Books for Writers

In Mictrostyle, branding consultant Christopher Johnson teaches readers how best to navigate the world of micromessaging.

In My Reading Life, Pat Conroy presents a straightforward spiritual and psychological autobiography, in which he gives his readers insight to the books that shaped him as both a writer and a person. "Reading and prayer are both acts of worship to me," he writes.

Stephen King's On Writing is half memoir, half instruction to writers, and all love for the craft of writing. As good now in its 10th Anniversary edition as it was when King penned it in 2000, On Writing recounts King's childhood writing efforts and his initial successes, and within its pages, King lays open a toolbox full of advice for writers.

In this essential book of tips, practical advice, and wisdom, Walter Mosley promises that the writer-in-waiting can finish his or her novel in one year.

Not a book but a wealth of writerly advice that came in tweets from Bob Mayer's session at the Pacific Northwest Writers Association Summer Conference.

The culmination of these past six years of Tin House workshops, featuring essays from a prominent list of contemporary authors.

New York Times journalist Sarah Boxer recommends 27 masterpiece blogs in her book.

Maryanne Wolf explains how we taught our brain to read only a few thousand years ago and how each of us does so today.

In The Well-Fed Writer and The Well-Fed Writer: Back for Seconds, Peter Bowerman makes the bold claim of being able to teach his readers how to achieve financial self-sufficiency as freelance writers in six months or less.

In The War of Art explains why the hardest part of any art is the act of sitting down to do it, and how this resistance can be overcome.

For lovers of words and seekers of wisdom, a lively history of aphorisms—the shortest and oldest written art form—and the intriguing people who have penned them, from the Buddha to Emily Dickinson.

Strunk & White's The Elements of Style has for decades been an essential tool for English language writers and students. The 1959 handbook gets a 2005 facelift with the addition of Maira Kalman's fanciful illustrations.

What would you read if you had the time? What would you learn if you could?

A valuable tool for SAT vocabulary preparation, the 200 pages fly by, and in the interim, 1,000 vocabulary words are easily reviewed or acquired.

In Eats, Shoots & Leaves, former editor Lynne 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. If there are only pedants left who care, then so be it. This is a book for people who love punctuation and get upset when it is mishandled.

Dr. Mardy Grothe is a logophiliac... a word-lover. The man loves words. He loves them so much, he collects them... gathers them and stores them away. He boasts something like 10,000 phrases that he's collected over the years. Putting forth that man's very basic nature is paradoxical, Dr. Grothe exhorts the wit and wisdom of these wonderfully twisted quotations.