--Fons Taddic

Hmmm. I think I am trying to set a record for the most things I've promised to get back to in this journal at the same time. Or perhaps it just seems that way. At any rate, it's late, and I'm tired, and I'm not really in the mood to describe the rest of my reference shelf.

Oh, on second thought, why not? I could do worse.

• The Argument Culture, by Deborah Tannen

  This probably doesn't belong on my reference shelf, really, but there's room for it, so why not? Deborah Tannen rules. She's a linguist who writes wonderfully readable books about language issues that affect real people in everyday life. In this book, she looks at the way our society has gotten increasingly argumentive, with real dialogue being replaced by debates in which neither side really listens to the other.

• The American Language (4th Ed.), by H.L. Mencken

  I got it at a used book store, cheap, and have occasionally referred to it, but I've never really gotten around to reading it. More's the pity.

• The Random House Handbook, by Frederick Crews

  I picked this up -- along with Wasson's Subject and Structure (7th Ed.) -- free from somebody in the English Dept., who was giving them away. They may come in handy, I imagine, but I've only barely glanced at either so far.

• The Norton Anthology of Poetry

  Technically belongs on my Literature shelf, I suppose, but that one floweth over. I got this for English 140: Introduction to Poetry. It's a pretty decent anthology.

• How Does a Poem Mean?, by Ciardi and Williams

  I love the start of this book. I've never quite finished it, though.

• The Random House Writing Course for ESL Students, by Tucker and Costello

  A truly great book, which covers some issues affecting ESL students that most other texts ignore altogether, such as the rules affecting the use of articles (a, an, the). I got it when I was a Team Teacher in a remedial composition course primarily comprised of ESL students. We weren't using it in the course, but I found it to be useful enough that it was worth buying.

• Frumspeak: The First Dictionary of Yeshivish, by Chaim M. Weiser

  A brilliant book, which works on more than one level. You could take it as being a lighthearted look at the jargon that pervades the Yeshiva (Orthodox Jewish religious academy) world, or you could take it as an actual, well-researched dictionary of a linguistic phenomenon, the nature of which is discussed in a scholarly essay at the beginning. Fact is, it's both, although mostly the latter.

• A Pocket Style Manual (2nd Ed.), by Diana Hacker

  Hacker's guides are the standard reference in a whole lot of English courses at my college. This one fits in one's pocket, and is pretty useful, covering a bunch of grammatical issues, and MLA format.

• Rhyme's Reason, by John Hollander

  A wonderful book, which describes various poetic forms while using those forms itself. This is a book I might have written, given some more time. Too bad I've been beaten to it... but it's very, very good. Here's a quick sample:

  Lord Byron, seeking a verse to dally in
      While roaming through Don Juan, came to see
  The point of imitating the Italian
      Poets back in the sixteeth century:
  Don Juan's stanza, jumping like a stallion,
      Over its disyllabic rhymes and free
  Of too much room to roam in, came to seem a
  Verse pattern all its own (ottava rima).

  
  
• Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott

  I'd heard good things about this book, so when I saw it in the evil remaindered bookstore near the discount store where I buy my tea, I grabbed it. Alas, while there are some good bits, on the whole, I didn't really care for it. There's something about Lamott's attitude that really rubs me the wrong way. Perhaps it's her blanket statements about what all writers are like, some of which really don't fit me at all, and some of which seem really snotty.

• Sentence Writing Simplified,, by Norwood Selby

  It picks one bite-sized subject, and covers it well.

• The World Almanac: 1993

  I got this for 49 cents a year after it was current. It's still good for a great many intents and purposes.

• Who Put the Butter in Butterfly?, by David Feldman

  A very readable book on some interesting word origin questions. I took it out from the library some time back, lost it, and then found it again some time after I paid for it.