I’m here to make a case for textbooks. I understand that they are expensive and heavy and boring and bulky; and that their value degenerates too quickly; and that you don’t use them anyway, but textbooks also have a certain charm. Something about stacks of textbooks hastily annotated and bookmarked with scribbled-in margins strewn across my desk offers a visual satisfaction—a tangible testament to the studying I have been doing.

Excuse my unabashed romanticism for moment but I like highlighting sentences and reading the name’s past owners so legibly printed on the inside cover. I love watching freshmen girls struggle with books outside Case Center and I love imagining myself offering to carry those books like I’m some sort of smitten archaic charmer. I like tattered covers and cracked spines. I like lining up my musty tomes in height order and proudly displaying titles like “Micro-Economics Unraveled” and “The American Pageant: A History of the Republic.” Textbooks aren’t for everybody but they make me feel like I’m staring in some collegiate Tobias Wolff short story and that is something I want, even if I have to pay for it.

At least that is how I feel until I have to wait on that dreadful buy-back line only to sell $700 dollars worth of textbooks for a miserly $31.25.

You’ve got several choices when it comes to buying your “musty tomes” this year:

The Skidmore Shop lets you purchase online and has lots of used copies to lessen the financial blow, plus they guarantee you’ll get the right edition and all that shit. No matter where you get your books from make sure to check out this little ditty posted on the SkidShop blog earlier this week.

Amazon.com has long been a resource for thrifty students. Look up which books you will be needing here and then dedicate a solid afternoon to finding them in Amazon’s used book marketplace. You’ll save lots of money but the true benefit is all mail you will be getting the first week of school as your  textbooks arrive. The easiest way to publicly affirm your popularity it to be known as the-kid-who-is-always-in-line-for-package pickup. Nobody has to know you are receiving copies of Jefferson’s letters and not care packages from enamored summertime loves.

Or you could just Google around a bit, the internet is full of free textbook resources and places to find cheap books, knock yourself out kiddo.