Your recent story on the textbooks' cost made me chuckle, and I can't help wondering if anyone else noticed what I noticed. A young man, apparently echoing the sentiments of his fellow students, expressed frustration that he had to shell out so much money for books when he would only sell them back at the end of the semester (and only get half of his money back), which was pretty funny, when you think about it.

The routine assumption here, by students and bookstores alike, is that it is normal and natural for students not to keep their texts after the courses are over. These textbooks, presumably the products of prodigious amounts of scholarship and sweat, and selected carefully by faculty as their syllabi's centerpieces, are treated like magazines.

Whether this is an indictment of students, textbooks or subjects of study would make an interesting debate, and I would like to kick it off with the following observations: Students in the physical sciences and engineering, in general, do not sell their textbooks. Students in the liberal arts and humanities generally do.

In my undergraduate days, I studied music and engineering, and kept about all my textbooks, which I regarded as invaluable references. Many of them are classics in their fields.

Can it really be that students have no use for the wisdom in their sociology books, once they've passed the final? Is this the fault of students or sociology? I can't help but wonder.