Used Books Blog

My recent post on Textbook Torrents has been both popular and controversial. Though still off line the latest seems to indicate we haven’t seen the end of Textbook Torrents.

In the interim, I’m compiling a list of sites where students can gain access to free textbooks.

Textbook Revolution

“TBR’s mission is to drive the adoption of free textbooks by teachers and professors. We want to get these books into classrooms. Our approach is to bring all of the free textbooks we can find together in one place, review them, and let the best rise to the top and find their way into the hands of students in classrooms around the world.”

Wikibooks

“Wikibooks is a Wikimedia community for creating a free library of educational textbooks that anyone can edit. Wikibooks began on July 10, 2003, since then Wikibooks has grown to include over 30,398 pages in a multitude of textbooks created by volunteers like you!”

Open Text Book

“Open Text Book is a registry of textbooks (and related materials) which are open — that is free for anyone to use, reuse and redistribute. It is run by the Open Knowledge Foundation”

Scribd

“Through Scribd.com, iPaper, and the Scribd Platform, Scribd is changing the way people view, publish, and monetize documents. Through our vast library of content and our unique document display technology, we hope to unlock the information in the world’s documents and make it readily accessible to everyone.”

Scribd doesn’t specifically aim to provide free textbooks but there seem to be many available. Searches for specific titles or subjects often bring back a substantial list of results. Outside of textbooks, Scribd can be used as a deep source of student contributed notes.

Nearly all of the sites above are not in violation of any copyright laws. Scribd is the exception, but only because they allow users to upload materials. However, they seem responsive to DMCA take down notices.

This list is not comprehensive, but I believe represents the largest and best of the bunch. Others are extremely narrow in focus, abandoned or overrun with advertising ploys. Please let me know if I’ve missed any that merit inclusion on this list.

Fiskadoro by Denis Johnson is a jumbled, frustrating post-apocalyptic novel. Don’t expect a paint-by-numbers approach to revealing how things went wrong, nor what happened between that fateful day and the present. There is no omniscient character to provide the necessary background. There is no guide. Instead Johnson’s characters inhabit the world as it is, without the explanation that might bring clarity to the reader.

I admire what Denis Johnson is trying to do in Fiskadoro. He immerses the reader in what it might really be like to be a survivor. History is lost or, worse, is a warped collection of things heard or imagined. The connection to the past is limited, receding away until it vanishes like a sunset never to return. What remains isn’t well understood or is taken for granted as part of daily life.

Admiration and enjoyment don’t always go hand in hand.

Johnson creates a realistic world in which the survivors, and reader, are often fumbling for answers. The survivors crave those answers. They want to know what happened, how it happened and what comes next. And so did I! There are a few sign-posts in Fiskadoro that point to a quarantine and some sort of civilization in Cuba. There is one particular scene late in the book that paints an interesting portrait of the hours or days after the bombs fell. But it’s not enough to quench my thirst for answers. And while I know that’s what Johnson wants me to feel, it leaves me frustrated.

Yes, I enjoy post-apocalyptic novels and Johnson provides one reason I might be drawn to this theme.

Can we help it if sometimes we like to tell stories that want, as their holiest purpose, to excite us with pictures of danger and chaos?

I’ll admit that I see part of myself in that statement. But it’s overwhelmed with the idea of starting again; of battling back from the brink; of stripping down all the old conventions and building anew; of how you might respond should civilization disintegrate. What would you do if …? I am intrigued by this idea.

A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr., Lucifer’s Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, The Postman by David Brin and Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell all answer this central question and satisfy in different ways. Fiskadoro doesn’t.

Oddly, the best passages in the book revolve around the past life of a now elderly, nearly mute, woman. The reader is taken back to her harrowing escape from Saigon. This is where the book comes alive and Johnson is certainly drawing some parallels between the two timelines with themes such as the breakdown of society, of leaving the past behind completely and of survival.

I don’t doubt Johnson’s writing ability. He’s talented, with interesting insight …

The sabotage of knowledge by a wealth of facts - they weren’t professors, but guerrillas.

and observations.

The seagulls walked back and forth at the border of the water, all bellies and beaks, throwing out their chests with an air of flat assumption like small professors.

In the end Fiskadoro proves that the post-apocalyptic genre is tough to get right, even for gifted writers. With all the great post-apocalyptic novels out there, I simply can’t recommend Fiskadoro by Denis Johnson.

Textbook Torrents is using BitTorrent, a peer-to-peer file sharing protocol, to let students download textbooks for free. The site not only allows Torrents for those open textbooks but allows users to scan and upload other textbooks.

Scan as many of your other textbooks as you can, and put them up here for others to benefit from. There aren’t very many scanned texts out there, so let’s change that.

A basic rule of thumb to determine if something is acceptable: if you can find it in the courses section of your local university bookstore, it’s fair game.

Sites like Textbook Torrents are reacting to the increasingly high cost of textbooks. According to a 2004 CALPIRG study, the average textbook costs $102 and students spent almost $900 a school year on textbooks. Many believe these prices are artificially high, creating windfall profit centers for publishers on the backs of students who essentially must purchase these textbooks.

The used textbook marketplace has flourished because of these high prices, though the shelf life of a textbook seems to be decreasing as publishers crank out updates and editions on a more regular basis. The Amazon Kindle is also delivering textbooks via digital download.

It’s no surprise that students are using new technology to defray the cost of their education. Obviously the textbook landscape would collapse if the majority of students sourced their textbooks via Torrents - authors need to be compensated, publishers need to run a business.

But publishers shouldn’t squawk too much about these developments. High textbook prices were the accelerant to the flux in the textbook market. Now they’re scrambling to protect their cash cow in the encroaching digital age.

Textbook Torrents Update (July 14, 2008 - 2:00pm)

As noted by readers, the textbooktorrents.com website is currently offline. The error data (”not found on this server”) makes me believe that the owner took it down or that the host (DreamHost) took it down. Please note that Google still has pages from textbooktorrents.com in their index. Google hasn’t banned the site, it’s simply not ranking high because there’s no longer any relevant content on these pages.

I’m guessing this disappearing act is due to legal pressure brought by publishers. The domain doesn’t expire until January 2011. Perhaps textbooktorrents.com will come back when a new host is secured … or not if the publisher pressure was simply too much to handle.

Textbook Torrents Update (July 14, 2008 - 2:57pm)

I emailed DreamHost in what I thought would be a vain attempt to gain some information on the Textbook Torrents situation. To my pleasant surprise, DreamHost responded to my inquiry within the hour. Below is the text of that email:

We received very long DMCA takedown notices from publishers of the content in question. The site was further closed down due to violations of our Terms of Service due to it’s illegal facilitation of the distribution of copyrighted content without the copyright owners consent.

While I sympathize with students and the cost of textbooks, you can’t fault DreamHost for pulling the plug. Based on the information provided above, I’d be surprised if any major US host would touch Textbook Torrents at this point.

Last week (or so) I wrote about sites that had good bookstore maps. A kind reader noted that I’d missed LibraryThing Local. I use LibraryThing, fairly regularly, and missed this completely. So much for tab UI huh?

In general I find LibraryThing to be the best social reading website. Sure enough, they’ve implemented an extremely nice local section that lets users see bookstores, libraries and fairs/festivals in both text and map form based on an address or postal code radius search.

In addition, they provide event listings for these venues. These listings are dependent on users and/or venues uploading their events, so the information is less than comprehensive. It’s better than nothing and I’m hoping more and more bookstores and libraries will begin to use the service.

Features also include an individual listing for each venue where you can comment, edit or favorite the venue. I find it a bit humorous that in the edit area they ask whether it is a ‘Real place’ or ‘Online’.

As you might expect, LibraryThing Local has more libraries listed (>21,000) than bookstores (nearly 10,000). Also, there just isn’t a lot of user generated information here yet (event/venue ratio is below 5%), but it is ready and waiting … so stop by and help build what could be the best resource for finding used bookstores online.

Restless by William Boyd is a fascinating novel that exposes the British Security Coordination (BSC), an extensive British covert spy operation aimed at persuading the US to enter World War II. However, this engrossing spy intrigue is hamstrung by non sequitur characters and over-reaching thematic metaphors.

Restless takes place in two time lines: the mid-1970s and early 1940s. The reader joins Ruth Gilmartin as she discovers the mysterious and heretofore unknown past of her mother - Eva Delectorskaya.

The chapters that chronicle Eva’s indoctrination and participation in the BSC are absorbing and suspenseful. Unfortunately, the chapters that follow Ruth’s daily life wind up a disappointment. Her world is populated with a number of characters and plot lines that never connect to the rest of the story. At the end of the novel I simply regarded these passages as unwanted filler. Instead, I wanted three more detailed chapters on Eva and her relationship with Lucas Romer, her BSC mentor.

The activities of BSC agents, the cat and mouse tactics, are what drive Restless. The concept behind the BSC was to use the media to actively bring the US into WWII. The BSC did this by surreptitiously planting fake stories that pointed at Nazi aggression or expansion past Europe. The BSC was an extensive spy network dedicated to information and spin!

Information wasn’t neutral … if it was believed or even half believed, then everything began subtly to change as a result - the ripple effect could have consequences no one could foresee.

In today’s information rich society, particularly in an election year, this theme resonates strongly. The fact that it was taking place 60 years ago is both interesting and frightening given what could be accomplished today.

The other downfall of Restless is Boyd’s seeming need to make the novel about more than just the personal stories that reveal the BSC. Does anyone really know another person? Are we all waiting for the proverbial other shoe (aka death) to drop? These themes and metaphors are a stretch and, frankly, detracted from my enjoyment of the taut spy thriller that was at the core of Restless.

Last but not least, there was no acknowledgment or afterword that told me what parts of the novel were based on fact. Instead I had to search the Internet to find … a fantastic piece Boyd did in The Guardian titled The Secret Persuaders. If only Boyd had used more of this material in Restless!

I’m being hard on Boyd because Restless was good but had the potential to be great. Ladies, don’t be scared away by the idea that this is a nuts and bolts spy story. It isn’t. The main characters are strong women embroiled in a great and sometimes romantic intrigue. Both my wife and I enjoyed Restless by William Boyd, with reservations, and recommend it as good summer reading.

I recently found a stunning international collection of cover art for The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells. This first one is a favorite simply for the laugh factor of putting Star Trek’s Enterprise on the cover.

The site allows you to explore the covers by a number of methods including date, language, artist, publisher and design. The ‘Enterprise’ edition is classified under the aptly named ‘Huh??’ category. Other categories include ‘Screaming Humans Running at You’, ‘Humans Grabbed by Tentacles’, ‘Damsels in Distress’ and the popular ‘Tripods’. You can even view the covers by color.

I’m not a cover art aficionado, the kind who knows all the history and the actual artists. But I appreciate interesting cover art and am lucky to have inherited some spectacular examples from my dad’s collection. I read Frank Herbert’s Santaroga Barrier and got into Keith Laumer’s Retief series because of interesting covers.

I highly recommend that you visit and browse The War of the Worlds book cover collection if you are at all interested in science fiction, cover art, or art in general. A hearty thank you to Chez Zeus for putting together and maintaining this fine user contributed collection.

Dave Rosenthal and the team at Read Street have put together a great Google Map of favorite bookstores away from home as compiled by Read Street readers and contributors, including yours truly of the Used Books Blog.

View Larger Map

It got me thinking about what other bookstore maps were out there. I immediately thought of the Abebooks Frappr. I won’t embed that map because it’s ugly (think MySpace of maps) and doesn’t seem to be working that well. (Frappr itself has seen traffic drop by over half in the last year.) Still, it holds an impressive 646 listings from around the world.

It was the international aspect that intrigued me and after a few searches I stumbled upon Bookstore Guide, “an amateur guide to book shopping throughout Europe..” (Yes, two periods for some reason.) This is a neat site (minus the black background) and their city coverage is impressive. Sure enough, they recently added a new mapping feature!

Thanks to Nomao and Google Maps, we have the pleasure to introduce a new feature to our guide. Namely, it’s a map where we’ve marked all the bookstores in our guide. This should help you locate the bookstores more easily. Unfortunately, not all the cities have a detailed map of the streets but should at least give you some sense to where the place with the bookstore is. We have just started adding the bookstores to the map, so stick around to see the whole map of Europe become filled out with your favorite bookstores.

Of course you can use Google Maps and just type in ‘bookstore’ without any geographic parameters. But there’s no easy way to sort the nearly 200,000 results or remove chain stores like Borders. There’s a good deal of search and scroll involved. A tagged taxonomy might go a long way to making it easier to find the right bookstore.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams is like that old Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups advertising campaign. You know, the one where the peanut butter and chocolate lovers clumsily bump into each other.

“You’ve got peanut butter on my chocolate! You’ve got chocolate in my peanut butter!” they exclaim before finding out just how delicious the combination turns out to be.

Replace peanut butter and chocolate with science fiction and humor and you get Douglas Adams’ brilliant The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Follow the rollicking exploits of Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect as they pinball around the universe, getting into tight scrapes and meeting up with a zany assortment of outlandish characters. You won’t find hard science here or a complex tale mirroring a modern day social issue. In fact, Adams lampoons these staples of science fiction and instead creates a wild parody without equal.

Here’s a secret. You’ll even learn the puzzling answer to the meaning of life, provided by Deep Thought, the second greatest computer in the universe.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy begins when a nasty bunch of officious aliens called the Vogons destroy Earth to make way for a ‘hyperspatial express route.’ Arthur and Ford survive by thumbing a ride on the Vogon spaceship. They’re able to do this only because Ford happens to be an alien and, more importantly, is a researcher for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a type of electronic tome which is a cross between a Lonely Planet guide, a George Carlin cassette (remember this was published in the late 70s) and the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Adams uses entries in the Guide with great effect, providing quick tongue-in-cheek explanations or background information without it feeling forced. The cast of characters are entertaining and undeniably memorable: the wisecracking Ford Prefect; straight man to the farce, Arthur Dent; the swashbuckling Zaphod Beeblebrox, President of the Galaxy, who happens to have two heads and three arms; Marvin, the Paranoid Android, a severely depressed robot; and a beautiful woman by the name of Trillian.

This motley band of characters jet about the universe on The Heart of Gold, a stolen ship powered by an Improbability Drive and equipped with an annoyingly cheery computer named Eddie.

Forget about highly defined plot lines and let yourself bounce from one screwball situation to another. Give in to the lunacy and snappy dialog that drive the novel. Douglas Adams is without a doubt the funniest science fiction author in the universe. Sadly, we lost Adams well before his time.

Don’t panic! The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is just the first in a classic and oddly titled five book trilogy. So there’s plenty more to read if you enjoy this introduction to the series.

Think twice about reading this in public, since a bark of laughter in your local cafe may earn you some odd looks. Though this could work to your advantage if you want some space during your commute to or from work.

The Rider by Tim Krabbe is a bicycling book that will appeal to more than just hardcore cycling fans. In fact, The Rider is the best sports book I’ve ever read. This slim fast-paced novel follows bicycle racer Tim Krabbe on a grueling one-day race in mountainous France. Krabbe chronicles the cat and mouse strategy of cycling; the competitive camaraderie; the blinding physical pain; the superstitions; and the internal stream of consciousness battle that takes place as a rider pushes themselves to the limit.

I know a bit about bicycling because … I ride. Since the age of 13 I’ve been rewarded with great personal victories like riding from Philadelphia to Long Beach Island with my Dad and finishing the Mount Diablo Challenge in 1:25:10. I’ve also fought back from pain and tragedy, pushing through exhaustion and getting back on the road after being hit by a car.

Bicycling gives you perspective and insight that you translate to your life and career. Yes, it all sounds very new age and perhaps you’ve heard other athletes lecture monotonously about the subject. But it is … the truth. When you crest the summit of a mountain or finish a 100 mile century ride there is an immense sense of accomplishment. Not just for the actual deed but for how you overcame your own weaknesses. You think about all the times your body wanted you to stop and how many times the lesser part of your nature shouted persistently and persuasively: “turn around, you can’t do it, just give up, there’s no shame in stopping.”

Tim Krabbe captures this perfectly in The Rider. No other bicycling book I’ve read details that roller coaster of emotions and the ebb and flow of pain, determination and elation that is cycling. Even those not into bicycling will be drawn into this personal battle and will want to know how the race turns out. Does Krabbe win? This can’t fail plot device is executed with precision.

Amid all of this the hardcore cyclist is treated to anecdotes and references to some of the most revered names of cycling such as Merckx, Anquetil and Coppi. One of my favorites comes at the beginning of the novel:

Jacques Anquetil, five-time winner of the Tour de France, used to take his water bottle out of it’s holder before every climb and stick it in the back pocket of his jersey. Ab Geldermans, his Dutch lieutenant, watched him do that for years, until finally he couldn’t stand it any more and asked him why. And Anquetil explained.

A rider, said Anquetil, is made up of two parts, a person and a bike. The bike, of course, is the instrument the person uses to go faster, but its weight also slows him down. That really counts when the going gets tough, and in climbing the thing is to make sure the bike is as light as possible. A good way to do that is: take the bidon out of its holder.

So, at the start of every climb, Anquetil moved his water bottle from its holder to his back pocket. Clear enough.

This is such a perfect way to illustrate the ways in which cyclists deceive themselves in order to succeed. On the face this makes no sense at all, but as a rider, I can absolutely understand the ‘value’ of this behavior.

The style of The Rider also makes it an easy read. The short journal like entries that document the kilometer by kilometer progress throughout the race are tight, visceral and compelling. The prose isn’t detailed or overblown. It matches the dichotomous experience of the rider, mixing an economy of words with free association.

First published in Holland in 1978, it took and obscene 14 years until The Rider was translated into English. Now is your chance to read The Rider by Tim Krabbe. It is entertaining, informative and inspirational to both cyclists and non-cyclists.

Now … off for a ride of my own.

Darwin’s Children by Greg Bear is a satisfying but imperfect follow-up to Darwin’s Radio that reaches too far outside the scientific realm and into politics and religion. Bear is a gifted storyteller with a knack for building great suspense. Bear uses a scientific framework to create interesting characters and places them in situations that compel you to read on to find out what happens next. Darwin’s Children is no different.

Darwin’s Children picks up 11 years after where Darwin’s Radio ended. Bear doesn’t do a whole lot to catch the reader up, so if you haven’t read Darwin’s Radio you might be a bit confused. I definitely recommend reading Darwin’s Radio before Darwin’s Children. (Jeez, how many Darwin’s can you fit into a paragraph!)

The story revolves around the treatment and integration of a new type of human, children born through a retrovirus embedded deep in our DNA. As with all Bear novels, you’re treated to a bit of hard science. I personally enjoyed learning about the differing nature of viruses; a disease but also as a carrier of information. But the story is really about the Rafelson family who were central to Darwin’s Radio.

We follow Kaye Lang, a scientific researcher who essentially discovered the new virus; Mitch Rafelson, a former archaeologist who made a critical discovery in Darwin’s Radio; and Stella Nova, their “virus child” daughter. Stella is the most interesting because we get insight into these new humans.

Virus children have a hyper developed sense of smell that allows them to sniff out emotions. In addition, they can produce scents that can persuade others, a subtle type of mind control. Their faces are freckled and these freckles can be manipulated to produce patterns that allow non-verbal communication. In the verbal arena, they’re able to carry on two streams of conversation at once. Bear does a fine job of exploring the evolving ways in which these new humans will form relationships and develop new social patterns.

Alone, this type of speculative sociology would be interesting but Bear places his characters in tense, explosive situations. Can the Rafelson family evade capture by government agencies bent on placing Stella, and all of her kind, in internment camps? Will Stella survive a new disease that is ravaging this new breed of humans? And that’s just the first act of Darwin’s Children.

In fact, Bear creates three consecutive suspense stories which is both good and bad. The set-up is great but in many cases the climax never came. Instead you’re thrown head long into another set-up. So just when you’re warming up to how the situation would be resolved … the rug is pulled out from under you and you’re back to square one.

Yes, they all did support the final resolution, but I found the final story weak, the novel petering out near the end, ambling into cliche territory. In addition, Bear takes on a bit too much, straying into politics and religion.

On politics he takes very transparent shots at governing by fear and the erosion of freedom. I completely agree with Bear’s clear sentiment, but didn’t need or want them in this context. Yes, it’s easy to create some parallels but inference would have been better than exposition.

Bear also brings religion or God into the mix when it does nothing for the story and doesn’t lead anywhere. It’s simply his own personal observation and, from reading the caveats section, personal experience. My advice is to write up an essay or put this into another novel entirely. It’s distracting here and unnecessary.

Despite these failings Darwin’s Children is a good read as Bear deftly draws you into a new reality. Not his best by any stretch of the imagination, but worthwhile if you’ve read Darwin’s Radio and appropriate for those who enjoy readable hard Sci-Fi.