Get and keep by you a good basic theory book

Hi, Tim:

Looking at my shelves, I see:

Russel Garcia, The Professional Arranger Composer, Books I and II (long out of print). Very good books.

Samuel Adler, The Study of Orchestration, Norton. Likewise.

Aldwell and Schachter, Harmony and Voice Leading, Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich. Dry as dust.

Robert W. Altman, Advanced Harmony, Prentice-Hall. Even drier.

Kent Wheeler Kennan, Counterpoint, Prentice-Hall. So dry it crumbles away as you read it.

And the be-all-and-end-all is Stravinisky's On Orchestration, which I can't find right now, so I don't know who published it.

And an amazing book from the late 1940s called Underscore by Frank Skinner which goes step by step, in story-form, through the creation of the score for a Hollywood movie, including page after page of examples of scoring and orchestration.

And a bunch more, most of which I've acquired from used book stores and such. Although I think I stole the two Prentice-Hall books from my siblings, who used them in their university days.

David