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Style & Grammar
Since its publication in 2005, From Dissertation to Book has helped thousands of young academic authors get their books beyond the thesis committee and into the hands of interested publishers and general readers. Now revised and updated to reflect the evolution of scholarly publishing, this edition includes a new chapter arguing that the future of academic writing is in the hands of young scholars who must create work that meets the broader expectations of readers rather than the narrow requirements of academic committees.
At the heart of From Dissertation to Book is the idea that revising the dissertation is fundamentally a process of shifting its focus from the concerns of a narrow audience--a committee or advisors--to those of a broader scholarly audience that wants writing to be both informative and engaging. William Germano offers clear guidance on how to do this, with advice on such topics as rethinking the table of contents, taming runaway footnotes, shaping chapter length, and confronting the limitations of jargon, alongside helpful timetables for light or heavy revision. Germano draws on his years of experience in both academia and publishing to show writers how to turn a dissertation into a book that an audience will actually enjoy, whether reading on a page or a screen. Germano also acknowledges that not all dissertations can or even should become books and explores other, often overlooked, options, such as turning them into journal articles or chapters in an edited work.
With clear directions, engaging examples, and an eye for the idiosyncrasies of academic writing, From Dissertation to Book reveals to recent PhDs the secrets of careful and thoughtful revision--a skill that will be truly invaluable as they add "author" to their curriculum vitae.
This is a book to be relished one awakening at a time. Each story is a reminder that no matter how hard the situation or desolate you may feel, spring will come again, breaking through a cold winter, bringing early yellow forsythia flowers. And the Great Spring of enlightenment--that sudden rush of acceptance, pain cracking open, obstructions shattering--will also burst forth.
"Read everything that is good for the good of your soul. Then learn to read as a writer, to search out that hidden machinery, which it is the business of art to conceal and the business of the apprentice to comprehend."
In The Hidden Machinery, critically acclaimed and New York Times bestselling author Margot Livesey offers a masterclass for those who love reading literature and for those who aspire to write it. Through close readings, arguments about craft, and personal essay, Livesey delves into the inner workings of fiction and considers how our stories and novels benefit from paying close attention to both great works of literature and to our own individual experiences. Her essays range in subject matter from navigating the shoals of research to creating characters that walk off the page, from how Flaubert came to write his first novel to how Jane Austen subverted romance in her last one. As much at home on your nightstand as it is in the classroom, The Hidden Machinery will become a book readers and writers return to over and over again.
New York Times Bestseller
"Both deeper and more democratic than The Elements of Style" - Adam Haslett, Financial Times
"A guided tour through some of the most beautiful, arresting sentences in the English language." - Slate
"Like a long periodic sentence, this book rumbles along, gathers steam, shifts gears, and packs a wallop."
--Roy Blount Jr.
In this entertaining and erudite New York Times bestseller, beloved professor Stanley Fish offers both sentence craft and sentence pleasure. Drawing on a wide range of great writers, from Philip Roth to Antonin Scalia to Jane Austen, How to Write a Sentence is much more than a writing manual--it is a spirited love letter to the written word, and a key to understanding how great writing works.
I started this meditation on the first day of Lent. I hope to keep going every day until Easter. Each day I go fishing in the water of this internal voice. This week the water's still, this angled pen a blue sail; the hook is lazy in the estuary, the water the color of lapis. So what if I don't catch a fish? I said that I would fish; that's all I promised. I bait the hook with each day's discipline. I have no guarantees that there is anything at all to catch in these particular waters, that something beneath the surface won't grab my pen and pull me under. --from Iconography
When Susan Neville enrolls in an icon-painting class in the cellar of an Indianapolis monastery, she begins a journey into a fascinating hidden world where saints are fabricated of mineral and wood, yolk and blood, earth and time. The process is tedious, and she begins to make mistakes, to become impatient; she doesn't feel ready for the challenge. To prepare herself, Neville makes a vow to write during the 40 days of Lent. What emerges is a journal, a meditation, a series of confessions that we are invited to listen to as we follow Neville's sometimes painful attempts to reveal the truth and discover the mystery of her existence. In the layering of colors and moods, her writing is the spiritual equivalent of an icon. As she observes the world around her and applies the paint of language to her observations, she realizes that spirit and matter are not separate--that now and then moments of meaning emerge from daily life, and the stillness and majesty of the universe shine through.
"Genius could be the ability to say a profound thing in a simple way, or even to say a simple thing in a simpler way."--Charles Bukowski
In The Mathematics of the Breath and the Way, Charles Bukowski considers the art of writing, and the art of living as a writer. Bringing together a variety of previously uncollected stories, columns, reviews, introductions, and interviews, this book finds him approaching the dynamics of his chosen profession with cynical aplomb, deflating pretensions and tearing down idols armed with only a typewriter and a bottle of beer. Beginning with the title piece--a serious manifesto disguised as off-handed remarks en route to the racetrack--The Mathematics of the Breath and the Way runs through numerous tales following the author's adventures at poetry readings, parties, film sets, and bars, and also features an unprecedented gathering of Bukowski's singular literary criticism. From classic authors like Hemingway to underground legends like d.a. levy to his own stable of obscure favorites, Bukowski uses each occasion to expound on the larger issues around literary production. The book closes with a handful of interviews in which he discusses his writing practices and his influences, making this a perfect guide to the man behind the myth and the disciplined artist behind the boozing brawler.
alone volume, On Writing is a handbook every fiction writer, whether novice or master, should keep within arm's reach. Like The Elements of Style, On Writing is concise and fundamental, authoritative and timeless--as was Eudora Welty herself.
Through this droll and spellbinding narrative, with its royal riffraff, brigands, nefarious beasts, cutthroat capitalists, cross-dressing cowboys, and come-hither heroines, and with the help of such eccentric language authorities as Startling Glower, Gordon clarifies the mysteries of language usage, focusing on the meanings of words that look alike or that aren't as interchangeable as we assume them to be. A thrilling companion lexicon of unusual words continues the tales and inspire anyone's vocabulary. All the while war, power, and celebrity cults are treated with satirical wit and insight.
With Out of the Loud Hound of Darkness, Karen Elizabeth Gordon once again lures her readers into the intricacies and pleasures of language through a brooding, hilarious fabric of fiction.