I recommend that all writers find at least three grammar and/or style books they find easy to understand. Each should speak in plain English, meaning their explanations and examples make good, quick sense.

Why not just one? Because, as I’ve found, I need to “hear” an explanation more than once and from different angles for it to sink in. Too, what one book explains well, another doesn’t. (This doesn’t always work, however. I still struggle with who/whom no matter how many books I consult.)

Anyway, here are some of the books on my shelf. Some are no longer in print, but you might be able to get a used copy.

The Wrong Word Dictionary: 2,000 Most Commonly Confused Words

The Associated Press Stylebook

Woe is I (The grammarphobe’s guide to better English in plain English)

Action Grammar (Fast, no-hassle answers on everyday usage and punctuation)

Brief Handbook of Usage

Reference Handbook of Grammar & Usage

Harry and the Lady Next Door is is one of my all-time favorite children’s books. Note that I said books. In fact, it is the only “fiction” book I keep in my office.

My husband and I used to read it to my eldest daughter, Julia. Just about every night, two or three times a night. We each took turns acting out its characters.

Written by Gene Zion, it’s about Harry, a dog with sensitive ears who can’t stand the lady next door whose singing drives him nuts. In the book, he gets into all sorts of mischief as he tries to make her stop.

The book is illustrated by Margaret Bloy Graham, whose pictures capture Harry’s great personality and wacky doggedness (pun intended).

Zion has written other Harry books:

•Harry by the Sea
•No Roses for Harry
•Harry the Dirty Dog Treasury
•Harry the Dirty Dog Board Book

By Doris Kearns Goodwin

I think this is an incredible book and incredibly relevant during this election season. Not beach reading, but well worth it. I have learned so much about Lincoln, the person, as well as about the political process; in many ways, not a whole lot has changed.

In Team of Rivals, historian Doris Kearns Goodwin illuminates Lincoln’s political genius as the one-term congressman and prairie lawyer who rises from obscurity to prevail over three gifted rivals of national reputation to become president: William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase and Edward Bates. Lincoln brings the three into his cabinet and somehow overcomes their animosity and marshals their talents to help preserve the Union and end slavery.

Now, I’m not comparing Obama to Lincoln per se, but it is interesting nonetheless to see how these two politicians, seeming from out of nowhere, gained prominence. Takes a lot of confidence, intelligence, drive, political acumen, connections, etc. Takes a lot of hard work, too, to be in the right place at the right time. (Both, btw, were dismissed as being too inexperienced to be president.)

Both were/are brilliant orators, had/have first-rate minds. And both faced/face absolutely dire circumstances when assuming office. Lincoln: a civil war; Obama: an economic meltdown.

Don’t let the page count (944) turn you off too much. The book’s well written, and while there are too many names and places to remember — we’re talking a big cast here — you at least know the story line and will be able to follow along.

Goodwin won a Pulitzer for another of my favorite history books: No Ordinary Time:Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II. The CD version is great, too.

As you may have read in this blog, I am working on a novel, more specifically, a mystery. Mastering scenes is especially important, given the way mysteries are structured and the pace at which they move.

As should be a given, The Scene Book offers lots of practical advice and scores of examples from well- and lesser-known books. Sandra Scofield also refers readers to movies, which I find helpful, especially when I am familiar with the films. Because I know what they are about, I can view them more objectively and ponder the choices directors make: Why, for example, do they choose a close-up of a city street or a corpse? How, literally, do their characters’ paths cross? How do they use lighting, music and dialogue to propel a storyline?

Thinking about my book in movie terms has given me a better, more intuitive sense of how scenes work, how each exists independently and as part of something larger.

I’ve been reading and rereading this book with a highlighter in hand. Here are some of observations (among many) that Scofield makes and which resonate with me:

• A scene is action, “passages in a narrative when we slow down and focus on an event in the story so that we are ‘in the moment’ with characters in action.” Something happens that makes “this moment” different from past moments.

• Well-written scenes have an event and emotion. Something happens and characters react and then act in meaningful ways. Such interactions have consequences, unleashing a chain of events.

• Tension in a scene is the “taut stretch of something pulled toward, away, from, or through something, like the stretch of a rope in a game of tug-of-war.” Tension is heightened when uncertainty is raised in the minds of readers. It’s critical, however, to remember “the balance the inevitability and surprise, the pleasure we get when we arrive at insight at the same time a character does. … Surprise that comes out of gratuitous coincidence or shock isn’t good storytelling. Real surprise, the alleviation of true tension, is earned.”

• Although conflict is good, even required, it doesn’t have to be direct. Fiction is a process of change, and change between and among characters can be negotiated. “In many instances, what we see is negotiation, an exchange of character desires and denials and relenting, until some sort of peace is caved out, or else the whole interaction falls apart.”

I could go on and on, but you get the sense of why I like this book. If you know of others on scene writing, let me know and I’ll pass the word along. In the meantime, I’ll keep highlighting.

Books on how to make it as a writer are a dime or dozen. Peter Bowerman’s Well-Fed Writer series isn’t part of that dozen.

What I really like about Bowerman’s books is how deep and wide they go. They not only give you a sense of how things are done but detailed instructions for how to do them. Plus he’s opinionated. He gives lots of pros and cons and buyer-bewares. All you have to do is read Chapter 12 of Well-fed Self-publisher and you’ll know what I mean: “Print-on-demand (POD): Dream or Disappointment.”

BTW, Bowerman’s given me permission to reprint the chapter, so keep checking at the Self-publishing articles page at WriteDirections.com. It will be posted soon, probably in sections. In the meantime, you can read Bowerman’s article on whether or not we can trust book reviews, testimonials and Amazon rankings.