# Your reference shelf **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 2, 2004, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-reference-shelf/248302 "2004-06-02T18:32:39Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2004, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-reference-shelf/248302/21 "2004-06-04T02:54:48Z")
In no particular order: American Heritage Dictionary, College Edition Funk and Wagnalls Dictionary (1964) Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Fifth Edition (1936) Oxford English Dictionary Chicago Manual of Style, 13th Edition Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable Collegiate World Atlas (c. 1968) Quirk and Greenbaum, “A Concise Grammar of Contemporary English” Columbia Desk Encyclopedia The Complete Guide to Primetime TV Shows, 1946-Present (C. 1975) Partridge’s Dictionary of Slang Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, 15th Edition New York Times Desk Reference GPO Style Manual Skeat’s Etymological Dictionary (c 1882) French, German, Russian, Italian and French to English dictionaries Capricorn Rhyming Dictionary The Word Book AP Stylebook Medical Dictionary Fowler’s Modern English Usage What’s What Follette’s Modern American Usage Descriptionary Oxford Companion to the English Language Various Almanacs The Rock Encyclopedia (Roxon) Halliwell’s Film Guide (c. 1970) Encyclopedia of Rock Horne’s “The Comic Book Encyclopedia” The Great Movie Stars (2 volumes) The Science Fiction Encyclopedia The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (just to show off my entry) The Baseball Encyclopedia The Home Run Encyclopedia The Sports Encyclopedia: Baseball The Enclopedia of Baseball (Turkin & Thompson) The People’s Almanac The Book of Lists 1, 2 & 3 The Encylopedia of Comic Book Heroes, Vol. 1, Batman Listening to America Panatti’s Extraordinary Beginning Panatti’s Extraordinary Endings The Fifty Worst Films of All Time The Golden Turkey Awards (I and II) Hollywood Hall of Shame The Mot Juste NY Public Library Book of Answers Strunk and White The Transitive Vampire The Well-Tempered Sentence Hammon Almanac 1979 Guiness Book of World Records The Pocket Book of Quotations The Straight Dope More of the Straight Dope Maltin’s Film Guide 1994, 1999, 2003 And plenty more. You can’t have too many reference books. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2004, 12:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-reference-shelf/248302/22 "2004-06-04T12:12:57Z")
[ul] [li] **The C Programming Language** Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie[/li][li] **Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment** W. Richard Stevens[/li][li] **Programming Perl** Larry Wall, Tom Christiansen, and Jon Orwant[/li][li] **The Penguin Dictionary of Symbols** Jean Chevalier and Alain Gheerbrant, translated by John Buchanan-Brown[/li][li] **The Encyclopedia of Superstitions** E. and M. A. Radford, edited and revised by Christina Hole[/li][li] **Isaac Asimov’s Book of Facts** The Good Doctor Himself ;)[/li][/ul]And a whole load more. That last one is, shall we say, gently foxed and missing a dust cover. It’s also horribly out-of-date and of no practical use to anyone, but I like to thumb through simply to see the kinds of things Asimov found intriguing enough to devote space in one of his books to them. I also have a goodly selection of archaic textbooks gleaned from used book stores\* and library divestitures, all of them purchased for a pittance and the time it took me to wade through barely-classified stacks. I know more about programming assembly at the user level on the System/360 machines than I’ll ever have a need to, but my fascinating text on introductory linguistics is a purchase I’ll never regret. Nor shall I rue my decision to pick up a book on applied psychology from the 1930s. \*(The good kind, with massive wads of dead trees arranged in odd configurations, omnibus SF collections rubbing gently aged bindings with gaudy romance potboilers and classical literature. The kind of places that are run by people who obviously don’t want or need the ‘mainstream’, and would probably rather read books than sell them.) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-reference-shelf/248302.md?page=1)