[was inspired by this post to alt.callahans]
*****************************begin quote********************* Author: kightp@kira.peak.org (Pat Kight) Date: 23 Nov 1997 12:02:59 -0800 Jezebel has one of those idle questions that seems like it might make an interesting thread. “We were talking about r*tabagas and some kind soul came up with a nice, scientific explanation of what they *are* … and it sounded as if he had a botany reference book, or at least a good encyclopedia, close at hand. “I know I occasionally find myself running to my bookshelves to look up the answer to another patrons’ question … and I’ve certainly seen evidence that others here do the same thing. So I’m curious: What reference books do you keep within an arm’s reach of your computer? “And since I brought it up, here (and in another ficton she glances up to the shelf that runs across the top of her desk) are mine: *****************************end quote********************* Many people contributed. Dave Kifer collected the messages, edited them for brevity and clarity, and formed the list of books that follows: *****************************begin bookshelf********************* Jezebel “Dictionary of Word Origins,” by John Ayto “A Dictionary of Euphemisms and Other Doubletalk” by Hugh Rawson “Wicked Words,” by Hugh Rawson, subtitled “A Treasury of Curses, Insults, Put-Downs and other Formerly Unprintable Terms from Anglo-Saxon Times to the Present” “637 Best Things Anybody Ever Said” series by Robert Byrne “Peter’s Quotations” by Laurence J. Peter “The Portable Curmudgeon” by John Winokur “The Last Word” (sayings by women) by Carolyn Warner The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations the Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations Bartlett’s “Familiar Quotations” “Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes,” edited by Clifton Fadiman “The Oxford Companion to the English Language” A set of “New American Webster” dictionary and thesaurus The Chicago Manual of Style American Usage and Style The Associated Press Stylebook “Usage and Abusage” by Eric Partridge “Elements of Style” by Strunk and White “The New York Public Library Desk Reference” The Official Associated Press Almanac — the 1974 edition. “The Jargon File.” The King James Bible The Collected Works of Wm. Shakespeare software manuals –WordPerfect, PageMaker, etc. hypatia the American Heritage Dictionary the Official Scrabble Dictionary an Atlas. Brice D. Fleckenstein the Compact Edition (2 volume) Oxford English Dictionary American Heritage Dictionary Rand-McNalley Atlas Anne Gwin two French-French dictionaries one French/English dictionary a list of the French kings from the Slime Age to the Revolution and beyond a Latin/French dictionary a Provencal/French dictionary _An Incomplete Education_ European history books complete works of Chaucer and Shakespeare _An Incomplete Education_ (first ed) several European history books, mostly medieval and/or French Bill Longley Chambers English Dictionary The Hamlyn Pictorial Atlas of the World The Wordsworth Dictionary of Phrase and Fable The Guinness Book of British Hit Singles The Old Grey Wassail Test The Drunken Rabble Project “Devil’s Dictionary” by Ambrose Bierce “Encyclopedia of Science Fiction”, the “Chronicle of Britain and Ireland”, the Wordsworth “Dictionary of Science and Technology” and “Book of Intriguing Words”, the Musicmaster “Tracks Catalogue” and “Singles Catalogue”. Sam Voeller American Heritage College Dictionary Rand McNalley Road Atlas (North America) Webster’s Color Atlas of the World (from the late 70’s) Roget’s II “The New Thesaurus” Strunk & White’s Elements of Style The Well-Tempered Sentence & The Transitive Vampire (aids to punctuation and grammar for the Innocent, the Eager and the Doomed) Rivka the _American Heritage Dictionary_ the _New Oxford Annotated Bible_ the _Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition_ the _Merck Manual_ D’vora “ArtScroll Siddur (prayerbook, with useful commentary) The Ordination of Women (it’s hard being an Orthodox feminist…) Chumash Mikraot Gedolot (The first five books of the Bible plus *lots* of commentary) Nach Mikraot Gedolot (The same for the rest of the Jewish Bible.) ‘The Living Torah’ – R’Aryeh Kaplan’s (may the memory of the righteous be for a blessing) masterful translation of the Torah, with Hebrew on facing pages and commentary. The New JPS Tanakh, since R’Kaplan died before he could translate the rest. Maimonides’ Guide to the Perplexed in English ‘Be Fruitful and Multiply’ – Orthodoxy and infertility Darchey Taharah – the laws of marriage and family purity. We have it in English, too. ‘Women and Jewish Law’ BDB Biblical Hebrew-English Lexicon Roget’s Thesarus Mishnah Berurah, a commentary on everyday Jewish law. (2 vol., Hebrew) Mishnah Torah, Maimonides’ legal code Jastrow’s Aramaic dictionary (don’t learn Talmud without it.) Women at Prayer (Again, Orthodoxy and feminism.) Two volumes of the Code of Jewish Law (the Shulchan Aruch, of which the Mishnah Berurah is a commentary.) More commentaries on legal works. The Mishnah (the earliest codification of Jewish law) A modern Hebrew/English dictionary Master Charles Henri Beaufort Macintosh Bible, 6th Ed. The Dead Mac Scrolls, by Larry Pina The Bawdy Bedside Reader, ed. by Harold H. Hart The Complete William Shakespeare Shakespeare in His Time by F. E. Halliday Rand McNally New Universal World Atlas 12-volume set of Popular Mechanic’s “How to Do It” series (Circa 1955) Chilton’s 1971-1973 Buick car guide English, Arabic, and Latin pocket dictionaries The Art of War The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi nearly all of the last year’s issues of MacAddict magazine journeyman Oxford Dictionary of quotations Chambers dictionary Guinness Book of Hit Singles Leslie American College Dictionary, from Random House the two-volume American Medical Association Home Medical Encyclopedia Family Health and Medical Guide from the editors of _Consumer Guide_ _Learned Optimism_ and _What you can change…and what you can’t_, by Martin Seligman (the current(?) president of the Division of Clinical Psychology of the American Psychological Association) _Psychological Symptoms: A consumer’s guide to diagnosis and available treatments_ _Games People Play_, by Eric Berne _Strunk and White_ Roget’s Thesaurus _Writing for Story_, by two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Jon Franklin _Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations Scofield Reference Bible (1967 King James version) John the Wysard “Access 97 Developer’s Handbook”, by Litwin and Getz “Visual C++ Tutorials” “Unix Power Tools” “Oracle 7 Server Messages and Codes Manual” “Oracle 7, the Complete Reference” “Microsoft Visual Basic” <the Microsoft manual set> “ISIS/Base, ISIS/Draw, ISIS/Host, ISIS/PL” – thirteen volumes of documentation Elocutus of Borg Goedel, Escher, Bach: The Eternal, Golden Braid — Douglas Hofsteader Media Virus — Daniel Rushkoff The Holy Bible with Apocrypha — Various Authors Adam, Eve, and the Serpent — Elaine Pagels Code Complete — Steven whoozit Why I Am Not A Christian — Bertrand Russel The State of Humanity — Julian R. Simon The Road to Serfdom — F. A. Hayek Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal — Ayn Rand Order Without Laws: How Neighbors Settle Disputes — whoozit whatsisface The Wealth Of Nations — Adam Smith The Hero With A Thousand Faces — Joseph Campbell Future Shock — Alvin Toffler Being Digital — Nicholas Negroponte
[second post]
Hitchhiker’s Guide to Visual Basic & SQL Server — Bill Vaughn Beginning MFC Programming — Ivor Horton Troubleshooting, Maintaining & Repairing Personal Computers — Bigelow Teach Yourself Calculus — P. Abbot Valuing Fixed-Income Investments & Derivative Securities — Allen Kleinstein Networking With Microsoft TCP/IP — Heywood & Scrimger Visual Basic Programmer’s Guide to the Win32 API — Dan Appleman Developing ActiveX Components with Visual Basic 5.0: A Guide to the Perplexed — Dan Appleman Straight Talk About Bonds & Bond Funds — Richelson & Richelson Conversational Russian — Poyuz Code Complete — Steve McConnell Object Oriented Software Construction — Bertrand Meyer Windows NT Security Handbook — Tom Sheldon Dreamweaver Webster’s dictionary Roget’s thesaurus “Elements of style” the Swanfeldt Crossword puzzle dictionary Jim M. Pierce a collegiate dictionary ‘The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy’ ‘The People’s Chronology’ Eric Schwartz HP 16500B Programmer’s Guide O’Reilly X books 4, 5, 6A, 6B HP-UX Symbolic Debugger User’s Manual Microline Widget Library User’s Manual Undocumented DOS ClearCase User’s manual Xwindow Inside & Out The C++ Programming Language Object-Oriented Programming with C++ and Motif Using The Booch Method- A Rational(tm) Approach AT&T SC library reference guide Numerical Recipes in C Slywolf Simon & Schuster New World dictionary Roget’s Thesaurus the Scrabble dictionary an antique Life atlas (I mean from the 60’s!), a huge Webster’s universal unabridged one of those tiny 3 book set encyclopedias from Time-Life Laughing Otter AutoCAD Instructor, R-12 Colorado Court Rules Resume Writing Made Easy The Klingon Dictionary betleH yIqel Death – Kubler-Ross Ottawa-English Dictionary Dying, Death, & Bereavement – Annual Editions The Report from Iron Mountain The New Well-Tempered Sentence The Deluxe Transative Vampire A ton of assorted AD&D materials The Writer’s Digest Guide to Building Believable Characters Shadowcat Assorted Traveller Books Driven to Distraction Direct Mail Manual volume 50 Rand McNally Road Atlas Military History of the World[1958 edition] jen the Winnie-the-Pooh Dictionary a flip-book on continental drift, by Dr. C. Scotese, UTA Handbook on Media Law in Texas two AAA Texas guides in case the first gets lost “Arlington Life,” signed by the author herself, Pennie Boyett AP Stylebook, 1994 unused Photography tome City of Arlington Officials guide AISD guide, UTA directory random maps (not randome’s maps, okay?) comic book, museum guide Wilton 1997 Yearbook of Cake Decorating Merriam-Webster dictionary Webster’s Third New International Dictionary NY Public Library Desk Reference Dictionary of Cultural Literacy several books on how-to-make-the-computer-behave-without-inserting-a-fork-and-twisting Roget’s SUPER Thesaurus (comes with it’s own cape and tights.)… PDR, 1987 DFW Restaurant Guide All D/FW, Texas area phone books Celine Several software manuals Elements of Style, E. of Grammar, E. of Editing Merriam-Webster desk dictionary Amo, Amas, Amat and More (guide to Latin phrases) Roget’s Thesaurus and my printed font reference guide, which needs updating Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations Cassell’s French-English Dictionary Harper Dictionary of Music The Concise Columbia Encyclopedia The Art of Heraldry by Fox-Davies The Known World Handbook Bullfinch’s Mythology Poet’s Manual and Rhyming Dictionary Newcomb’s Wildflower Guide Bride’s Book of Etiquette 1987 Prescription Drug Guide (need to update that one!) Reader’s Digest Household Hints & Handy Tips How to Clean Practically Anything Art books by Norman Rockwell, Don Maitz, Boris Vallejo, Roger Dean, and Ron Miller, plus two collections of photos taken from orbit The Art of Star Trek Gems and Crystals (Am. Museum of Natural History) String Figures and How to Make Them Songbooks by John Denver, the Beatles, and Tom Lehrer Score for _The Messiah_ by Handel 100 English Folk Songs Folk Dancing in High School and College The Art of Calligraphy Celtic Art (how to draw your own knotwork) Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts (collection of kid verses) Wings and Things, Origami that Flies How to Make and Fly Paper Airplanes How to Make and Use Talismans The Cat Owner’s Manual and several other cat books Robert Frost’s Poetry Shakespeare – The Sonnets Color Me Beautiful (finding your best colors & style of clothing) Complete Works of Shakespeare Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (in Middle English, with footnotes) Complete Book of Kipling’s Poetry Celtic Magic Theory of Music Grimm’s Fairy Tales Ieuan The 1996 telephone book (hey, it’s a reference) The LaTeX Companion The C Guide to Programming A dictionary that doesn’t believe in anything that comes before “apiculture”. Dynamical Systems Models of the Protein Pool in Animal Growth (thesis in progress) Ruminants: Feeding standards for Australian Livestock Animal Metabolism, Digestion and Nutrition Differential Equations with Applications and Historical Notes Recent Advances in Animal Nutrition in Australia The Collected Stories of Katherine Mansfield Matlab Reference Guide Eleri Elements of Style severeal old dictionaries Word Origins The phone book (Hey, it’s refrence!) a couple of drawing books bunches of books on pregnancy, childbirth and such herb books. Susan Cohen “Name Your Baby” by Lareina Rule “Color Me Beautiful” by Carol Jackson “The Book of Chinese Chance” by Suzanne White Cris Maria Montessori books The Secret of the Child The Discovery of the Child Education for a new world The Absorbent Mind _Poetry books_ The Poetry of Robert Frost (complete and unabridged) Langston Hughes, The dreamkeeper and other poems (has really nice illustrations in it) Six American Poets, An anthology ed. by Joel Connarroe. Philosophy related books St Augustine, On Free Choice and the Will. Philosophy in the Middle Ages ed by Arthur Hyman and James J. Walsh Random 4 Origami how-to books an ASL dictionary 3 Spider Robinson books 2 Charles deLint books 1 Stuffed animal A book of weaving patterns. Lady Cheron Pricing Catalogs from Black Box Tech Data Ingram Micro UPS, FedEx, and Emery Worldwide Service guides ZIP Code Book Local Phone two-volumes of Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR to the acronym conscious) Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) Codes Manual Upgrading and Fixing PC’s for Dummies Win95 for Dummies instant spelling dictionary. Big Al ‘The Dinosauria,’ Weisenhampel, Dodson, & Osmolska Pernicious the Musquodoboit Harbour Farm Cat “The Consumers’ Guide to Buying Your Second Mink Coat” as the ONLY re-fur-ence book within appendage’s reach (*do* watch that species-specific language…) Dave Rudyard Kipling’s Poetry Definitive Edition Almanac of American Politics ’98 Vote-Smart Web Yellow Pages Roget’s Super Thesaurus Rand-McNally World Atlas Woe Is I The Grammarphobe’s Guide to Better English, by Patricia T. O’Conner H.L. Mencken’s New Dictionary of Quotations Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary 2nd Ed. (1983) Deluxe American Heritage 3rd Ed. (unabridged/digital on hard drive, 1996) Amo, Amas, Amat and More, by Eugene Ehrlich (common Latin phrases translated and explained) Je Ne Sais What?, by Jon Winokur (common French phrases translated and explained) Top 500 Poems, edited by William Harmon many other lesser: quote collections specialty/jargon/niche dictionaries almanacs atlases ***************end shelf*******************