Essential Reference Books

What are your essential reference books? A few of mine would be:

• The Oxford English Dictionary
• Encyclopedia Britanica
• Bartlett's Book of Familiar Quotations
• The Baseball Encyclopedia

Aside from the ones you already mentioned (though their essentialness is highly debatable):

• The World Almanac
• The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows: 1946-Present
• The Very Best of British
• The Star Trek Encyclopedia
• I'm Just Here for the Food
• Encyclopedia of Social Work
• I'm Just Here for More Food

The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows: 1946-Present

and that? is why i love chris. that book has been an essential reference for me for, like, 10 years. since back in the days before imdb. (but i still have my old copy, from before they added cable shows. i should upgrade.)

spin's alternative record guide was my music reference before i had internet access. it's still worth having.

at work, it's the chicago, ap, and gregg style manuals, and the website of the us patent & trademark office.

Hee! I have 2 editions, one from 1999 and one from 1994. The most recent edition is 2003. Back in the day, I saw a staff member of the Museum of Television and Radio use it and had to get my own copy.

When I was in college, I checked out Television Cartoon Shows: An Illustrated Encyclopedia, 1949 Through 1993 from the university library and kept renewing it for a good 6 months until someone placed a recall on it. I was so sad when I had to give it up.

dwd. i wonder if that cartoon book is anything like the one i bought  Alan Mendelsohn for her birthday many moons ago.

A woman? named alan?

that's just weird.

oh, if only you knew.

o/~ how much i think of you o/~

*hides*

more importantly, how about essential reference links?

m-w.com

google.com

imdb.com

the list goes on!

:)

I've actually gotten up in the middle of the night to check imdb.

same here.

I'll add wikipedia, baseball-reference, and hp-lexicon to those.

baseball? ewwwwwwwwwwwww

I actually need more baseball books.

• Total Baseball
  
• The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract
  
• The Official Baseball Record Book
  
• The Baseball Prospectus (a annual publication)

Funny that you listed the links, but didn't make them links. :-)

yeah, it's what we in the business like to call "laziness".

:D

Any Tolkein fan needs The Encyclopedia of Arda bookmarked.

• The Oxford Companion To English Literature


• The Oxford Dictionary Of Current Idiomatic English (2 volumes - currently out of print - If anyone wants them - only over my dead body :D)


• The American Heritage Dictionary Of Idioms


• Daniel Jones - English Pronouncing Dictionary


• (Partrigde - English Slang Dictionary (1938) - just a pleasure to browse and indispensible when reading Chandler, Hammett or Ross MacDonald :D)
  
  
• Gr�visse - Le Bon Usage (French Grammar Bible - for those who really want to know)

- oxford english dictionary
- french/english dictionary (for that troublesome honors french homework)
- google
- apple.com
- LetterGrade.com (because i need to know what my grades are...and what is due when. not really a book, but i'm listing things i check daily)

13 and doing honors french? Yeah, caroline fits in here.

*laughs*

14 in 20 days...not that im counting.

oh man... I remember when I used to pay attention to that stuff.
:)

As it is now... the other day someone asked me how old I was, and I actually had to say "ummm.." while I thought on it.
And my birthday was less than a month ago.

*laughs*

wow...i feel so young...

and I feel old. *shakes head*

dammit, I'm not even 30.

*sighs*

but you will be in a couple of years!

(I however, just have a year and a half)

So do I and I'm a Quatrogenarian. Or is that Quattro? Or Quadro?

It should be quad, I don't know what I was thinking.

don't worry Caroline, you're not the only underage person here. though im 4 years older then you... but still.
ahh to be 13 again.... haha

yay...now i don't feel so....young. sorry, but a lot of you guys are like twice my age.

heck, there are some here that are 3 times your age. :)

..Don't worry, there were a bunch of people who were just as young as you when they started listening into Fruvous.

And one day, you will wish that you were younger, so enjoy and celebrate your youth!

oh believe me, i wish i was younger right now. well, maybe not that much younger. and i know there are people 3 times my age...........
woo-hoo! *celebrates youth* yay

I'm 3.4 times your age :-)

aren't you the cosine guy? that would explain your strangely adept math skills. one could even say, L337 m47I-I $kIllz.

well, Gordon does teach math for a living. Though reading his test questions can be quite amusing.

I had a notebook quiz today in math. One of the questions was:
True or false: you are glad to be finished with this unit.

When Fruvous was touring they would regularly appear on my tests. My favorite one had to do with Jian Driving to Falcon Ridge but his car breaks down and he has to walk the rest of the way. I give the time for the total trip and they had to answer how far he drove and how far he walked. When I posted it on the Fruvous newsgroup someone volunteered the answer, "he walked 10 yards then some woman picked him up and drove him the rest of the way."

hey, i would. if i could drive.

Yeah, I keep forgeting my age too.
I was pretty good up until I hit 22. Once you're over 21, it's all "in my 20s" for a bit.

i still do. just today i was like "OMG 3 MONTHS EXACTLY TILL MY BIRTHDAY!"

..and i'll be. 26 :P

OMG I'M NEARLY TWICE CAROLINE'S AGE. *dies*

*whimper*

*curls up in corner*

I need an updated copy, but I loved Roget's Thesaurus. It got me through many crossword puzzles in high school.

I love it too. I got it as a birthday or Chanukkah present when I was about 10, I was so excited.

Jane's Encyclopedia of Aviation
Of Mice and Magic, a guide to cartoons up to the 70's
A Guide to Middle Earth
Concise encyclopedia of Science and Technology
Illustrared Ecyclopedia of Science and invention
Physicians' Desk Reference.

Lots of books there with personal connections for me.

In intermediate school my friend and I would pour over Jane's Guide to Aviation, is that the same book? The one with pictures of just about every plane made?

Of Mice and Magic changed my life. I read it and reread it till I lent it to someone who destroyed it. I made a check list of all the cartoons I have seen. It turned me on to one of my all-time favorites, the Betty Boop version of Snow White with Cab Calloway singing St. James Infirmary.

Do I need to say that I have A guide to middle earth?

I actually read straight through a good portion of Jane's Fighting Ships,then I realized how out-of-date the library copy was.� I never saw the Aviation one, but I knew it was out there somewhere.

The Joy of Sex
The Field Guide to Cows........not to be used in conjunction
Players Handbook

The Expurgated version of "Olsen's Standard Book of British Birds"

The expurgated version?!!

The one without the gannet.

The one without the gannet?! They've all got the gannet - it's a standard bird, the gannet, it's in all the books!

Well, I don't like them.
They wet their nests.

Don't we all, every now and then?

I never wet gannet nests, thank you very much.

a) Rand McNally Road Atlas
b) A trusty recent world atlas, no specific title/publisher preference

Without one or preferably both of these I can't read fiction, much less the news or National Geographic, and I certainly can't play Civilization.

In fact my world atlas has gone missing and I am much aggrieved, because I need to know the minutiae of Danish geography NNNNOW thankyouverrehmuch.

Ooooh... Rand McNally. Life would suck with out those.� I actually have two on my desk right now ('04 and '05).

oh, yes! definitely the Rand McNally atlas. I have two as well, one is in the car, while the other one is in my room.

I know a guy who likes to introduce himself as Rand McNally.

:D

in rand mcnally, everyone wears shoes on their feet! and hamburgers eat people!

.oO She waited tables all around Mill Valley. Stayed until she bought herself a Rand McNally. She set her sights on Tin Pan Alley. She's gonna go all the way Oo.

Thanks for the earworm. Seriously :)

mmmmmmmmmaura.

the kennedys are seriously the way i get thru when my life is in flux. like right now. :)

Me, I keep a Rochester Atlas nearby, often in my car, so if I should get lost somewhere in town I've never been before, I can find my way back out.

-- Pauley

The Guiness Book of British Hit Singles

I also would probably fail my degree if I did not use my dictionary. The Guiness book gets more usage though as I am always looking up the year a song came out or something like that. I am a music geek and am happy to say it gets updated every year.

The Billboard book of top 40 hits is one I consult a lot.... I need one that goes past 1995, though.