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 authorExperiences in translation
Umberto Eco · 135 pages
"Translation is not about comparing two languages, Umberto Eco argues, but about the interpretation of a text in two different languages.". "In this book he draws on his substantial practical experience to identify and discuss some central problems of translation. As he demonstrates, a translation can express an evident deep sense of a text even when violating both lexical and referential faithfu
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
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
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.
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 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
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation
Lynne Truss · 209 pages
Heavy Words Lightly Thrown: The Reason Behind the Rhyme
Chris Roberts
Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why
Bart D. Ehrman · 256 pages
For almost 1,500 years, the New Testament manuscripts were copied by hand — — and mistakes and intentional changes abound in the competing manuscript versions. Religious and biblical scholar Bart Ehrman makes the provocative case that many of our widely held beliefs concerning the divinity of Jesus, the Trinity, and the divine origins of the Bible itself are the results of both intentional and ac
The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary
Simon Winchester · 265 pages
The City of Words
Alberto Manguel · 203 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.
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 Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays
Mikhail Bakhtin · 444 pages
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 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
Wheelock's Latin
Frederic M. Wheelock · 511 pages
The classic beginning Latin texbook offers forty chapters with grammatical explanations and readings based on ancient Roman authors, along with self-tutorial exercises and an answer key for independent study.
Why Homer Matters
Adam Nicolson · 297 pages
"In this passionate, deeply personal book, Adam Nicolson explains why Homer matters--to him, to you, to the world--in a text full of twists, turns and surprises. In a spectacular journey through mythical and modern landscapes, Adam Nicholson explores the places forever haunted by their Homeric heroes. From Sicily, awash with wildflowers shadowed by Italy's largest oil refinery, to Ithaca, southern