Comments | miss_kitty09: So Many Books, So Little Money

miss_kitty09

So Many Books, So Little Money

Apr 17, 2005 16:21

Is it just me, or has the price of a book become utterly ridiculous? I've been on the prowl for some new reading material as of late, and I am just dumbfounded by how expensive books -- paperbacks mind you -- have become. For example, I was considering picking up a copy of Nick Hornby's "The Polysyllabic Spree", and whenI flipped over the book to ( Read more... )

Comments 4

scrabonia April 21 2005, 17:12:44 UTC

I utterly failed to respond to this before but yes. In watford sunday I had a few hours to kill so I wandered into the local book store and purchased two paperback books. "Beyond good and evil" and "Sellevision", both are fairly small little things and I'm sure the raw ingredients couldn't have been more then 30 cents for both. What did they cost?

Nearly $40.00 for the pair!!! I nearly passed out on the counter! Who knew going into a book store was like bending over in a maximum security prison?!?! I was truly appalled.

This means only one thing for me though, it's time to go back to second hand book stores. I liked the idea of supporting the author and paying full price for that reason, but who is getting the royalties for books like the republic and BGE??? Certainly not the long passed away authors!!!

So yea, long story short I'm with you in a big way on this one! SECOND HAND BOOKSTORES ARE THE WAY TO GO!

miss_kitty09 April 21 2005, 17:35:57 UTC

(Close to)$40.00 for two books?!?!?!Oh my god. I think that both of us should save our pennies, and purchase portable defibrilators before retuning to the bookstore. At the rate things are going, sticker shock could be deadly.

I think that going the secondhand bookstore route is a smart idea. Come to think of it, one of my favorite local bookstores has a secondhand annex right next door to the main shop. I ought to check it out. And there is always the option of buying used and seconds from amazon.

People really ought to actively protest the cost of books. It's bad enough that so many people don't care for reading. Now a certain percentage of people who do like to read are unable to afford books. Ugh. before you know it, society will go back to the days when owning a book was an extraordinary privilege that only the wealthy could afford.

scrabonia April 21 2005, 17:50:45 UTC

Haha, I think you are on to something there. Of course this is totally going back to my theory that humans are in actuality de-evolving. Pretty soon we'll have new-speak alright but only because people have lost any and all use of vocabulary!!

Oh, speaking of vocabulary... Maybe you can help me out on this one. "Dialectic". I read it in the Republic but wasn't 100% sure what it meant, then I looked it up and the description was something like "A word Plato uses to find truth and expose fallacies" but that didn't help me much because every word he uses is aimed at that, plus I already knew that much! As you are philosopher du jour could you let me know if you have a better definition then that?? Muchas Gracias in advance :)

miss_kitty09 April 22 2005, 14:16:19 UTC

Off the top of my head, I can't help you. But, I *do* have Republic somewhere around here, so I might be able to come up with something. If you tell me what part of the book you're on, I'll go straight to that section, and see what I can do.

P.S. Don't waste your time on Plato. It's good to read for the sake of seeing how schemes of human reasoning have gone from A to B (to now next to nonexistent.) But I think he's much too pie in the sky for a smart and practical girl like you. Read some Aristotle. Watch him turn Plato on his head, while he introduces a rational, practical scheme of existence into the ancient world. :-P to you, Theory of forms!