Textbooks

[Matt]

If I was more prepared at the start of the year I'd have spent more time trying to get them second hand. I just ran out of time and bought them through the proper bookshop. It came to around $250 for just a few books that I don't really use all that much (which is around £130?) and they're only for 1 semester.

I know school is kinda different as you have them for the whole year but I still knew people who'd not bother buying them at all (the textbooks).


So how much are your books? Do you go hunting for them before the year/semester starts or buy them new? Do you even buy the books or just wing it?

[Phil]

All of our books this year have been optional. We've just been advised to get some. I say I've only spent €60 on books this year.

[Kyle]

at a level we had a few textbooks for each subject and i bought them all 2nd hand about £10 each but at uni we don't really have textbooks, just a ton of weekly readings which consist mainly of journals and book chapters. everything's digitised or available in library these days so there's no ralneed for any purchases other than paper if you print.

[Cody]

Oh yes! At my university I spend around 600 a semester on books!

[-:Undertaker:-]

We have compulsory books for each module but nobody really buys, especially ridiculous priced ones.

Most of the time you can go by handouts/other books.

[Mark]

£200 for a year studying law, perks of studying a subject with lots of reading :)

[Red]

I got a book bursary of like 100 each year so I bought the books. It was never more than that. Used to have to spend so much weekly though on printing out readings.

[Mikey]

They like you to buy them but normally everyone just takes them out of the library because there is usually tons of copies of each book.

[Alkaz]

Luckily for my course we have a pretty extensive library and we have the RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects) library literally 500m away from our campus, so if we can't find it in our own library we can nip down there to copy what we need. For other stuff like technical books then there are several bibles that we're recommended to buy and they're around £40-60 each, however I only have one of them and one other book written by two of my tutors which was £20. All in all I've probably spent about £100 over two years so I think I've been pretty lucky. All my books are from new.