BTT: Manual Labour

From Booking Through Thursday:

Writing guides, grammar books, punctuation how-tos . . . do you read them? Not read them? How many writing books, grammar books, dictionaries-if any-do you have in your library?

Well, actually - I just placed a mooch for the classic writing guide, Elements of Style and am looking for some guides on writing for web, as I'm going to do some work like that soon. So, better get some new ideas! And who knows, perhaps my blogging for fun will profit from some lessons? I don't know, but I'm definitely curious to learn more.

I do like reading grammar books, for example the Eats, Shoots & Leaves was fun to read. I like reading about languages in general, I've read few books of the development of Finnish language and they've been all very interesting.

I don't have a Finnish dictionary, but I do have The Times English Dictionary and Thesaurus - it's a huge book, and I got it for just ten euros or so few years ago. Haven't read it a lot, though, because it's such a pain to go get it from the top shelf just to look up a word. I just type "define:word" in Google to find out how something is spelled and if the word means what I think it means (always best to be sure, especially since checking is so easy when you're online).

Since Trish brought up phone books: I so agree those are a complete waste of good trees. I haven't used one in years, and still I get two of each (no, make it four, since both consist of two parts) every year. Well, at least I don't have to wonder what to use to prop up the crib when our toddler has flu...