Wednesday, September 5, 2007

Sigh. Goddamn textbooks.

Textbook shopping is definitely one of my least favourite things to do in life and the McGill bookstore does not make it easy for me to fork over my money.

First of all, you don't know what books you need until classes actually start, so everyone converges at the store in the first few days to try and find their textbooks. It is MADNESS. The line ended in the middle of one of the shelves, went to the wall and then followed the wall around the whole basement and back to the cash registers. At least the U of T website gave you the option of buying your books online (even used ones). Then they would tell you when your package was ready so you could go and pick it up anytime during the summer. You could even have it shipped to you if you wanted.

When something makes me think fondly of U of T, you know the apocalypse is nigh.

The books are also scattered all over the place. One would think they would be under the "Nursing" sign, but oh no, I found three of my books in random piles in the Anthropology section.

None of this would matter, of course, if there was a decent stock of used books that I could buy, but even that is lacking. I checked my reading list for this term and there is no way I'm paying $140 for a book so that I can read 60 pages from it. I can photocopy the pages I need for $3.00, for Pete's sake. If it was a book that I would have to read the whole way through and use for assignments and whatnot, fine. Take my money. But that's seriously way too much when I've already paid $65 for a "coursepack" of articles that I need for the same course.

So my mission for tomorrow is to borrow the book from the library and photocopy the hell out of it. Fun!

1 comment:

JG said...

So far the Waterloo bookstores are relatively straightfoward in layout... but it's as bloody expensive as ever.

$100 for a used book? Sigh...