$90 is too much for a used textbook
August 23, 2007I’m taking the Analysis of Algorithms class at U of L this semester, and I just bought the textbook yesterday afternoon. Paid $90 for a used, yes *used*, copy. The new copy would have set me back $120.
Both prices are an outrage. This is a one-semester course, so it’s not like the database textbook I bought last year which we used for both semesters. $90 for a used textbook that I’m going to use for less than four months of study.
The complete Harry Potter set, including the nifty carrying case, is about the same $120 price on Amazon.com as the new textbook would have been. I’m not certain that spending the money on this textbook would be a better investment than the Harry Potter books.
At least if you read those Potter books you’ll be able to make small-talk at parties, whereas this algorithms text is not going to significantly add to my social repertoire. It might even make things worse, now I’ll babble on about NP-completeness and transitive closure. That’s not going to be useful at all in the real world.