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April's book of the month goes to:
Welding Technology Fundamentals
(I would have given them bonus points if they changed it to Funde'metals', ha ha.) <--please excuse me, it's finals week.Anywho, this may seem like an off the wall selection, but not as off as you might think.
Ever heard the expression, write what you know? I have about a million times. What happens though if you have the perfect solution to your plot problem but it means 'Mike' who used to work at a desk job, actually has to work in a motocycle shop for everything to work out? Give up? NEVER! Your solution is to buy a textbook.
Text books can come in every variety but there's one thing that makes them different than any random information you could dig up on mororcyle shops on the internet:
It's guarenteed to be correct. That, my friends is worth the expense.
I'm the first to complain about a teacher who insists on the newest version because on page 88 they changed "a" to "the." It's a pain for poor college students like me, but it means great news for writers like you. It floods the book markets with college textbooks just a year or so old and sells them cheap. (We're talking 20 bucks a pop or less on some) Most of the time they just change a couple pictures or a phrase here or there. 99% of the time the information is the same.*
*this is a completely made up statistic. Made up, but with strong personal opinoin backing it from a college student in the know.
So, what do you think? Ready to invest in some textbooks? If you are there's of course amazon.com. There's also half.com and a sleu of others with a simple google search.
6 comments:
I tried buying used textbooks when I was in university, but for some reason, the professors liked to come up with test questions based on the paragraph that was absent in the earlier edition. Nice! Did they cut some sort of deal with the publisher? So I ended up buying both the second hand book AND the new edition. :P
I'm just about done with textbooks, so it's hard to say yes. But they are a great source of info. =)
Excellent post Bethany! =D
What a great idea - I'd never thought to use textbooks for research, but it makes sense. Since I write historical I love the Writers Guide series to different eras in history.
A friend used an old auto class textbook to completely rebuild his truck, so I see their usefulness in everyday life. I've just never thought of using them for research. Looks like I've got some shopping to do.
-Aaron
Great advice, Bethany! I always check the bargain NF books at the bookstore.
Great tips, thanks for sharing.
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