What literature do you recommend?

[Thane Messinger]

To learn how to write better I suggest reading guides about basic grammar and writing.  You might find them helpful to refresh your memory about concepts you were supposed to be taught in grade school and high school. 

Purdue has an excellent online resource:  http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/

Thane.

PS:  To all, there's easily a resistance or even antipathy towards grammar, punctuation, spelling, etc.  This is unfortunate, as everyone can improve.  (Yes, I check the dictionary too many times to count.)  Graduate and especially doctoral students spend much of their time proofing and re-proofing their work, and woe be unto the graduate student who repeats a basic error.  (Actually, not always.  They will, however, find it hard to get stellar recommendations and inside job tips.)  In law school, this is confined mostly to a process that's rather important in a different sense than learning: the application process.  Know that faculty members sitting on admissions committees--and everyone else in admissions--cares about this, rather a lot.

[.Chuck]

To learn how to write better I suggest reading guides about basic grammar and writing.  You might find them helpful to refresh your memory about concepts you were supposed to be taught in grade school and high school. 

Purdue has an excellent online resource:  http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/

Thane.

PS:  To all, there's easily a resistance or even antipathy towards grammar, punctuation, spelling, etc.  This is unfortunate, as everyone can improve.  (Yes, I check the dictionary too many times to count.)  Graduate and especially doctoral students spend much of their time proofing and re-proofing their work, and woe be unto the graduate student who repeats a basic error.  (Actually, not always.  They will, however, find it hard to get stellar recommendations and inside job tips.)  In law school, this is confined mostly to a process that's rather important in a different sense than learning: the application process.  Know that faculty members sitting on admissions committees--and everyone else in admissions--cares about this, rather a lot.

Yes.  I agree 100%.  I blame escalation of the problem and deterioration of attention to proper grammar and language in large part on the growing use of and dependence on wireless digital Txt messaging for day to day communication.  Heavy daily use of and reliance on cell phones, smart phones, iPhones, portable web access devices, twitter (with the 140 characters per tweet limit), FB status updates, etc. for primary day to day communications is impairing development of solid reading and writing skills in the younger school aged generations.     

[BlackDuck]

Chuck, thank you for the advice. As you can see I need to work on my writing. I greatly appreciate the advice from the forum.

Thanks.

[.Chuck]

Chuck, thank you for the advice. As you can see I need to work on my writing. I greatly appreciate the advice from the forum.

Thanks.

No problem duck.  Improving writing skills is an endless quest.  I use my dictionary and other resources like the ones in the links whenever I'm unsure about grammar and phrasing.  Staying in that habit is always helpful to fine tune important text as well as to improve comprehension of sophisticated writings. 

[Duncanjp]

Chuck and Thane have both identified exactly what I see in your posts, BlackDuck. I would note that your interest in asking for literary recommendations puts you ahead of some, if not many. I approve — ha ha. Actually, I applaud. If you find reading weighty literature interesting in itself, then reading legal texts will terrorize you not at all. You may even find that you have a leg up on those who restrict their recreational reading to the funny pages — which I love to read. Well: Monty, anyway. Just being a happy reader will put you ahead of the game. I have laughed through the reading of almost everything Mark Twain ever published, although he didn't write expressly for the literati. But I've also consumed Herman Melville's works like popcorn, always with my dictionary within close reach. Moby-D ick (it comes out as Moby-male private part when written as normal on this website) was a staggering experience for me, partly because when I first read it, I had no clue how the story would end. But beyond the plot, I loved the loftiness of Melville's English. It thrilled me to the quick of my soul to circumambulate the watery parts of the world with someone who knew so many words that I had never heard before and who could write a sentence that extended for half a page or more without ever losing its train of thought.

Moby-male private part, I think, is a good boot camp for law students. It shows that other people will misunderstand and censor your references, regardless of how innocent your references may be. At any rate, my approach is to consult my dictionary whenever I encounter a word I cannot confidently and conclusively define. Never blow past a word that you cannot immediately define. Consult your dictionary or go to dictionary.com. Use it. Love it. Live it. In fairly short order, you'll begin to recognize verbs like allot. And "male private part" will begin to appear silly.

[Thane Messinger]

Chuck, thank you for the advice. As you can see I need to work on my writing. I greatly appreciate the advice from the forum.

Thanks.

There's a short book that has specific advice on this point as well.  It's Law School Fast Track.  Among the recommendations are those as to reading (and writing as well).

Thane.

[Julie Fern]

no help for julie...

[! B L U E WAR R I O R..!]

...GLOBAL RIFT...

it is a must read!

we worked hard on this book...

[erickagrimes]

Maybe literary can't help that much. But if you're interested there's a lot of good non-fiction stuff. I like the Tipping Point.