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[llamameeljueves]

A question to all University students! Grab any book you have used or are using. WHY is it that most of textbooks have chapters that are approx 30 pages long? It is like a fucking rule about it. I complain because I have read many useless shit (I call it cheap poetry) that I have the sensation it was "added" to make the chapter 30 pages long, so

Comments

[virtuousdream]

I am one of the rare exceptions. my music books are differently organised into eras and composers etc, or even whole texts of score themselves (e.g Liber Usualis)

[llamameeljueves]

Music books to me are a pleasant reading!!! I wouldn't care how long they are, but when you need to understand How to record Accrued Fringe Liabilities in an Enterprise Fund for a State Government Accounting System you shouldn't need to read a whole freaking 30 pages book filled with poetry to find the answer out very blurred among the anecdote of Schwarzenegger's government style and Accounting scandals in XYZ state.....It makes me waste time!

[virtuousdream]

Sounds like it :|

[mihosan]

My political science books range from three pages to 50 pages of reading.

[llamameeljueves]

Yes, there are exceptions. My Business Law textbook has odd number of pages per chapter. There is a chapter that is 4 pages long!!!! However, this is the exception....all other books I have are 28 to 35 pages per chapter. It's annoying.

[mihosan]

Hmm, it must be your textbooks and major because all of mine are very different. My music textbook has like, 10 pages, Sociology has no more than seven, and I don't even have a book for my two Communication classes. On the bright side, you always know how many pages there are to read.

[extralonglife]

Ah, well, thank God for libraries, eBay and Amazon :-D. As you say, most books here are around £40, way beyond what I can afford for a brick of mainly useless stuff.

[llamameeljueves]

My point was not that concern about the money (Though I think it's lot)...It's more about wasting time readin loads of unnecessary crap that seems to be there just to "make up" a chapter the standard 30 pages long....bah...I'm a lazy rambler ;)

[sherlockh]

Yeah...and it makes it so much harder to concentrate when you KNOW this is useless crap which is only necessary for the test. It's very hard to think when my mind is saying "This is useless...useless...useless."

Then you get out of college and find out that textbooks tend to be about 10 years (or more) behind current scholarship in a given field, and wonder why anyone bothers.

[starpaint]

I'm not even in college and I've worked that out. =P

It's the way textbooks are written, I suppose. If you could be developing your own theories on something or getting into a prominent position in Nice and Possibly Well-Paying Job X, why would you bother to write a textbook? Textbook writing is (mostly) for companies who want money and scholars who don't have better things to do.

The poli-sci book I got this summer didn't have any poetry, but it did put in little inserts and pictures and whatnot to make it look nicer and take up space. I guess that when you get to a certain level in a field, you can't do that anymore and have to resort to singing praises to a daisy leaf in between important points.

[virginiajetzt]

Javier, I'm so glad to see you.
The most annoying thing is going on at school. My Spanish teacher is from Ecuador and our topic is the Cuban Revolution and all. Remember when you (tenderly) critisised me for my liking of Che Guevara, telling me how he murdered and treated people horrible like Batista, too?
Our teacher keeps proclaiming Cuba as *the* model for the development of a latinoamerican state and is all pro-socialism. He literally shuts you up when you mean to differenciate anything at all. It's so depressing.
I asked him what he thought of what was going on in Venezuela then and he really said he thought people where better off now.
Quite depressing, really.
Every single Spanish leson I wish you were to stand next to me and help me argumenting (and whisper me vocabulary, too ;)).

[llamameeljueves]

Dear...that's the way communist people think and behave...You try to expose your ideas and whenever "they" see it different from their socialism, they shut you up (or put you in jail or kill you...like in Cuba for example

[virginiajetzt]

Despite of all your pain (and I hope you don't get this wrong) I am glad about your reaction; makes me feel like being on the right side.
I hope you won't mind me arguing with your words.

Thanks Javier :)