Well, one could say my personal bible is the Holy Bible, as I’ve read that thing cover to cover three times, some books even a few times more and having deteriorated my first copy of it, I had to get me a new one a few years ago, but mythical/religious stories are just a side interest for me. My real bible is M. C. Strong’s “The Great Rock Discography”, second edition from 1994 (here’s a link to the 7th edition). It contains discographical entries for 1000 bands and artists, each with a small biography, complete list of all their records in different formats with track listings, release dates and chart listings for the US and UK. It has been my constant font of information about music for almost thirty years and the book looks strained accordingly. Though I’ve come to use it more rarely since the advent of the internet, I still look up basic chart information first there and the book always lies on my living room table.
What’s the bible for your hobby/field of interest?
The first Straight Dope book. I’ve had to replace it twice from wear; the second copy I gave to my Dad. It’s still a great bathroom companion (it’s kinda tough to haul the entire computer in there).
First off, considering Strong’s Concordance to the Holy Scriptures is one of the standard reference works for Bible study, I find your use of a Strong’s Discography humorous.
My hobby is hymnology. The standard textwork for that is Julian’s two volume Dictionary of Hymnology, but it’s very dated. Now there’s websites that have all that information and more at hymnary.org, the Cambridge Dictionary of Hymnology (pay site), and the Cyber Hymnal at HymnTime.org.
I don’t have a unified bible. My equivalent is a collection of datasheets. Whenever I’m trying to work out how some bit of electronics works, I go to the datasheet first. It usually has the answer to exactly what I’m looking for in a clear format. Google searches on the other hand usually lead to useless questions on discussion forums which go either unanswered or are answered incorrectly. I keep a local copy of any useful datasheet, but of course they’re usually available online. Sometimes hard to find, though, and hidden behind crufty site-specific search engines.
In the area of of vintage fountain pens, which is a hobby of mine, many hobbyists are interested in repairing their own fountain pens, in order to save the cost and time of sending it off to an expert repairer. Repair can be necessary because some parts wear out (e.g. ink sacs and diaphragms) or because one might be able to buy a collectible pen at a cheaper price if it is being sold “as is” and needs repair.
The bible for this activity is often called “da Book” among the cognoscenti. it is “Pen Repair” by Jim Marshall and Laurence Oldfield. I have a signed copy.
I was introduced to Heinlein by a girlfriend when I was a teenager, and I proceeded to read everything he published. His canon occupies an entire shelf in my home office. He has a fairly typical hero type in many of his books, and I sort of aspire to be one of them. Their good traits as I see them:
Highly competent at many varying things, often interesting back stories with a lot of occupations
Articulate, sense of humor, sense of perspective
They know themselves and can be humble despite being hyper capable
The pseudo-libertarian, fascist stuff that’s in much of Heinlein’s work… not so much. And I don’t claim to have come anywhere near being a Heinlein-esque hero, but it’s a fun goal to have.
Surfing California by Allan Wright - A nice description of pretty much every break in the state; what tides and wave size are best at each location and where to park and what trails to take. Absolutely invaluable before online surf reports and surf cams.
Thomas Guide: Los Angeles and Orange Counties Street Guide - I’d still be driving in circles in some suburban labyrinth in Mission Viejo if not for that book. Now my phone tells me where to go.
Now? Probably a stack of Pearls Before Swine collections within arms reach of the toilet.
Though in my 20s, it probably would have been the 2nd Edition AD&D Player’s Handbook. I used to be able to tell people exactly what page to look up certain rules and charts, like saving throws or THAC0. Or the insane wrestling/brawling rules that I am certain were made overly complicated on purpose to dissuade anyone from ever doing them.
I haven’t played that particular edition in decades, that knowledge is lost.
Wikipedia, and also my images folder that I collect several thousand informative images on, and cycle on my desktop background (1 background per minute) so that my laptop screen is always educating me.
If I need information about something, be it corporate finance or some certificate, I can usually find it in my Excel schedule, or in my images folder.
I totally forgot, this is one of my bibles. Because no matter what anyone thinks, nobody memorizes every damn bit of web code.
Fun fact… I had years of professional experience doing web design. The agency where I work has an intranet site, and the region of my state that I support in IT (I have a few field offices I support) has its own presence on that site. Even though my job isn’t as a web designer, they wanted to leverage my experience and have me directly edit our pages, rather than emailing requests to another group of people like most groups. (And I enjoy it; it’s a lot more fun and creative than my usual day-to-day work.) But the higher-ups who manage our web sites didn’t want to give me the permission to do it unless I passed a “quiz”.
So I get on a conference call and they basically just ask me how to do different tags for a web site, one after the other. My reply over and over again was that I don’t know that crap off the top of my head because I don’t need to, you can look it up in seconds. They said, nope, you clearly don’t know what you’re doing, you need to spend a couple of weeks taking some crash courses at a local community college before you can edit the site.
Day one, first class, one of the first things that the teacher told us, was to keep some links bookmarked that you can use as a reference, because nobody needs to remember all the code, just how to use it.
I was SO bored in those classes, at one point the teacher even asked why I was there.
mine is the ‘Guide Vigot des Fleurs des Montagnes.’
It has been with me on every mountain walk I have taken for 21 years and has served me well. It has been criticised by proper botanists because it groups flowers by color (probably the least accurate physical criterion to use for plant identification) but has worked very well for me and is light and easy to carry. When I walk with friends there is usually an argument over who gets to carry it.
Well, the OP asked “What’s the bible for your hobby/field of interest?” I’d have to reply with Ainslie’s Complete Guide to Thoroughbred Racing. Handicapping horse racing is one of my hobbies:
There are many books on horse racing, ranging from the lousy to the great (Andrew Beyer’s books are valuable also–Beyer on Speed and Picking Winners come to mind), but few have everything in one volume, and are as easy to understand, both for the beginner and the experienced horseplayer as Ainslie’s Complete Guide.
ETA: The Daily Racing Form is indispensable, but I’m taking the OP to mean “published books” instead of “daily newspapers.”
, but I still often look something up first in the Great Rock Discography.
