What’s in it
Tap a tag: ❤ = this matters to me · tap again ✕ = don’t care · again to reset. The list below updates each time.
24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorCrossing The Wine-Dark Sea
Emily Wilson
The translator of editions of Homer’s “Iliad” and “Odyssey” explicates potential complications encountered in her line of work.
Of Grammatology
Jacques Derrida · 354 pages
Jacques Derrida's revolutionary theories about deconstruction, phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and structuralism, first voiced in the 1960s, forever changed the face of European and American criticism. The ideas in De la grammatologie sparked lively debates in intellectual circles that included students of literature, philosophy, and the humanities, inspiring these students to ask questions of thei
The Elements of Style
William Strunk Jr., E.B. White · 72 pages
You know the authors' names. You recognize the title. You've probably used this book yourself. And now The Elements of Style-the most widely read and employed English style manual-is available in a specially bound 50th Anniversary Edition that offers the title's vast audience an opportunity to own a more durable and elegantly bound edition of this time-tested classic. Offering the same content
The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary
Peter Gilliver, E.S.C. Weiner, Jeremy Marshall · 256 pages
A Collection of Essays
George Orwell · 320 pages
Such, such were the joys ... -- Charles Dickens -- The art of Donald McGill -- Rudyard Kipling -- Raffles and Miss Blandish -- Shooting an elephant -- Politics and the English language -- Reflections on Gandhi -- Marrakech -- Looking back on the Spanish War -- Inside the whale -- England your England -- Boys' weeklies -- Why I write.
The Languages of Tolkien's Middle-Earth
Ruth S. Noel, J.R.R. Tolkien · 207 pages
Presents a comprehensive pocket guide to the fourteen languages of Tolkien's Middle-Earth and contains a dictionary and English/Elvish glossary, rules of grammar and pronunciation, and how to write the Elvish alphabet.
How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One
Stanley Fish · 165 pages
Some appreciate fine art; others appreciate fine wines. Stanley Fish appreciates fine sentences. The New York Times columnist and world-class professor has long been an aficionado of language: "I am always on the lookout for sentences that take your breath away, for sentences that make you say, 'Isn't that something?' or 'What a sentence!'" Like a seasoned sportscaster, Fish marvels at the adeptne
Elements of Semiology
Roland Barthes · 111 pages
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation
Lynne Truss · 209 pages
The Elements of Eloquence: How to Turn the Perfect English Phrase
Mark Forsyth · 224 pages
From classic poetry to pop lyrics, from Charles Dickens to Dolly Parton, even from Jesus to James Bond, Mark Forsyth explains the secrets that make a phrase--such as "O Captain! My Captain!" or "To be or not to be"--memorable. In his inimitably entertaining and wonderfully witty style, he takes apart famous phrases and shows how you too can write like Shakespeare or quip like Oscar Wilde. Whether
Heavy Words Lightly Thrown: The Reason Behind the Rhyme
Chris Roberts
The City of Words
Alberto Manguel · 203 pages
This Craft of Verse
Jorge Luis Borges · 160 pages
**From Library Journal:** For Borges (1899-1986), the central fact of life was the existence of words and their potential as building blocks of poetry. In this series of six long-forgotten lectures given at Harvard more than 30 years ago, he insists that reading (in English, primarily) gave him more pleasure than writing. Most of his examples are taken from English-speaking writers, such as Shakes
The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary
Simon Winchester · 265 pages
The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays
Mikhail Bakhtin · 444 pages
The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien
J.R.R. Tolkien · 463 pages
Selected letters discuss his books, their meanings, his interests and also reveal his view of the world.
Nabokov's Favorite Word Is Mauve: What the Numbers Reveal About the Classics, Bestsellers, and Our Own Writing
Ben Blatt · 288 pages
In Nabokov's Favorite Word Is Mauve, statistician and journalist Ben Blatt brings big data to the literary canon, exploring the wealth of fun findings that remain hidden in the works of the world's greatest writers. He assembles a database of thousands of books and hundreds of millions of words, and starts asking the questions that have intrigued curious word nerds and book lovers for generations:
Rules for the Dance: A Handbook for Writing and Reading Metrical Verse
Mary Oliver · 194 pages
For both readers and writers of poetry, here is a concise and engaging introduction to sound, rhyme, meter, and scansion - and why they matter. "The dance," in the case of this brief and luminous book, refers to the interwoven pleasures of sound and sense to be found in some of the most celebrated and beautiful poems in the English language, from Shakespeare to Edna St. Vincent Millay to Robert F
Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words
Jay Rubin · 326 pages
The Art of Fiction: Illustrated from Classic and Modern Texts
David Lodge · 240 pages
"The articles with which David Lodge entertained and enlightened readers of the Independent on Sunday and The Washington Post are now revised, expanded and collected together in book form. The art of fiction is considered under a wide range of headings, such as the Intrusive Author, Suspense, the Epistolary Novel, Time-shift, Magical Realism and Symbolism, and each topic is illustrated by a passag
The Road to Middle-earth
Tom Shippey · 252 pages
"The Road to Middle-earth, Tom Shippey's classic work, now revised and expanded in paperback explores J.R.R. Tolkien's creativity and the sources of his inspiration. Shippey shows in detail how Tolkien's professional background led him to write The Hobbit and create a timeless charm for millions of readers. He argues convincingly that the source of Tolkien's inspiration lay not just in his love of
The Rhetoric & The Poetics of Aristotle
Aristotle · 289 pages
Le Ton beau de Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language
Douglas R. Hofstadter · 632 pages
Not Merely a set of translations of one poem, Le Ton beau de Marot is an autobiographical essay, a love letter to the French language, a series of musings on life, loss, and death, a sweet bouquet of stirring poetry - but most of all, it celebrates the limitless creativity fired by a passion for the music of words. Dozens of literary themes and creations are woven into the picture, including Push
Six Memos For The Next Millennium
Italo Calvino · 124 pages
"Six memos for the Next Millenium" is a collection of five lectures Italo Calvino was about to deliver at the time of his death. Here is his legacy to us: the universal values he pinpoints become the watch-words for out appreciation of Calvino himself. What should be cherished in literature? Calvino devotes one lecture, or memo to the reader, toe each of five indispensable qualities: lightness, qu