On Textbooks

Although it is traditional for college students to complain about the number (and cost) of textbooks, and I sometimes did so too, I actually felt a certain special pleasure when buying assigned books for my classes. Seeing the lovely pile of books with their varied topics, sizes, and colors, I had a sense of anticipation. I knew that I would read my way through those books as the semester progressed, and by the end of the term, I would know so much more about the world. This feeling came from the same place where all my feelings about books come from: the overwhelming conviction that books are central to my life, and that they provide knowledge, power, variety, connection, and pleasure. Twentieth century American fiction! Survey of European art! Introduction to Social Psychology! The Novels of Joseph Conrad! Hinduism! Existentialism! It has been many many years since I was a college student, but as a professor, I still feel a little frisson when I walk into a university bookstore at the beginning of a new semester and see all those beautiful books, classified by department and class number, filling the shelves.