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books do I need?
All the books a writer needs
can be found in the public library, but it’s comforting,
if you can afford it, to have some at hand whenever you
need them. A basic
library for the British writer might include:
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The Oxford
Dictionary of English
An up-to-date and easy-to-use dictionary, with spellings
of which most copy editors will approve!
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Roget’s
Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases
The original, and in my opinion, the best. If you
aren’t familiar with using a thesaurus, don’t
be alarmed by it. It’s just a tool to help you
find exactly the word you’re looking for. Some
writing tutors object to the use of a thesaurus, but
it can be invaluable – not so that you can find
thirty different ways to tell the shopkeeper that
your parrot’s dead (though that was one use
of a thesaurus to which no writing tutor could object)
but so that you can find the word that’s eluding
you, the one you know would indicate exactly what
you want to convey, the one that would mean you could
drop that irritating adverb, if only you could think
of it. It’s in the thesaurus, and why shouldn’t
you find it that way rather than racking your brains?
One word of warning – like all tools, a thesaurus
can be dangerous if it isn’t used in a responsible
manner. It is never a good idea to use a word with
which you are unfamiliar, because a pound to a penny
you’ll use it wrongly.
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Pears Cyclopaedia
Published annually, this little book packs in an amazing
amount of information on every major subject, and
includes a very useful chronology of world events
from seventy million years BC to the middle of last
year!
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Oxford Dictionary
of Quotations
Fun to read, useful to have around to check that you
aren’t misquoting, and a wonderful source of
titles.
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Brewer’s
Dictionary of Phrase and Fable
An invaluable collection of oddities, myths, strange
facts and fancies, historical incidents, characters,
documents…reading it could give you ideas for
a dozen novels. It has wonderful lists: famous horses,
famous dogs – famous dwarfs, even – and,
of course, famous last words.
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Writers’
and Artists’ Yearbook (A & C Black)
An annual directory of newspapers and magazines, book
publishers, markets for poetry, stage plays, TV and
film scripts – lots of articles on subjects
of interest to writers.
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The Writers’
Handbook (Macmillan)
Also annual, and covers much the same ground, but
as this one is purely for writers, in more depth.
Also includes small presses, audio books, and a great
deal more. It too has lots of articles of interest
to writers.
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Together, the last two books cover virtually everything
the writer can possibly want to know about the markets for
his work.
And, if you have the necessary equipment, there are inexpensive
CD-ROM versions of many reference books which allow you
to search them in every possible way. Focus Multimedia (www.focusmm.co.uk)
has many titles of use to the writer, and is well worth
a look.
There are also free-to-use and entirely searchable on-line
versions of the original Brewer’s Dictionary
and Roget’s Thesaurus on the Biblomania
website, which you will find under My Favourite Sites.
Books of use to crime writers
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Encyclopedia
of Forensic Science (Brian Lane)
A well-written, easy-to-understand encyclopedia which
has the crime writer in mind. Not bang up-to-date,
but certainly worth having.
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*Blackstone’s
Police Manuals
An invaluable source of police procedure and the
law, updated annually. There are four main manuals,
covering
Crime, Evidence and Procedure, General Police Duties
and Road Traffic.
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*A Writer’s
Guide to Police Organization and Crime Investigation
and Detection
The title says it all!
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*These two cover British policing only.
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