A writer's bookshelf

Centuries ago, book ownership indicated that a person was of high status. If that were true today, I’d be at least minor royalty. (The Countess of Coconino County, perhaps?)

Over the years, I’ve given away boxes and boxes of books. Even so, I still have so many books that it's chore to move them. Ounce for ounce, I’d say my biggest haul is reference books. Yes, the web has many resources for writers, but sometimes (when I’m hiking, for example, or dashing across the room to identify a bird singing outside) going online isn’t convenient. Plus, I have what could be described as an ambivalent relationship with my computer. Or maybe, after reading books and writing books for most of my life, I simply enjoy picking up a book and flipping through the pages, even if it’s just to look something up.

For a book author, the reference bible is the latest edition of the venerable Chicago Manual of Style, now in its sixteenth edition. For magazine articles, it’s the Associated Press Stylebook. I own both, as well as a glossary of words and expressions. I’ve noticed that my glossary use is related to the number of years I’ve been out of school—maybe needing help remembering the difference between “affect” and “effect” is one of the early effects of aging … which eventually affects us all (just practicing, sorry!).

A good dictionary isn’t as essential as it once was, thanks to all the great resources online, but I’m happy with my Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. Other books I use include a brief etymology guide for sleuthing the origins of words. (I’d prefer the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary, but that would fill a shelf all by itself.) Roget’s Thesaurus is helpful when I’m at a loss for words or, more likely, when I find myself repeating the same ones too often. I occasionally need to refer to my French and Spanish dictionaries. And I’m still schlepping around my Harbrace College Handbook, a handy grammar/composition guide I’ve had since, well, college. Yikes.

The internet has opened up vast doorways for research … often to my dismay, when I go online to find a quick answer and realize I’ve spent a half-hour or more following a tempting trail of breadcrumbs. A site I especially like is howjsay.com for pronunciations of words. Even after all these years, those little symbols are difficult for me, especially the ones used by Wikipedia.

I also have shelves and boxes of maps, atlases, and project-specific information such as field guides. I find regionally published books especially useful, such as the field guides produced by Grand Canyon Association and Western National Parks Association. For cookbook projects, I use Joan Whitman and Dolores Simon’s invaluable Recipes Into Type.

I realize that my life would be more Zen-like if I could rely entirely on the internet. But these are old friends, moving with me and helping me write dozens of articles and books. When I first starting freelancing, buying reference books represented an investment in myself. Seeing them on the shelves or opening one and breathing in the scent of ink and paper evokes a multitude of past experiences and projects, and holds the promise of more.

As Cicero once said, “A room without books is like a body without a soul.” I read that in a book somewhere.