The Best Books on Writing Series

I've been a reader and collector of books on writing for at least 25 years. While many writers buy them, few read them all the way through and even fewer do the exercises or try out the content. I enjoy reading books on writing whether it's on the art, the craft, or the business. For me it's like entering into a conversation with another writer where we go deep into a subject. You mention the topic, genre, or writer and I probably have a book on it.

For years I've answered questions about best books on writing or suggesting titles. So this year I decided to go through my collection and pull out the various books I tend to recommend and write about them. This lensography page captures those pages as they're written and adds them to the growing list. So if you keep this handy, you'll always be able to see what's been added.

If you enjoy writing, you probably are interested in learning about other writers: their lives, their work, their processes. Writers are often a curious lot so the interviews can be fun reading, too.

Scroll down for more anthologies that feature writers.

Do you read the books on writing and/or publlshing or do they sit on your bookshelves?

The Paris Review Book: of Heartbreak, Madness, Sex, Love, Betrayal, Outsiders, Intoxication, War, Whimsy, Horrors, God, Death, Dinner, Baseball, Travels, the Art of Writing, and Everything Else in the World Since 1953

Well, I'm not sure how you can go wrong with a title like this one. This anthology commemorates the 50th anniversary of the great Paris Review series. The Paris Review has been read by writers for years and remains highly regarded. Here are a few of the writers included in this volume:

Jack Kerouac

Norman Mailer

Louise Erdrich

Jonathan Franzen

Gabriel García Márquez

William Burroughs

Denis Johnson

David Foster Wallace

Raymond Carver

Italo Calvino

Grace Paley

Editor, George Plimpton and introduction by Margaret Atwood

Gain insight from sixteen women writers who talk about their work, their writing processes, their fellow writers, and their lives. The interviews are culled from the famous Paris Review anthologies.

Writers include Margaret Atwood, Marianne Moore, Katherine Anne Porter, Rebecca West, Dorothy Parker, P.L. Travers, Simone de Beauvoir, Eudora Welty, Elizabeth Bishop, Mary McCarthy, Nadine Gordimer, Maya Angelou, Anne Sexton, Toni Morrison, Susan Sontag, Joan Didion and Joyce Carol Oates.