Ball, J., J.O'Connor, and Jonathan E. Lighter. 1994. Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang Volume 1. Random House. This is a great resource for anyone writing a book set in the US. Volume 2 is below (edited by Lighter).
Derricourt, Robin. 1996. An Author's Guide to Scholarly Publishing. Princeton University Press. Robin Derricourt divides his energy between informing potential authors about the ins and outs of scholarly publishing and training them to be the kinds of writers scholarly publishers enjoy working with. Academic publishing is a world unto itself, in which publishing's accepted elements--agents, enigmatic titles, attention-getting design, publication parties--do not matter.
Donald, Roger (editor). 1996. Bartlett's Roget's Thesaurus. Little Borwn & Company. If your a writer you need one of these. There are many different thesauri on the market, find the one you like the best.
Elbert, Lorian Tamara. Why We Write : Personal Statements and Photographic Portraits of 25 Top Screenwriters. 1998. Silman-James Press. Pity the poor screenwriter. Once he or she has finished work, it is churned like butter by the great Hollywood system, rewritten and reworked at will. If a movie is successful, the director gets the credit; if it bombs, the screenplay is to blame.So why do it? In these pages, Michael Ferris ("The Net") and Daniel Waters ("Heathers") lament the Hollywoodization of their endings. John Briley ("Gandhi") and Mark Rosenthal ("The Jewel of the Nile") warn against script gurus and film courses. There is plenty of complaining about Hollywood but it is the screenwriters' humor, passion, and, finally, love for what they do that are so appealing here.
Lighter, Jonathan E., Ball, J., J.O'Connor, and Jesse Shiedlower. 1997. Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang Volume 2. Random House.
McClatchy, J. D. 1998. Twenty Questions. Columbia University Press. J.D. McClatchy is that rare essayist who is concerned both
with the intellect and with the emotions. The essays
gathered in "Twenty Questions" are learned and engaging
inquiries into his life, poetry in general, and the work of
poets both ignored and renowned. McClatchy's attention is
democratic, as likely to scoop up a quote for his commonplace book from Coco Chanel as Gertrude Stein, Alfred Hitchcock as W.H. Auden. Equal attention is given to the lives and work of Jean Garrigue and Stephen Sondheim as to those of Elizabeth Bishop and James Merrill. McClatchy somehow manages to address the oeuvre of Seamus Heaney in under seven pages and not seem to give short shrift. His writing is as direct as poems can be oblique, avoiding altogether any hint of academic jargon or critical posturing.
Sheidlower, Jesse. 1995. The F Word. Random House. If you're going to use the word find out about its colorful Anglo-Saxon history, dating back to the 15th century.
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