The First Christmas Guilt Trip

[trailerparkmedic]

I have a professor next semester who wrote the book. I'm not super worried because it has 5 authors, 3 of whom are not currently at the school, and it is a specialized area, even for nursing. Also, judging by the location of the people selling the book on half.com, it seems to be used in several other schools.

Hubby had several professors who used books they wrote. He really hated the one professor who required 5 books and only used one. The professor at the end of the semester that the others should have been listed as recommended, not required.

[JustaCashier]

3) Your book is very dull.

SC: "Oh. I agree wholeheartedly! And that's precisely the reason I don't want to waste £12.99 on the bloody thing!"


Mike

[wraiths_crono]

I was ecstatic to get my cousins books for my birthday(yes they're signed), he writes about machine guns and the beloved M1 Garand.....*Sigh*

I must have details...



And I have a politician cousin, he loves to send his books, pens, and other things as gifts... it got old fast.

[Cymberleah]

Not every professor who requires students to buy his book is horrid. I had a professor who wrote a book on rugs in the middle east. Granted, I like textiles anyway, but when other books got sold back at the end of the semester, that one stayed with me.

[Victoria J]

I think giving someone your book is wonderful, but doing it for an occasion requiring a present anyway is a bit selfish in most cases. That's how I'd feel if I had a book or if someone I cared about had written one. I'd just want to give the people who mattered a copy without waiting for Christmas or Birthdays.

It seems like the kind of gift which is all about making the giver happy not the recipient.

Even if giving the book is reasonable gift he shouldn't expect someone else to fund it. He had a contract. The contract said X amount of money and Y books - you can't then go back and get more.

Not every professor who requires students to buy his book is horrid. I had a professor who wrote a book on rugs in the middle east. Granted, I like textiles anyway, but when other books got sold back at the end of the semester, that one stayed with me.

The only professor I had who used his own book was still writing it - so he let us download the chapters he was working on for free (and took feedback). I don't think it's always a bad thing - if they write a book on the subject that will follow the way they think the subject should be taught. I guess if the person is good at their subject you get a good teacher and a good book and if not you get a bad teacher and a bad book. Kind of double or nothing.

The only person I know who writes books is a friend of my mother - and she often gives my mother her books as presents. It's odd though - I guess what she writes about is fairly obscure (strangely enough given Cymberleah's post a lot about textiles, and also about Indian art) but it's also a special interest of my mother's. Many of the books are wonderful illustrated books and she does sometimes give them as Christmas and Birthday presents. She also gives other books on similar subjects sometimes. She gets a staff discount at the bookshop linked to the museum she works for and as she has sometimes used this to get money off books my mother wanted she knows her gifts are well appreciated.

My mother one had a cartoon published in a collection - and got 2 "authors" copies. This friend got the second one because it might have been her only chance to reciprocate

Victoria J

[Ben_Who]

I gave my mother a copy of my second novel for her birthday because it came out around that time. Now I feel guilty.

Love, Who?

[C. Cecil Ivanish]

Bet if this guy were a college professor, he'd make his own book the required text.

Would that even be legal?

I'm sure it would... I had it several times when at Uni.

I was ecstatic to get my cousins books for my birthday(yes they're signed), he writes about machine guns and the beloved M1 Garand...

...OK, corollary: unless you know that the recipient is a major fan of the topic
Still - I know a bunch of published writers and after reading this thread I asked a couple of them about this... they say that usually they won't use their books as Christmas/birthday gifts - they just give them away when they get their complimentary copies.

Seriously, he didn't even bother having it published -- he just took the quarter's lecture notes and xeroxed them. In his own illegible scrawl.

Had one professor doing this as well... I failed his class.

[technical.angel]

At college, one of the professors used his own textbook in class.

If you bought it new, he would refund you the money.

I liked that guy.

[Ironclad Alibi]

Several of my professors used their own books in their classes. One in particular stands out in my memory. This was a senior level materials engineering class, and the only class for which I had to write a term paper.

His lectures consisited of him reading the textbook to the class. Not only that that, he read it slowly word for word, repeating most passages as though the students were copying it down.

If that wasn't enough, he assigned half of the problems for homework, and his graduate assistant worked the other half for us in the lab class. The tests were open book, open notes, and consisted of problems chosen from the textbook examples and unassigned homework problems.

That class was an easy A.

[ralerin]

If you find yourself in a class that the required text was written...over 80 years ago) drop the class, find a section taught by a different professor, or take it again when a different professor is teaching it.

Would Jane Eyre or Dante's Inferno count? :P

Not every professor who requires students to buy his book is horrid. I had a professor who wrote a book on rugs in the middle east. Granted, I like textiles anyway, but when other books got sold back at the end of the semester, that one stayed with me.

There were 2 books that I wanted to keep and was beyond pleased the store wouldn't accept them back. One was a book on medieval history and the other was Ericka Warmbrunn (?)'s story about cycling across Mongolia, China and Vietnam.

[RootedPhoenix]

In my counterpoint class, we used a a text that I think was several hundred years old. Counterpoint is one of those things that doesn't change, though. (It's a music form that is itself very old. It was an...ancestor, if you will, of chord-based music.)

If it's a rapidly changing field though, 80+ years isn't so good.

[LadyAndreca]

I'm in a class this semester that WOULD have had a book by the professor, except it's still going through the publisher. The class is "Art and Asian Civilization", and the lectures were all done from his own footwork and research. About two thirds of the pictures used in the course, he took himself. I think I'll buy the book, once it gets published, because I was far more fascinated by the subject than I thought I would be.

[AccountingDrone]

I'm in a class this semester that WOULD have had a book by the professor, except it's still going through the publisher. The class is "Art and Asian Civilization", and the lectures were all done from his own footwork and research. About two thirds of the pictures used in the course, he took himself. I think I'll buy the book, once it gets published, because I was far more fascinated by the subject than I thought I would be.

I once took a great class taught by a retired CIA analyst that had the old China/Japan/PanAsia desk. Asian history, but not cultural, military It was actually very fascinating. I actually once found the actual office on the Naval Shipyard up in Portsmouth NH where a specific treaty that we studied was signed When I toured a naval museum, I saw stuff that had been present at treaty signings I learned about, and belonged to American, Japanese, Chinese and Russian officers that I actually studied.

[The Electric Fetus]

my daughter took an online english course where the book was by the professor. $100 [read that again...... $100 frikkin' american greenbacks] for a book abrely 3/4" thick, basically photocopied, and plastic bound. [not 'spiral' but bound with those black plastic 'clip on' bindings, if you follow] and! you couldn't sell it back to the bookstore.
YIKES!

[Primer]

Seriously, he didn't even bother having it published -- he just took the quarter's lecture notes and xeroxed them. In his own illegible scrawl. He even went so far as to tell us that, if we were having problems understanding it, he would be available during office hours to help. So I went. His help? "It's all in the lecture notes."

At least you got photocopied notes. I had an Advanced Calculus II professor that not only had no text, and illegible handwriting, but he was a misogynist (I'm female), and the only one who taught the course! He made me so miserable every day in there, that I decided to return the "favor." I was there, front and center every day, doing my darnedest to figure out what was going on, and since some of the grade was based on class participation, I participated every day, even when I KNEW I was totally off track. I still swear that he passed me with a C just to get me out of his life. That was the only C in any math course I had ever received in college. I ended up with a B in Topology that same semester, but everything else (math) was straight A's.