The Seven-Day Book Cover Challenge: The Honorable Mentions

This is a list of other good books that I was considering for the seven days.

Like I told Don Bugg, it was hard to choose just seven.

Most of these books, like Dumas' The Three Musketeers, are really old, but some, like Craig's Missing, Presumed Dead, are relatively new. Some, like White's North American Indian Footwear, are surprisingly still in print, and others, like the 1974 EMS catalog, are long gone. Most of these titles can be found online. Besides Amazon, you can check Goodreads and ThriftBooks. Project Gutenberg is a good source for the classics, such as The Count of Monte Cristo. And it's always a delight to discover any of these books in a real brick-and-mortar bookstore.

There is no significance to the order in which the books appear in this list. Seriously, the order does not matter.

I left off a lot of really good books. I don't know why; that's just the way my brain works. Don't ask me for their titles. If I could remember their titles, they would be on the list. Duh.

There is a quartet of books that doesn't even need to be mentioned: the holy books, the sacred texts, which guide my life. They are superior to any book list I could ever compile.

After that long preface, here's the list of Honorable Mentions.

The Art of Electronics, by Horowitz and Hill
The Complete Walker, by Colin Fletcher
Craft Manual of North American Indian Footwear, by George White
Outdoor Survival Skills, by Larry Dean Olson
The 1974 Eastern Mountain Sports catalog
The Complete Calvin and Hobbes, by Bill Watterson
Betty Crocker's Cookbook, New and Revised Edition (1979)
The original Harry Potter series, all seven books, by J. K. Rowling
The Chronicles of Narnia, by C. S. Lewis
The Chronicles of Prydain, by Lloyd Alexander
Missing, Presumed Dead, by Craig Depew
The Princess Bride, by William Goldman. The book is great; the movie is even greater
The Scarlet Pimpernel, by Baroness Orczy
(also about France, before and after the Revolution:

• The Three Musketeers, by Alexandre Dumas
• A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens
• Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo
• The Count of Monte Cristo, also by Alexandre Dumas)

Three programming classics:

• The C Programming Language, by Kernighan and Ritchie
• Who's Afraid of C++, by Steve Heller - that title is obsolete, but his later C++ books are just as good
• Common Lisp: The Language, by Guy Steele

The Seven-Day Book Cover Challenge, Day Seven: the official Boy Scout Handbook

The 7th edition, the one on the left, is from when I was a boy. The 9th edition, the one on the right, is from when I was a Scoutmaster and a Boy Scout dad. I have seen other editions, and IMHO these two are the most solid, most useful, and best written, but my bias is clear.

The journalist and author Peter Applebome wrote a book, Scout's Honor, about his experiences as a Boy Scout dad. Being a reporter and a problem-solver at heart, he takes a long, hard look at what Scouting could be (and should be), compares it to what it is, and makes several really good recommendations for fixing Scouting. 

One of the most interesting things he says is that the Scout Oath and the Scout Law, the moral foundations for Scouting (in the U.S.A.), are rock-solid and it would be a very good thing if all boys (and men!) lived by those tenets. He also says (either himself, or quoting someone) that the Boy Scout Handbook, any edition, is just the kind of "advice to boys" that people have been longing to give to boys today.

The Seven-Day Book Cover Challenge, Day Six: The Organization Guerilla: Playing the Game to Win

This one is going to have a few of you scratching your heads. It's a book I picked up off the 99-cent table at a bookstore, at the beginning of my career. It's easily worth 20 or 30 times what I paid for it.

This is a very cynical book, with practical advice that will save (and maybe even advance) your career, whether you work in a small business or a giant corporation. You may disagree with some of its principles, and you may go "well, duh" at some others, but after reading the book, you will see its truisms everywhere.

Here are three examples:

1. In business, as in politics, nobody ever gives you the real reason for their decisions/actions.

2. If you want to know who has the real power in an organization, watch where the money comes from, and where it goes -- in short, Power Follows Money.

3. I can't put this into a pithy sentence, but there's an entire chapter in the book about the politics behind distribution lists: who do you put in the From, To, Cc and Bcc fields of a memo or, in today's world, an email? There's a whole science behind it. Make sure you get it right.

The Seven-Day Book Cover Challenge, Day Five: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

But first, a joke.

At a major league baseball game, the batter hit a line drive right that caught the second-base umpire right behind the ear. He staggered a bit, but shook it off, and play continued. But as time went on, he began to act a little loopy. He wandered around the field, and eventually started walking in little circles just behind third base, finishing in a beautiful death spiral. He lay there on the ground until a medical crew ran out and hauled him off on a stretcher.

One of the TV commentators turned to the other and said, "We have just witnessed the Decline and Fall of the Roamin' Umpire."

Now to the serious stuff.

The 19th-Century historian Edward Gibbon changed the way history books are written. He also changed the way, and the reasons why, history books are read.

It took me seven years to finish this six-volume masterpiece, a few pages at a time. When I finally closed the last volume, I understood more about the entirety of western civilization than I ever had before.
  

 

The Seven-Day Book Cover Challenge, Day Four: The Sneetches and Other Stories

My own children will tell you that this is one of my favorite read-aloud books.

Did I ever tell you that Mrs. McCave had twenty-three sons and she named them all Dave?

Well, she did. And that wasn't a smart thing to do. You see, ...

The Seven-Day Book Cover Challenge, Day Three; Alvin's Secret Code

This was one of my favorite pre-teen books. After all these years, it's back in print.

I'm delighted. Now a new generation can discover the fun of codes and ciphers.

The Seven-Day Book Cover Challenge, Day Two: Seven Habits

Stephen R. Covey wrote two powerful books about managing your life and getting along with others, called Spiritual Roots of Human Relations and The Divine Center. Then he distilled the fundamental principles from those books and repackaged them as The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

The seven principles in this book have guided my life, and everything I do, ever since I was a young man.

p.s. Here's a link to a blog post with a concise list of the Seven Habits, for those of you who have asked for it: https://zyzmog.blogspot.com/2012/07/a-great-man-coveys-next-great-adventure.html

The Seven-Day Book Cover Challenge, Day One: The Lord of the Rings

Preface

This began as one of those viral challenges on Facebook: post the covers of seven of your favorite books, one a day, for seven days. On the seventh day, nominate someone and challenge them to do the same.

Multiple people nominated me, so I gave in and posted seven covers. Although the original challenge specified that the covers be posted without explanation or review, I briefly explained and reviewed my choices.

Here's the first one.

---

Day One of the seven-day book challenge.

The hardest thing is going to be picking just seven books.

In fact, I'm going to cheat. This first book is actually one story in four books: The Lord of the Rings, including The Hobbit, written as a preface to the trilogy.

I first encountered The Lord of the Rings as a freshman in college, when I picked up a paperback-edition boxed set for $6.00, on my way back to the dorms for lunch. I disappeared into my room and didn't come out, except for meals, for 72 hours. By then I had finished the books, and my life had been changed.

This is an absorbing adventure, full of deep magic, deep wisdom, and all of the good and evil of humanity, on display against an epic backdrop of epic-backdropness.

If the movies are great, it's because they were built on a great foundation. This is the foundation. Read it to your kids at night. Read it to yourself, over and over. Take notes in the margin. Stick quotations on your bathroom mirror. Let it fill your life with its richness.

Best quotations from the original seven Harry Potter books

This summer, I decided to reread all of the original Harry Potter books. I extracted my favorite quotations from the books and posted on Facebook, in real time, to everyone's delight. (Yes, really.)

Here they are, all in one place – copied and pasted from Facebook.

---

July 7

"It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live."
- Albus Dumbledore

"After all, to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure."
- Albus Dumbledore again

July 10

"Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can't see where it keeps its brain."
- prophetically important advice from Arthur Weasley
See? Dumbledore isn't the only wise old man in the story.

Arthur Weasley's warning is for anyone who uses a smartphone, a computer, or any device connected to the Internet. 

"It is our choices that show who we truly are, far more than our abilities."
- aaaaand we're back to quoting Albus Dumbledore.

July 12

"I don't go looking for trouble," said Harry, nettled. "Trouble usually finds me."

July 14

"Christmas spirit was definitely thin on the ground in the Gryffindor common room that morning."
- An unusual metaphor offered up by J.K. Rowling.

"The consequences of our actions are always so complicated, so diverse, that predicting the future is a very difficult business indeed."
- Albus Dumbledore

"You know, Harry, in a way, you did see your father last night.... You found him inside yourself."
- Dumbledore again

July 18

" it is a strange thing, but when you are dreading something, and would give anything to slow down time, it has a disobliging habit of speeding up."
- J. K. Rowling

"Oh, did I? Just because it's taken you three years to notice, Ron, doesn't mean no one else has spotted I'm a girl!"
- Hermoine Granger, 4th year

July 19

"Her-my-oh-nee," she said slowly and clearly.
"Herm-own-ninny."
"Close enough."

"Powers You Never Knew You Had and What to Do with Them Now You've Wised Up" - Sounds like a good motivational book for some Muggles that I love.

"If you want to know [the measure of a man], take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals."
- Sirius Black

July 23

"Kill the spare."
- Possibly the saddest moment in the first four books. Don't worry; it gets worse.

"Decent people are so easy to manipulate."
- a cynical, but true, observation from Barty Crouch Jr., masquerading as Mad-Eye Moody.

"Understanding is the first step to acceptance, and only with acceptance can there be recovery."
- Albus Dumbledore

"You are blinded by the love of the office you hold, Cornelius! You place too much importance, and you have always done, on the so-called purity of blood! You fail to recognize that it matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be!"
- powerful truths for our time, from the mouth of Albus Dumbledore.
Or from the pen of J. K. Rowling

"You all righ'?" he said gruffly.
"Yeah," said Harry.
"No, yeh're not," said Hagrid. " 'Course yeh're not. But yeh will be."
- words of hope for anyone who has suffered and is slowly healing

"We are only as strong as we are united, as weak as we are divided. Lord Voldemort's gift for spreading discord and enmity is very great. We can fight it only by showing an equally strong bond of friendship and trust. Differences of habit and language are nothing at all if our aims are identical and our hearts are open."
- more wise words for our time. Albus Dumbledore and J. K. Rowling.

"Never mind the Statute of Secrecy now, there's going to be hell to pay anyway, we might as well be hanged for a dragon as an egg."
... and ...
"Well, it's no good crying over spilled potion, I suppose . . . but the cat's among the pixies now."
- the lovable Mrs. Figg

"Who d'you know who's lost a buttock?"
- Tonks!
Remember reading that part out loud?
Wait! There's more:
"Ah well . . . wand still in your jeans? Both buttocks still on? Okay, let's go."

"Dark times lie ahead of us and there will be a time when we must choose between what is easy and what is right."
- Albus Dumbledore
That quotation is from the movie only. In his eulogy for Cedric Diggory, Dumbledore did say, "... if the time should come when you have to make a choice between what is right and what is easy, remember ...". But that's not the same thing, and it really doesn't have the same flavor.

July 26

"Shut up, you horrible old hag, shut UP!"
- Sirius Black says hello to his mother

July 27

"Oh, know the perils, read the signs
The warning history shows,
For our Hogwarts is in danger
From external, deadly foes
And we must unite inside her
Or we'll crumble from within
I have told you, I have warned you. . . .
Let the Sorting now begin."
- the Sorting Hat, year 5.

Change "Hogwarts" to "country", drop the last line, and you'll see, again, the timeless wisdom in much of what J. K. Rowling wrote.

"We will be following a carefully structured, theory-centered, Ministry-approved course of defensive magic this year."
- Dolores Umbridge.
Oh please, spare us from anyone's private agenda disguised as "education reform".

"The world isn't split into good people and Death Eaters."
- Sirius Black, and the lovable (and deeply loved) Robyn Chalupa.

"December arrived, bringing with it more snow and a positive avalanche of homework for the fifth years."
- J. K. Rowling loves her wintry metaphors, doesn't she?

"Ron, you are the most insensitive wart I have ever had the misfortune to meet."
And on the same page, everyone's favorite:
"Just because you've got the emotional range of a teaspoon ...."
- Hermoine Granger

But to be honest, Ronald Weasley did have a fair point when he said, in the discussion which led to Hermoine's outburst:
"One person can't feel all that at once, they'd explode."

July 28

"It's like losing a Knut and finding a Galleon, isn't it?"
- Dumbledore

Maybe it's better understood in context. Cornelius Fudge went to Hogwarts, intending to expel Harry Potter, and instead he got the chance to arrest Dumbledore. This was Dumbledore's amused response.

"You know, Minister, I disagree with Dumbledore on many counts ... but you cannot deny he's got style."
- Phineas Nigellus' potrait, to Cornelius Fudge
... although I think Kingsley Shacklebolt said it in the movie

July 29

"... The cloudless sky smiled at itself in the smoothly sparkling lake ..."
- Okay, it looks rather turgid out of context, but this is J. K. Rowling drawing a picture of a perfect day in early June.

"You are quite wrong," said Dumbledore. "Indeed, your failure to understand that there are things much worse than death has always been your greatest weakness."

"There is no shame in what you are feeling, Harry. On the contrary . . . the fact that you can feel pain like this is your greatest strength."
- Albus Dumbledore

"Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young."
- Albus Dumbledore

"Indifference and neglect often do more damage than outright dislike."
- advice on both parenting and friendships from Albus Dumbledore

"I'm sorry, Professor," Harry said, holding up his hand and showing her the scars on the back. "But I must not tell lies."
This is only in the movie. Not the book. But it's one of the best lines in the story.

July 30

I've always been intrigued by J. K. Rowling's invention and re-invention of names. This was the day that I decided to write a blog article about the subject.

July 31

Happy birthday to Harry Potter and his creator, J. K. Rowling! I hope you found a good way to celebrate.

"You overlook Dumbledore's greatest weakness: He has to believe the best of people."
- Severus Snape
Then I wish to be weak like Dumbledore.

"And now, Harry, let us step out into the night and pursue that flighty temptress, adventure."
- Albus Dumbledore

"Don't count your owls before they are delivered."
- Albus Dumbledore

August 2

"Once again, you show all the sensitivity of a blunt axe."
- Nearly Headless Nick

"Hmph," snorted Professor McGonagall. "It's high time your grandmother learned to be proud of the grandson she's got, rather than the one she thinks she ought to have."

"Yes," said Harry stiffly.
"Yes, sir."
"There's no need to call me 'sir', Professor."

"From this point forth, we shall be leaving the firm foundation of fact and journeying together through the murky marshes of memory into thickets of wildest guesswork."
Oh, what fun words J. K. Rowling puts into Dumbledore's mouth! In the middle of this complex metaphor we find two alliterative triplets ... and one triplet that she couldn't alliterate on and just gave up.

"Oh, well, that's better than a whack on the nose with a rusty poker."
- Mrs. Cole, keeper of the orphanage in London where Tom Riddle was a child

"Very astute, Harry, but the mouth organ was only ever a mouth organ."
- Dumbledore

August 3

"Dumbledore's man through and through, aren't you, Potter?"
"Yeah, I am," said Harry. "Glad we straightened that out."
And you all know that we'll come back to this one later.

Nine pages later:
"Well, it appears that Rufus found a way to corner you at last."
"He accused me of being 'Dumbledore's man through and through."
"How very rude of him."
"I told him I was."
Dumbledore opened his mouth to speak and then closed it again. Behind Harry, Fawkes the phoenix let out a low, soft, musical cry. To Harry's intense embarrassment, he suddenly realized that Dumbledore's bright, blue eyes looked rather watery, and stared hastily at his own knees. When Dumbledore spoke, however, his voice was quite steady.
"I am very touched, Harry."

"It is one of the irritating things about old teachers. I am afraid that they never forget their young charges' youthful beginnings."
- Albus Dumbledore
I hope that all of my (air bunnies!) "young charges" know how proud I am of them for what they have become.

"Don't you see? Voldemort created his own worst enemy, as tyrants everywhere do! Have you any idea how much tyrants fear the people they repress? All of them realize that, one day, amongst their many victims, there is sure to be one who rises against them and strikes back!"
- Albus Dumbledore

"Age is foolish and forgetful when it underestimates youth."
- Albus Dumbledore repeats himself.

"It is the unknown we fear when we look upon death and darkness, nothing more."
These words of Dumbledore gave me understanding and comfort the first time I read them, many years ago.

"You thought I would not weesh to marry him? Or per'aps, you hoped? What do I care how he looks? I am good-looking enough for both of us, I theenk! All these scars show is zat my husband is brave!"
- Fleur Delacour wins everyone else's hearts.
p.s. This sounds best when you read it aloud with a cartoon French accent.

Harry considered him for a moment.
"Released Stan Shunpike yet?"
Scrimgeour turned a nasty purple colour highly reminiscent of Uncle Vernon.
"I see you are --"
"Dumbledore's man through and through," said Harry. "That's right."

August 4

"You did?" said Hermoine, gazing up at Ron. ...
"Always the tone of surprise," he said a little grumpily. ...
That's on page 76. Can't wait to see the other shoe drop!

"So why in the name of Merlin's saggy left --"
- Ronald Weasley
Aaaannd we're back to talking about buttocks.

"It's time you learned some respect!" shouted Scrimgeour.
"It's time you earned it," said Harry.
Later, near the end of Deathly Hallows, it was revealed that the Death Eaters tortured Scrimgeour before they killed him, but he never gave up Harry's location. So he did finally earn some respect.

"Wow!" Ron said, blinking rather rapidly as Hermoine came hurrying toward them. "You look great!"
"Always the tone of surprise," said Hermoine, though she smiled.
 And that's the other shoe dropping. Page 142.

"Where you treasure is, there will your heart be also."
- inscribed on the Dumbledore family tombstone in Godric's Hollow

"Wands are only as powerful as the wizards who use them."
- Hermoine Granger

August 5

"That old berk," muttered Aberforth, taking another swig of mead. "Thought the sun shone out of my brother's every orifice, he did. Well, so did plenty of people, you three included, by the looks of it."

There was a clatter as the basilisk fangs cascaded out of Hermoine's arms. Running at Ron, she flung them around his neck and kissed him full on the mouth. Ron threw away the fangs and broomstick he was holding and responded with such enthusiasm that he lifted Hermoine off her feet.
"Is this the moment?" Harry asked weakly ...
... He raised his voice. "OY! There's a war going on here!"

"This must be between us! Swear it! I cannot bear . . . especially Potter's son . . . I want your word!"
"My word, Severus, that I shall never reveal the best of you?"
- Dumbledore
That one chapter, the one where we watched Snape's memories in the Penseive, turned all seven books inside-out. The whole series became a love story, with Snape and Lily as the main characters

"You see what you expect to see."
- Dumbledore explains confirmation bias to Snape.
I think a few million more people need to understand and watch out for confirmation bias. It really clouds one's judgment. For one thing, it leads to mindless reposting of stupid political memes all over their Facebook pages.

"No," agreed Dumbledore [speaking to Severus]. "You are a braver man than Karkaroff. You know, sometimes I think we Sort too soon. . . ."

"For him?" shouted Snape. "Expecto patronum!"
From the tip of his wand burst the silver doe. ... Dumbledore watched her fly away, and as her silver glow faded he turned back to Snape, and his eyes were full of tears.
"After all this time?"
"Always," said Snape.

"Does it hurt?"
"Dying? Not at all," said Sirius. "Quicker and easier than falling asleep."

Dumbledore smiled at Harry, and Harry stared at him.
"And you knew this? You knew -- all along?"
"I guessed. But my guesses have usually been good," said Dumbledore happily.

"It is a curious thing, Harry, but perhaps those who are best suited for power are those who have never sought it. Those who, like you, have leadership thrust upon them, and take up the mantle because they must, and find to their own surprise that they wear it well."
- Albus Dumbledore

"Do not pity the dead, Harry. Pity the living, and above all, those who live without love."
- Albus Dumbledore

"Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean it is not real?"
- one of my favorites.

"Albus Severus," Harry said quietly, "you were named for two headmasters of Hogwarts. One of them was a Slytherin and he was probably the bravest man I ever knew."
 That's all of them, peeps. I saved the best for last. The end. Love to all of you.

A book to read

This isn't a recommendation for a new book.  I could recommend some, but that's not the point of this entry.

I want to ask you a question:  Which way do you prefer to read a book?
1) eBook - Kindle, Nook, iPad, computer, or other electronic device
2) audiobook - so you can listen to it in the car or whatever
3) paper and ink  - the old-fashioned way

I've actually been doing all three of them.  Right now, I'm working my way through The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire as an eBook.  It goes slow, but the actual book is three heavy volumes, and this way I don't have to carry one of them around with me.  The most recent audiobook I "read" was Freakanomics (the Revised Edition).  It was great to listen to as I drove to and from work.  I actually "read" it twice.  I've also enjoyed Harry Potter and the Something Or Other and several fascinating nonfiction works in audio form.

And the most recent paper-and-ink book I read?  Well, it's been over ten years since I read The Lord of the Rings.  I recently revisited the entire trilogy.  I skipped The Hobbit.  I'll go back to it.  But there was stuff in LOTR that I'd forgotten because it's not in the movies, and I needed to read it all again.  The movies are rich, of course, but the books are many times richer.

For the record, although I will continue reading eBooks and audiobooks, I prefer paper and ink.  There's just something about the printed page that the electronic and audio formats just can't deliver.  You can't caress the pages; you can't savour the words.  You can't underline key passages, make annotations in the margins, dog-ear the pages or mark the page edges.  With an eBook, you can at least go back and reread your favorite parts, but they're not that easy to find, and besides, what's the use?  The words in an eBook are sanitized, denatured, squeezed dry of the flavor that paper and ink imparts to the writer's words.

Whatever Happened to Editors at Publishing Houses?

Doesn't anybody edit books before they're published anymore?

I've been spending a few weeks polishing up my technical skills, and so I've been reading a series of books on a particular subject. One of the books is A Baker's Dozen: Real Analog Solutions for Digital Designers. The book is a beautiful compilation of knowledge, wisdom and tips on the subject of analog circuit design. It's written by one of today's leading experts on the subject: Bonnie Baker, currently vice president or director of something important at Microchip. Baker is great, and I have a soft spot in my engineering heart for Microchip, and so I'm enjoying reading the book and digesting its contents.

There's just one problem with the book. It is very poorly edited.

I'm only into the third chapter, but it seems like I've had to add a handwritten correction to every other page of the book. Only one correction so far is a technical error (she got the two's complement notation for -2 wrong). All the rest are errors involving:

• spelling errors
• typographical errors
• homonyms and homologues
• word usage and sentence structure problems
• grammar mistakes
• awkward phrasing or misuse of common idioms
• noun-verb disagreement ("is/are", for example)

This is not the only technical book I've encountered with an editing problem. It seems like most, if not all, of today's technical books have serious editing problems. Sometimes they're total disasters, like those written by Myke Predko (don't take my word for it; go read the reviews on amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com), but more often they're books like this one, where the technical content is (mostly) accurate, but the writing appears ... um ... "sloppy" isn't fair to the writer ... more like poorly edited.

It simply looks as though the editor wasn't doing his/her job. If I had to guess at what happened, I'd say that the publisher assigned a non-technical editor to Baker's book, and the editor was so bamboozled by the technical content that she completely forgot about her own ability to manage the basic mechanics of writing.

It's also possible that Baker told her publisher she wanted to edit the book herself. In a world of word processors and automated spell checkers, I feel that this is becoming increasingly common, especially among engineers who think that with the right manual or tutorial and a week to study it, they can become an expert on any subject. (This is the "any engineer can become a ..." syndrome. You read it here first, folks.)

But folkloric wisdom points out the problems with being your own expert: The taunt "Physician, heal thyself" shows up in the Bible, and a more modern proverb asserts that "Any lawyer who chooses to represent himself has a fool for a client." Authors shouldn't be their own editors.

Or maybe Baker's publisher, tight on cash (or just plain tight), had laid off too many editors and assigned this book and five others to a junior editor or intern with a one-week deadline. The junior editor had to let something slide, and this was it.

Or maybe Baker's editor was a raging incompetent, whose own literary skills are not very far above those required for modern high-school newspapers and yearbooks.

Good editors, like good schoolteachers, are worth their weight in gold. They're an overworked and underpaid bunch, and they may feel like we expect too much of them, but a good editor can make the difference between a "good read" and a waste of paper. My editors have always done a fantastic job, making a huge difference in the finished product.

You can't just jack into a port on the matrix and download the skills necessary to become an editor. It doesn't work like that. Every author should have a competent professional editor. Lacking a competent professional editor, every technical author should have an author whose writing they admire, and who is not a member of their technical profession, to go through their manuscript and fix their writing.

(If you want a more mainstream example of the difference a good editor can make, then look at the quality of language in Tom Clancy's The Hunt for Red October and compare it with the quality of language in the Tom Clancy's Op Center books. Clancy didn't write the Op Center books; he just lent them his name. He should have lent them his editors. The Op Center series is overburdened with horrendous language errors, which repeatedly bring the story to a screeching halt and ultimately cause the reader to throw down the book in frustration.)

I would further suggest that every technical author should ask a colleague whom they view as a competitor, or with whom they share a mild animosity, to review their manuscript for technical errors. Who is better qualified to find errors in your work, than someone who doesn't like you in the first place? Asking esteemed colleagues and best friends to check your work is great, but your greatest asset as an author will be someone who will root like a truffle hound for your mistakes.

It helps to have a good example. In this exercise in personal improvement, I'm saving the best book for last. Horowitz and Hill's The Art of Electronics is not only a technical treasure and a bible among electrical engineers, but it's also beautifully written, an example of how well English prose can be turned to instruct in even the most technical subjects. It's always worth reading and rereading, not just for the technical education, but for the exquisite turns of phrase.