I come from a family of intense readers and researchers who are constantly looking crap up in books. They love and worship the printed word and have a difficult time fathoming why anyone would want to part with a book. When my grandfather retired and was breaking down his lab, he parked in [...]
I come from a family of intense readers and researchers who are constantly looking crap up in books. They love and worship the printed word and have a difficult time fathoming why anyone would want to part with a book. When my grandfather retired and was breaking down his lab, he parked in a clearly marked No Parking zone (he lived by his own set of rules), stole a lab cart labeled in large letters with the angry phrasing: Lab Use Only! Do Not Remove!
He took me to his office, commanded me to climb up on his desk and read out to him the titles of every one of his reference texts. Some he had had since the 1930s, when he was a student, and some he had acquired over years of teaching and research. He’d kept everything he deemed useful and “not full of sh*t.” He left the less than brilliant volumes for other researchers, and gifted me with a few dozen gorgeous reference texts and old textbooks. I still have them, and they have their own beautiful book shelf (I do not allow them to mingle with novels, no matter how high the literature content).
I have an abundance of higher education under my belt, and the stacks of textbooks to go along with all that learning. If I kept every book, we’d all be killed under piles of books the next time Seattle has an earthquake. I’m perhaps a little more reasonable than my family, and can be fairly harsh when weeding out unnecessary objects from my home. Any book I have never opened as a reference past the term I read it as a required text gets donated to the nearest college or university.
I bought all new textbooks as a freshman because it was all so new and I felt that every moment had to be crisp and perfect in the fall light. After the first year of school, I only bought new books if they were fully related to my major, and I was certain I would be using them as references later on down the line. Everything else I bought used and then sold back or donated. You don’t need new textbooks unless you plan on keeping them as part of your permanent library.
If it will help you to decide, you can stand there in the bookstore and hold the pile of this term’s books straight out in front of you. It will weigh a lot and it will start to hurt pretty quickly. Think about how many times you will move between the ages of eighteen, when you’re a freshman, and thirty, when you’re ready to buy a house and settle down. Between my freshman year and when I moved into my current house at the age of 26, I moved 14 times. Only rocks and weights are heavier than books, people.
If a required book is something you feel sure you won’t ever need to crack again once this term is over, then you might want to consider renting your books or going with the digital textbook wave of the future.
Posted by Alexa Harrington
