College Textbooks

Some of us (including me) think that the prices charged for new textbooks are obscene.

Some of us (including my daughter, the teacher in California) can tell horror stories of teachers who specified a textbook for a course, then never asked the students to open it.

Some basic textbook rules

• Yes, you probably do need to buy all the books listed as "required." No, the teachers don't get a kickback from the publishers (though some professors are sadly unaware of how much money they are asking students to spend).


• Keep your bookstore receipts! If you bought something by mistake and didn't mark in it, you can return it for a full refund (but you need to know their deadline).


• Bookstores buy books back all through the school year. There are two reasons you need to know this:
  1. Some books just aren't worth keeping after you take the course.
  2. Thieves find bookstore buy-back a ready source of cash. Keep track of your stuff and lock your dorm room.


• You probably don't need to haul every book for every course into class every day. Some of my students have actually bought wheeled suitcases to tote their entire office around. Not necessary (unless you're a commuter who will be stuck on campus for eight hours waiting for your carpool to go home).


• You really do need to keep up with the reading, even if it's not on a daily quiz. The point of this whole exercise called "college" is to change you and inform you. If you refuse to read the textbook, why did you bother to come to college at all? Besides, if you are like me, the idea of spending $90 on something that you won't use is just ridiculous.

Marking your textbook

First of all, get used to the idea that you won't get that much money back when you sell the books at the end of the semester. It's your book. You might as well get the maximum good from it, and that usually means marking it somehow.

Tools
Though I like to write with a fountain pen, I don't mark books with one. The ink soaks through. Get out your good-quality ballpoint pen (the one that doesn't blob ink). Maybe a couple of different colors of ink would help. I like a short flexible plastic ruler to make the underlining neater. I usually avoid highlight markers (It takes me years to use one up).

Philosophy
If you think of a textbook as a series of things to memorize, you'll hate the process and get little from it. Think of textbook marking as a conversation between yourself and the author. The writer has thought through some important thing and has something to say. You are trying to think these thoughts too and to respond to them.

Procedure
On the first reading (Yes, it really does need more than one reading!), neat reader-response comments in the margin are appropriate: questions you'd like answered, points you disagree with, comments in the professor's last lecture that apply here, places you have seen this reading applied. The second reading is the time to figure out the structure of the piece. What did the author see as important? What's the main point? (Students often bog down in tiny details without seeing what it's all about.) This is when I underline transitional statements such as "The first thing," "Another main point," and so forth. The third reading might be a good time to deal with your professor's issues. Does he love little trivia for the test? Is she fascinated by big overall principles? Change ink color and mark these things. You'll want them when you're studying this stuff for the next test.

A last word about dictionaries

Do keep your dictionary handy and use it. Most college textbooks are written on a higher level than USA Today, and will use words you're not familiar with. A few years ago, my students read "The Jilting of Granny Weatherall," by Katherine Anne Porter. The point of the short story is that the old lady felt like God had abandoned her just as her first boyfriend had. My student misread "jilt" as "jolt," and wrote a fairly simple-minded essay about what a jolt it had been when she was left at the altar. If the student had known that "jilt" means "suddenly reject or abandon (a lover)," he would have known a lot more about the story.