Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

"Long live the King" hailed Entertainment Weekly upon the publication of Stephen King's On Writing. Part memoir, part master class by one of the bestselling authors of all time, this superb volume is a revealing and practical view of the writer's craft, comprising the basic tools of the trade every writer must have. King's advice is grounded in his vivid memories from childhood through his emergence as a... (more)

One Writer's Beginnings (The William E. Massey Sr. Lectures in the History of American Civilization)

One Writer's Beginnings (The William E. Massey Sr. Lectures in the History of American Civilization)

by Eudora Welty

Forty-six weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and nominee for the National Book Critics Award, this incomparable work--part memoir, part essay, and part autobiography--offers a revealing look into the life of one of America's most acclaimed writers. 8 pages of photographs.

Wild Mind: Living the Writer's Life

by Natalie Goldberg

Natalie Goldberg, author of the bestselling Writing Down The Bones , teaches a method of writing that can take you beyond craft to the true source of creative power: The mind that is "raw, full of energy, alive and hungry." Here is compassionate, practical, and often humorous advice about how to find time to write, how to discover your personal style, how to make sentences come alive, and how to overcome... (more)

The Writing Life

by Annie Dillard

With color, irony and sensitivity, Pulitzer prize-winner Annie Dillard illuminates the dedication absurdity, and daring that is the writer's life. As it probes and exposes, examines and analyzes, The Writing Life offers deeper insight into one of the most mysterious of professions.

Heart of the Artist, The

by Rory Noland

This book explores issues of character facing Christian artists who want to use their gifts more effectively in church ministry.

Hemingway

by Kenneth S. Lynn, Kenneth Schuyler Lynn

This text, winner of the "Los Angeles Times" Book Prize Award, explores the many tragic facets that both nurtured Hemingway's work and eroded his life.

Secret Windows : Essays and Fiction On The Craft Of WritingStephen King

Secret Windows : Essays and Fiction On The Craft Of Writing

by Stephen King

Madeleine L'Engle Walking on Water Reflections on Faith and Art

Madeleine L'Engle Walking on Water Reflections on Faith and Art

by Madeleine L'Engle

In this classic book, Madeleine L'Engle addresses the questions, What makes art Christian? What does it mean to be a Christian artist? What is the relationship between faith and art? Through L'Engle's beautiful and insightful essay, readers will find themselves called to what the author views as the prime tasks of an artist: to listen, to remain aware, and to respond to creation through one's own art.

Seldom Disappointed : A Memoir

by Tony Hillerman

In this affectionate and unvarnished recollection of his past, Tony Hillerman looks at seventy-six years spent getting from hard-times farm boy to bestselling author. Using the gifts of a talented novelist and reporter, Hillerman draws brilliant portrait not just of his life, but of the world around him.

The Poetry of Robert Frost

by Robert Frost

This comprehensive and authoritative edition of Robert Frost's poetry brings together the full contents of all eleven of frost's books of verse - from A Boy's Will to In the Clearing.

Annie Dillard Reader, An

by Annie Dillard

Annie Dillard -- "one of the most distinctive voices in American letters today" ( Boston Globe ) -- collects her favorite selections from her own writings in this compact volume. A perfect introduction to one of America's most acclaimed and bestselling authors.

Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen : Reflections on Sixty and Beyond

Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen : Reflections on Sixty and Beyond

by Larry McMurtry

In a lucid, brilliant work of nonfiction -- as close to an autobiography as his readers are likely to get -- Larry McMurtry has written a family portrait that also serves as a larger portrait of Texas itself, as it was and as it has become. Using as a springboard an essay by the German literary critic Walter Benjamin that he first read in Archer City's Dairy Queen, McMurtry examines the small-town way of life... (more)

Wallace Stegner : His Life and Work

by Jackson J. Benson

When Jackson Benson's biography of John Steinbeck was published in 1984, it was hailed as definitive and reviewed on the front page of every major newspaper in the country. Now, in an equally groundbreaking work, Benson takes on the late Wallace Stegner--conservationist, teacher, and author of more than two dozen works of history, biography, essays, and fiction, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Angle of Repose... (more)

Papa Hemingway : A Personal MemoirHOTCHNER A. E.

Papa Hemingway : A Personal Memoir

by HOTCHNER A. E.

On Teaching and Writing Fiction

by Wallace Stegner

Wallace Stegner founded the acclaimed Stanford Writing Program-a program whose alumni include such literary luminaries as Larry McMurtry, Robert Stone, and Raymond Carver. Here Lynn Stegner brings together eight of Stegner's previously uncollected essays-including four never-before-published pieces -on writing fiction and teaching creative writing. In this unique collection he addresses every aspect of fiction... (more)

Ernest Hemingway

by Anthony Burgess

Hemingway's great achievement was to free the novel from all the languid decoration and cozy indirectness that was its early twentieth-century inheritance. His terse prose taught the writer to engage life to the fullest in order to write about it, and his own life was the perfect demonstration of that principle. Reissued to coincide with the centenary of Hemingway's birth, Anthony Burgess's insightful biography... (more)

Louis L'Amour (Twayne's United States Authors Series)Robert L. Gale

Louis L'Amour (Twayne's United States Authors Series)

by Robert L. Gale

Education of a Felon: A Memoir

by Edward Bunker

In Education of a Felon, the reigning champion of prison novelists finally tells his own story.The son of an alcoholic stagehand father and a Busby Berkley chorus girl, Bunker was--at seventeen--the youngest inmate ever in St. Quentin.His hard-won experiences on L.A.'s meanest streets and in and out of prison gave him the material to write some of the grittiest and most affecting novels of our time. From smoking a... (more)

Walden, or Life in the Woods, and On the Duty of Civil Disobedience

Walden, or Life in the Woods, and On the Duty of Civil Disobedience

by Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau's masterwork, Walden, is a collection of his reflections on life and society. His simple but profound musings-as well as "Civil Disobedience," his protest against the government's interference with civil liberty-have inspired many to embrace his philosophy of individualism and love of nature.

The Good TimesRussell Baker

The Good Times

by Russell Baker

Picking up where Growing Up left off, the noted columnist recounts his odyssey from writing police reports in Baltimore to penning news stories about the Queen of England, offering his wisdom on the grownup world. Reprint. NYT.

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: writing life

by Stephen King

by Eudora Welty

by Natalie Goldberg

by Annie Dillard

by Rory Noland

by Kenneth S. Lynn, Kenneth Schuyler Lynn

by Stephen King

by Madeleine L'Engle

by Tony Hillerman

by Robert Frost

by Annie Dillard

by Larry McMurtry

by Jackson J. Benson

by HOTCHNER A. E.

by Wallace Stegner

by Anthony Burgess

by Robert L. Gale

by Edward Bunker

by Henry David Thoreau

by Russell Baker