Good Reads on Writing
One of my favorite sections of a bookstore is Writing Reference. As much as I like novels, quirky non-fiction, children's books and big pretty picture books, the Writing Reference section holds mysterious sway over me. It gives me that Container Store feeling of infinite possibilities that my friend Laura Mayes defines so well.
Perhaps that is why I am an editor. If I were an adventurer at heart, my favorite section would be the travel section. If I defined myself as a cook, I'd be in the Barnes & Noble armchair with Bobby Flay or some other Iron Chef's book.
But it's thesauruses--dare me to say thesauri--and big dictionaries, Annie Lamott's Bird by Bird, Stephen King's On Writing and of course Natalie Goldberg that send shivers of excitement down my bones. And Writing on Alligators? Delightful.
I actually have two versions of the OED. Although I can't read any of the writing without a powerful magnifying glass, and I spend more time than I'd like to admit Googling definitions of words, one day I'll have a hard core library stand to open them up on. They'll dominate the room, casually turned to some incredible word, fraught with delicious connotations and fascinating history.
I could go on about how cute I think my Chicago Manual is, and how I am not as enamored of Strunk and White as others are. It's interesting that reading about writing isn't really reading, and it certainly isn't writing. But I feel so cozy when I do it. Language creates havens within the narrative, little secret nooks within books.
Like the Know-It-All who read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica in search of facts, I am in search of words and phrases. Not necessarily to use--lots are too flowery or show-offy for everyday use--but to know, to play with, and to examine. Words about words, or words on how writers put words together, or even words on the feelings created by putting words together, the deeper into them I go, the more zenny it becomes.
Editorial thrills. Not blockbuster material in any medium, but powerful enough to warm the cockles of my heart. There are lots of book lovers out there, most far more well-read than I. But when I think about the way I love books--from the fetching little headband on the top to the first cracking spine and the frisson that occurs when an actual printed endpaper apprears, through the design and the content all the way into the deepest recesses of vocabulary choices and grammatical quirks--I realize that this goes perhaps beyond healthy normal bibliophilia.
Book Obsessive? Book Addict? Book Luster? Volume-ivore? Hard-Core Hard-Cover Junkie? I'm sure there's a term for the condition.
And, even better, I'm sure there's a book about it.
A definition is the enclosing a wilderness of idea within a wall of words.
~Samuel Butler
