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Chopping up books when they're physically too big

229 points · 211 comments · matt_kirkland

  1. cgearhart · · focus · HN ↗
    20ish years ago I complained to my college roommate that my math book was too big. He asked if I was gonna sell it back, and I said I couldn’t—they had a new edition out, so mine was worthless. Cut it, he said.

    It was something I had never considered. Not for a moment. Books were sacred to me. Cut one? Blasphemy.

    But he was right. And so I cut it. And it fixed all of my complaints.

    What I learned is that some folks have a different mindset; they see the world as something to be shaped around themselves, rather than seeing themselves as something that should be shaped to fit the world. That’s been a useful lesson sometimes.

    1. dgunay · · focus · HN ↗
      Do you mean you cut the excess margins, or cut out specific sections, etc?
      1. tylervigen · · focus · HN ↗
        Probably he meant the same thing as the parent post, chop it up into volumes?
      2. cgearhart · · focus · HN ↗
        We studied the book in order starting from chapter 1 in the first calc class up to the last chapters in calc 4. I was in the last class when he gave me the idea to cut it, so I cut out the last few chapters and carried a very thin volume of what I needed for the last class.
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