Textbook Rolecall!

I have 11 different books and workbooks, too! I don't know their exact weight, but it's enough to give me a Quasimodo-esque walk.

The tendency in anthropology is toward multiple paperbacks as opposed to single large textbooks. The advantage is that they're individually lighter and cheaper; the disadvantages are that you're more likely to lose or destroy a portion of your class reading because it isn't bound into a sturdy tome. And, of course, resale value is beyond nothing, but what kind of infidel really sells schoolbooks anyway?

I no longer have a camera, so I can't post my own textbook roundup. But I will tell you that I'm keeping Prehistoric Art and Death & Humor in Popular Culture even though I'm dropping both of the classes to which they pertain. I'm a sucker for bound printed material, is all it comes down to.

What class was Death & Humor for?

20 lbs? That's lighter than I expected!

Yeah, most of them are slim-ish paperbacks, and the Corporations casebook is annoyingly thin (I feel ripped off having to pay $100 for it). The only really big casebook I have is Criminal Procedure, with Evidence being moderately-sized.

I don't tend to sell back law books, and probably couldn't get much for them if I wanted to. The stupid judicial system keeps churning out cases, which have an annoying tendency to change the law, making old casebooks obsolete and necessitating new editions. This is particularly the case with Constitutional Law, where the Supreme Court likes to change at least one major area by some small amount once a year, requiring professors to gleefully revise their casebooks and make another fat profit off the new edition.

Also, for the aforesaid reasons plus the general insane mark-up of textbooks, the legal publishing market must be the greatest racket out there not tied into organized crime.

Wouldn't it be amazing if it were tied into organized crime?

Death and Humor in Popular Culture was for Anthropology 160, Forms of Folklore. I've heard nothing but fantastic things about the class in the past, all based on the professor who used to teach it. Said professor, the former head of folklore studies at Berkeley, recently died and so the class is being taught by someone else. I went to the first day of class and discovered that the new professor, while she may be stunningly competent and insightful, has an utterly terrible approach to teaching a large Berkeley lecture. Mainly it consists of attempting to be a dynamic lecturer by, in fact, being intensely patronizing. To break things up a little she interjects sarcastic remarks in a mutter which can only be heard by those sitting in the first three rows of a 500-person lecture hall. At the risk of sounding like I have my priorities out of order, I've dropped her class simply because sitting through her lectures promises to be painfully unenjoyable. But because I'm still interested in the material, I'm keeping two of the books.

I reluctantly returned "Born in a Mighty Bad Land: the violent man in African American folklore and fiction" because it was wrapped and needed to stay wrapped for a refund, so I had no basis to declare it interesting enough to keep. I am, however, keeping The Spirit Catches You And You Fall Down, because it looks excellent. Sad, but excellent.