Yup. Looks like I'm a student again. Already starting to feel the burn too (but that could be due to kind of a crazy first week). Of all the ways students get screwed, I think textbooks piss me off the most. Every once in a while, a textbook that you have to buy is a gem and you end up being able to use it for more than just a semester. Funny how those ones are always reasonably priced.
This semester I only needed to buy one book, which was nice. What wasn't nice was that this book costs almost $160 from the SFU bookstore (after taxes). This is an absolutely rediculous price. I wouldn't pay that much for any book, let alone a book that I'm only going to use for 3.5 months. In addition, this particular textbook comes out with a new revision every single year. That way you, oh so conveniently, can't sell the book back after the semester ends, your 2005 copy is already out of date.
With this particular book, if I were to pick it up off a book givaways shelf, and read the first chapter, I'd want the time it took me to read it back. I wouldn't take this book if it were given to me for free. It's not worth the space on my bookshelf. The quality of writing is so poor, it's almost uncomparable to any other book I've read. And Parveen can verify that (he had the pleasure of reading a brief part of the book).
I really wonder why so many students just bend over and take this. For a demographic that is probably the most likely to be involved in a protest you'd think the bullshit textbook monopoly would have been taken care of long ago. I guess it's just not that big of an issue in the grand scheme of things.
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