehouse    Laugh out loud and disturb the
neighbors.

A Story Like The Wind,  A Far-off Place  - Laurens van der Post -  Africa, a boy and his dog, a native uprising true love, words of wisdom, and an endless trek through the desert.  Wow.

Mysteries and Manners - Flannery O'Connor   Words from one of the great ones.  Includes the best chicken in literature.

Collected Poems - Kenneth Patchen      A beautiful dreamer.

Fires - Raymond Carver   Stories, essays, and poems.

War and Peace - Tolstoy  Trans- Constance Garrett   Who says translation doesn't matter?  This book will keep you warm in winter.

The Incredible Voyage, Ice, Adrift, and others. - Tristan Jones - The incredible Mr. Jones drags his sailboat through the Amazon jungle, is trapped with his ship on an iceberg off Greenland for months, and sails the sea with his three-legged dog.  True stories.

Freddy The Detective, Freddy and the Baseball Team From Mars  - Walter Brooks    One of the best voices in what they call children's literature.

Refiner's Fire, Ellis Island, Winter's Tale, A Soldier of the Great War - Mark
Helprin - Big hearts encounter adventure in an attempt to make sense of the world.

Red Harvest, The Thin Man, etc. - Dashiell Hammett - He means business and he means red as in blood.

So Long, See you Tomorrow, Time Will Darken It - William Maxwell   The longtime, former New Yorker fiction editor is one of the great stylists of all time.  Suspense, poetry, humor, everything is in his writing.

Crossing To Safety, Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner      Wonderful writing, wonderful stories.

Crow With No Mouth - Ikkyu     Zen haiku from a wildman.

Picnic, Lightning, Questions About Angels, The Art of Drowning,
The Best Cigarette - Billy Collins     All that poetry should be.  The Best Cigarette is a CD of poems read with feeling and humor.
 
 

Christmas Music

Solo Monk, Monk's Dream - Thelonious Monk

Steppin' Out -Astaire Sings - Fred Astaire

Today - Art Pepper    Desert island music.

Jerry Garcia Band       This was on the box in my car for two years.

Tiddlywinks, Diggin Uncle Q, - NRBQ     Rock and Roll will never die.

Louis Prima Hits        Oh, babe, there's no one like him.

12 Shades of Brown - Junior Brown   Ernest Tubb's illegitimate off-spring.

Buena Vista Social Club    Dancing, rum, and romance - what else is there?

Quanta - Gilberto Gil   Beautiful Brazilian songs that transcend borders, language, and genre.

True Life Blues - The Songs of Bill Monroe   Bluegrass performed by hot dogs that know how to swing.

Blues, Rags, and Hollers, Lots More Blues, Rags, and Hollers - Koerner, Ray And Glover         The old standbys.

Shot of Love - Bob Dylan    I'm always slow.  It took me ten years to get into this.

World Out of Time - The Music of Madagascar     Truly out of time, mysterious and beautiful.  This is music that sounds as if it came from another planet, just like ours, only without the distractions.

Knockdown Calypsos - Growling Tiger   Old style, acoustic calypsos, poetic and funky.

Temptation's Greatest Hits      Ain't too proud to beg.

 More titles added soon.  The classical section, etc.