Category Archives: Resources

Writing Tips & Tricks: Your Guide to Successful Writing

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The first snowfall in Montreal is a strong indicator of a certain time for the McGill community: the end of the fall semester is fast approaching, and with that comes many assignments and papers that are due. There’s no reason to fret however, as the McGill University Library has a wide collection of writing guides and books to help you get through with the best grade possible.

The following book suggestions cover writing tips for all kinds of subjects, from sciences to management!

Strategies for Writing a Thesis by Publication in the Social Sciences and Humanities by Lynn P. Nygaard and Kristin Solli

Written primarily for PhD students, this guide covers key topics within thesis by publication writing, including rhetorical challenges, strategies for handling the writing process, and much more!

A Companion to Creative Writing by Graeme Harper

This guide covers the writing of poetry, fiction, new media, plays, films, radio works, and other literary genres and forms.

Writing for Engineering and Science Students: Staking Your Claim by Gerald Rau

Accessible to both international students and native speakers of English, this book explores all the distinctive characteristics of a research paper based on articles from engineering and science journals.

Academic Writing: A Guide for Management Students and Researchers by Mathukutty M. Monippally and Badrinarayan Shankar Pawar

This book focuses on three main aspects: understanding existing research, documenting and sharing the results of the acquired knowledge, and acknowledging the use of other people’s ideas and works in the documentation.

Writing Winning Proposals for Nurses and Health Care Professionals by Sandra G. Funk and Elizabeth M. Tornquist

A step by step guide of the entire process of writing and submitting a successful proposal, with focus on writing with substance, clarity, and conviction.

English for Writing Research Papers by Adrian Wallwork

Aimed to help a wide variety of students succeed in academia, this guide contains rules, tips and examples to help you reduce the number of mistakes you make in English.

If you have any questions about how to access these titles or more, contact hssl.library@mcgill.ca

Spooky Book Recommendations for Fall 2023

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Leaves are falling, the weather is getting colder and we can find pumpkin spice flavoured things everywhere; a sign that Halloween is fast approaching! With Spooky Season upon us, now is the perfect time to cozy up with a horror book.

Here are just a few spooky book suggestions that you can borrow from the McGill Library Overdrive to keep you entertained (and scared) this Halloween!

Holly by Stephen King

Holly Gibney, one of Stephen King’s most compelling and ingeniously resourceful characters, returns in this thrilling novel to solve the gruesome truth behind multiple disappearances in a midwestern town.

In King’s new novel, Holly is on her own, and up against a pair of unimaginably depraved and brilliantly disguised adversaries. Holly must summon all her formidable talents to outthink and outmaneuver the shockingly twisted professors in this chilling new masterwork.

The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix

 Lynette Tarkington is a real-life final girl who survived a massacre. For more than a decade, she’s been meeting with five other final girls and their therapist in a support group for those who survived the unthinkable, working to put their lives back together. Then one woman misses a meeting, and their worst fears are realized–someone knows about the group and is determined to rip their lives apart again, piece by piece. But the thing about final girls is that no matter how bad the odds, how dark the night, how sharp the knife, they will never, ever give up

The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean

Out on the Yorkshire Moors lives a secret line of people for whom books are food, and who retain all of a book’s content after eating it.

Devon is part of The Family, an old and reclusive clan of book eaters. Her brothers grow up feasting on stories of valor and adventure, and Devon-like all other book eater women-is raised on a carefully curated diet of fairytales and cautionary stories. But real life doesn’t always come with happy endings, as Devon learns when her son is born with a rare and darker kind of hunger-not for books, but for human minds

The House Across The Lake by Riley Sager

Casey Fletcher, a recently widowed actress trying to escape a streak of bad press, has retreated to the peace and quiet of her family’s lake house in Vermont. Armed with a pair of binoculars and several bottles of bourbon, she passes the time watching Tom and Katherine Royce, the glamorous couple living in the house across the lake. They make for good viewing–a tech innovator, Tom is powerful; and a former model, Katherine is gorgeous.

One day on the lake, Casey saves Katherine from drowning, and the two strike up a budding friendship. But the more they get to know each other–and the longer Casey watches–it becomes clear that Katherine and Tom’s marriage isn’t as perfect as it appears. When Katherine suddenly vanishes, Casey immediately suspects Tom of foul play. What she doesn’t realize is that there’s more to the story than meets the eye–and that shocking secrets can lurk beneath the most placid of surfaces.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

A monster assembled by a scientist from parts of dead bodies develops a mind of his own as he learns to loathe himself and hate his creator.

Save Your Life With These 3 Tools: Citation Management

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With a new semester comes new assignments, many of which require detailed bibliographies. Citing your sources throughout your paper can get time-consuming, leaving less time to focus on the content of the work itself.

Fret not! McGill students and staff have access to citation management software, saving you the hassle of keeping track of and writing your citations manually! Below are a few of the options available, all for free!

EndNote

Zotero

Not a fan of citation management software? From Chicago to Turabian and more, The McGill Library offers Citation Guides to help you properly cite your sources, no matter the citation style you use! You can even look up your field of study to find the relevant styles for the subject of your assignment!

If you have any questions, email us at hssl.library@mcgill.ca.