This is a guest post written by Bob Hartzell
 
Bob Hartzell went to college before book shopping was an option and is still in debt as a result.  He currently writes for Master Degree Online.com and other alternative education options at the graduate level. He recently highlighted the top online masters in education schools & prograsm according to US News & World Report.
 
When I was an English major I went through the agonizing process that millions of other students have experienced and that spawned this website: I went down to the college bookstore and emptied my checking account buying books that were purely and simply an investment in a college degree.  Most of them were a challenge to read, some of them were altogether too dense with paragraphs that landed like lead on my delicate undergraduate brain.  Granted those that I got through contributed substantially to my education; they were on the whole a necessary labor and productive in their purpose when I bothered to invest the time they required.
 
But they changed my perspective on books and book buying radically.  Every quarter (I got to buy text books three times a year) I was offended by the textbook price scam that continues today, and every quarter I was saddled with scholarly works that made English seem like a recently acquired language.  The books I bought for my major were mostly historical works and I was in most cases years away from truly appreciating them as classics.  So the very thing that drove me to declare a literary major became a burden – reading.
 
If 800 pound textbooks have become part of your college experience it might help to not lose sight of the fact that books come in all intellectual shapes, sizes and flavors.  Google the word “books” and Amazon is in your face.  Amazon does not own the book space.  If you once read for pleasure and would like some entertaining reading on talented work, start with a visit to the venerable New York Times.
 
1.      The book page in the newspaper still publishes quality reviews and their staff has remarkable range.   The NYT Sunday Review of Books, which is a multimedia extravaganza devoted to the printed word.  Podcasts, reviews, criticism – and an assortment of soapboxes for commentary relevant and obscure.  But the Sunday Review has a much wider range of entertainment than overwrought criticism, it’s a great place to learn about the up-and-comers, and about what the authors that are both famous AND good have been up to lately.
 
2.      If you’re a little more inclined to browse through a reading resource that is not as engaged with literary prestige, the Barnes & Noble Review does a good job of sorting through new works and offering articles about literary activities across the globe.  There’s a lot of history to be found there as well, about writers and about their topics – historical or imaginary.  Like every brick-and-mortar outlet for products in the dead-tree media, they’re hanging on with fingernails.  But for the moment their review pages offer some quality viewing about entertaining reading.
 
3.      The New York Times book section is a separate cauldron of critics from the New York Times Review of Books, a biweekly publication that was founded independently of the newspaper and before long assumed a lofty position in the pantheon of Meaningful Book Reviews.  For all of its importance it’s still a good resource for new highlights in the bookshelves along with a hefty dose of political and cultural commentary.  Click on “current issue” to get to the book reviews, which is where you’ll find the fiction that is identified as such.
 
4.      The Atlantic Monthly, now the Atlantic, offers an assortment of discussions about printed works in their culture section.  These reviews tend to be about books that focus on current events and other Matters of Import rather than literary efforts.  If international affairs capture your interest this resource can inform you about a broad range of published works that you’ll never see on the display shelves at the local bookstore.   A little esoteric perhaps, but like every other dustbin you can often find something different.  And if your printed environment is composed of mandatory texts, different is good.

In an effort to escape from the ever present bad news that seems to be the cornerstone of our current civilization I have spent much time recently watching old movies, and reading good books.

The desire that I feel to escape to a “happier time” is understandable, after all, we are living in an unstable world, where no one knows what the next shoe that will drop will be. Oddly enough, instead of turning to fantasy or other such genres I find greater comfort in books that mimic reality, reading about the extremes of what could be possible, but thankfully what has not yet occurred.

One such book is “Death Wave” by Stephen Kahn. This book provides an excellent analysis into much of what is currently happening in our world – in terms of the financial crisis.

From the book cover:

“In the midst of a financial crisis one man must save the world with the aid of a maniacal serial killer, his dead hamster, and a homeless bum named “Troll”.

Stewart is a young man trying to keep it together during the worst financial crisis since the great depression. The corrupt politics and corporate scandals…”

If you want to read more about this book, or listen to free excerpts from the audio book, please go to http://www.kafilmworks.com/deathwave/contents

We live in a society where the value of the written word has steadily eroded in recent decades.  This erosion can be seen in a number of ways, starting with the rise of text messaging and instant messages as a form of communication in which shortening words is the norm, to the steady decline of basic formality.  Not only are most freshman college students incapable of spelling, but many have to be taught standard ways to address one’s elders in a letter (or an email to a professor).  Given such a decline, combined with the increased time that most of us spend in front of digital media (TV’s, computer’s video games…) one might think that the book- that indispensable, tome that has helped to shape our society, would be in decline as well, yet the contradictory is true.

Our society is one that has elevated literacy as a human good, and has, as a consequence of this elevated books.  We all have bookshelves filled with volumes of hard cover books, some of these we have read, but many (either given to us as a gift, or bought by us in a fit of passion and desire to change ourselves) will stand there for years collecting dust without having a broken spine; indeed, we often collect books as a sign of our intellectual prowess.  What amazes me is that in our world- where abbreviations are steadily replacing many words, we still value the spoken word as an “end in itself”, so much so that we judge developing countries on the literacy rate of their population.  The HDI (human development index), an annual report that rates countries from most, to least developed, looking at nations’ standards of living, mentions the issue of literacy as a key indicator of a States’ development.

Talking about the cost of books, this too has changed, from the days where all books were affordable, to today, where the cost of some books (almost anything printed 50 years ago or more) has shrunk virtually to $0, with e-books being freely available online, to the costs of others skyrocketing to a point where one is almost required to take out a second mortgage to afford a few textbooks (this may sound funny, but I kid you not, the cost of many accounting or business textbooks is upwards of $200, and students are required to purchase 4-5 of these books a semester!)

It is my hope that with the increased use of technology, e-books and other media, such as We Compare Books, book prices will again shrink as publishers realize the un-sustainability of such increases and figure out other ways to profit from our addiction to books (perhaps using product placement in examples, If Jimmy buys a bottle of Coke for $… and a bottle of Pepsi costs…, but here I am of course joking).

Getting cheap textbooks for summer classes is an especially unique challenge.  This is because of the duration of summer classes.  A normal class that you might take in the fall or spring semester lasts about 4 and half months, and most of the time the first week is spent on the introduction.  This means that if you were to not think ahead, and order your textbooks online on the first day of class, you would get them in time for your first, or second assignment (and if you were to plan ahead, contact your professor before hand, or ask another student, then…)

Summer classes, on the other hand work differently.  Most summer classes last 4 weeks, although some may last 6, and you typically have class 5 times a week, with assignments from day one.  Given this short duration it becomes difficult, if not impossible to order a textbook online and wait for regular delivery, and no one wants to pay for overnight shipping.  In this case most students end up going to the bookstore and paying full price for the textbooks.

The solution to this problem is one that is quite simple, but one that few students think of – plan ahead.  Summer classes are rarely a last minute thing, therefore, the same day that you register for a summer class contact the professor (email usually works best) and find out what the required books are, and order them 2 weeks before the start of class, this way you can be sure that you will receive the books in time for class.

Planning ahead and ordering your books online before the start of class has another advantage, and will help ensure that you are getting the absolute lowest price.  Towards the end of every semester students start to sell their textbooks online; given the increase in supply and the fact that demand for textbooks typically peaks after a course starts, this is the optimum time for you to get the best prices on textbooks! And the best way for you to ensure that you are getting the best price on new/used textbooks is to use a textbook price comparison site such as We Compare Books

Everyone knows that college students must read the equivalent of several books every year. Depending on your major your mandatory reading might amount to more than 50 books a year. How can you keep your eyes (and your brain!) in working order and still retain all the information you need to succeed in your classes?

If you are not lucky enough to read faster than the average person than that means you read about 100-200 words per minute. This is not a lot, considering a book can contain more than 100,000 words (~400 pages). This means it will take the average person 500 minutes (or a little over 8 hours) to finish that book. And that is simply the time required to scan the pages with your eyes with a minimum of information retention and without caution for your eyes. Eyestrain will appear in as little as 20 minutes of continuous reading. This means that if you plan to read for an extended period of time, you should takes breaks for your eyes every half hour or so.

This article describes eyestrain that occurs while reading and ways to prevent it. Although it is primarily intended for parents looking to help their children read longer, most if not all of the tips included apply to college and graduate students. By increasing your reading sessions you will decrease the time required to read a given piece but you will not necessarily have a better understanding of what you read. Many methods exist to help with information retention; one such method is the SQ3R (or SQRRR). Other methods are freely available over the Internet.

In short, when planning a long study session, prepare yourself, your environment and don’t hesitate to take short breaks.  Your general health will affect how you read, how much you can read, and how well you understand it. Read technical or hard to understand material differently than you would read a novel: take notes, ask yourself questions, look up words that you don’t understand right away.