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Bird by BirdBook

by Anne Lamott

1 person

Game designer; wrote A Theory of Fun for Game Design and worked on Ultima Online and Star Wars Galaxies.
liked

For general writing books, among many others I like John Gardner's The Art of Fiction and Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott. They perhaps tend a little more literary than others.

A mailbag reply to a reader asking for book recommendations on creative writing craft.

raphkoster.com ↗·2016-03-05Wrong?

Every entry is a verbatim quote and a link to the public post it came from. Nothing is paraphrased. If it is not on record somewhere public, it is not here.

The verdict is what they actually said: loved and liked are explicit; recommended means they told others to get it; uses means they only say they use it; read is a book on their public shelf with no verdict; mixed and disliked are kept too.

A dashed affiliate link, sponsored or their own label means the post disclosed a relationship. It is shown, never hidden.

The small bar beside a date shows how dated a recommendation is for its kind of thing.

The bar shows how dated a recommendation is, for its kind of thing. Full and green is recent. It drains, and turns amber and then grey, as the post gets older.

What counts as old depends on the thing. A laptop praised four years ago has been replaced twice; a book loved twenty years ago is probably still loved. The bar is empty after about:

A striped bar means the post carries no date and the date shown is an estimate. No date at all, no bar.