About Wonder Book Maryland, United States
Biblio member since 2003
Seller rating:
This seller has earned a 4 of 5 Stars rating from Biblio customers.
With 3 stores less than 1 hour outside the DC/Metropolitan area (1 in Gaithersburg, 1 in Frederick and 1 in Hagerstown, MD), we have the largest selection of books in the tri-state area. Wonder Book and Video has been in business since 1980 and online since 1997. We have over 1 Million books for sale on our website and another 1 Million books for sale in our 3 locations. We have a very active online inventory and as such, we can receive multiple orders for the same item. We fill those orders on a first come first serve basis, but will refund promptly any items that are out of stock. Since 1980 it has always been about the books. ALL kinds of books from 95 cent children\'s paperbacks to five figure rare and collectibles. A merging of the old and new is where we started, and it is where we are today. Our retail stores have always been places where a reader can rush in looking for a title needed for a term paper that is due the next day, or where bibliophiles can get lost \"in the stacks\" for as long as they wish. In 2002 USAToday recognized us as \"1 of 10 Great Old Bookstores\", and we have been featured in numerous other newspaper and TV stories including Washington Post and CSpan.
Terms of Sale:
RETURNS are cheerfully accepted up to 30 days. We ship out within 1-2 business days and U.S. Standard Shipments usually arrive within 6-9 business days, Priority 3-6.
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Summary
Here from more than four hundred of the world's most celebrated writers and booksmiths--from Euripides and Eudora Welty to Cynthia Ozick and P. J. O'Rourke--is a treasury of useful advice on the world and work of writing. Compiled by the author of The Rich Are Different and the best-selling Portable Curmudgeon, Advice to Writers includes priceless counsel on subjects ranging from writer's block and writing dialogue to dealing with agents and editors and appearing on television; from work habits and procrastination rituals to drinking on the job; from success, money, and fame to the lack of one or all of them.Flaubert, Twain, and Kipling impart their venerable wisdom. Red Smith tells us that "writing is easy. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein." Annie Dillard, David Guterson, and Maureen Dowd offer practical suggestions. David Remnick describes the ideal editor. A genre's-eye view comes from science-fiction master Harlan Ellison and sportswriter Frank Deford. Provocative insights come from David Mamet, Russell Banks, and Joyce Carol Oates.Clever and sagacious, pragmatic and heartening, this is an essential volume for both the aspiring writer and the devoted reader.From the Hardcover edition.
From the publisher
Jon Winokur is the author of a dozen books, including The Portable Curmudgeon and The Rich Are Different. He lives in Pacific Palisades, California.
From the jacket flap
In Advice to Writers, Jon Winokur, author of the bestselling The Portable Curmudgeon, gathers the counsel of more than four hundred celebrated authors in a treasury on the world of writing. Here are literary lions on everything from the passive voice to promotion and publicity: James Baldwin on the practiced illusion of effortless prose, Isaac Asimov on the despotic tendencies of editors, John Cheever on the perils of drink, Ivan Turgenev on matrimony and the Muse. Here, too, are the secrets behind the sleight-of-hand practiced by artists from Aristotle to Rita Mae Brown. Sagacious, inspiring, and entertaining, Advice to Writers is an essential volume for the writer in every reader.
Excerpt
On agents: "Choose your agent as carefully as you would choose your accountant or lawyer. Or dentist." -- Russell Banks
On characters: "The characters have their own lives and their own logic, and you have to act accordingly." -- Isaac Bashevis Singer
On colleagues: "Artists never thrive in colonies. Ants do. What the budding artist needs is the privilege of wrestling with his problems in solitude -- and now and the a piece of red meat." -- Henry Miller
On critics and criticism: "It is advantageous to an author that his book should be attacked as well as praised. Fame is a shuttlecock. If it be struck at only one end of the room, it will soon fall to the ground. To keep it up, it must be struck at both ends." -- Samuel Johnson
On dialogue: "Dialogue in fiction should be reserved for the culminating moments and regarded as the spray into which the great wave of narrative breaks in curving toward the watcher on the shore." -- Edith Wharton
On discouragement: "Writing is easy. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein." -- Red Smith
On drink: "First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you." -- F. Scott Fitzgerald
On editors and editing: "Bow down before them. They know what they are doing." -- Quentin Crisp
On grammar and usage: "Usage is the only test. I prefer a phrase that is easy and unaffected to a phrase that is grammatical." -- W. Somerset Maugham
Media reviews
"Best advice I've ever received: Finish." --Peter Mayle
"Cut out all those exclamation marks. An exclamation mark is like laughing at your own joke." --F. Scott Fitzgerald
"Make your characters want something right away even if it's only a glass of water. Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time." --Kurt Vonnegut
About the author
Jon Winokur is the author of a dozen books, including The Portable Curmudgeon and The Rich Are Different. He lives in Pacific Palisades, California.
