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Page 5 • Wednesday, June 9, 1999
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Books, looks and crooks
'opular culture has made booksellers
look like SIRENS . But linking beauty
'ith brilliance might not be so bad.
T he June Playboy cen
terfold’s measure
ments are 43-24-34.
She enjoys jumping up and
down, alphabetizing M&Ms
and although she’s still
learning, she’s quite fond of
playing “Paper, Rock, Scis
sors.” By the way, she is
also a bookstore owner?
Find that hard to believe?
You aren’t alone. In the
past year, no less than three movies have
been released with major characters as sexy
book store owners. And that should not be
interpreted as “Adult Bookstore” sexy.
In You’ve Got Mail, the queen of cute, Meg
Ryan, plays the owner of a children’s book
store. In The Love Letter, former Indiana
Jones babe, Kate Capshaw, plays a small
town bookstore owner.
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And in Netting Hill, Hugh Grant plays a
travel bookstore owner.
Okay, so maybe Grant isn’t sexy, but in his
past excursions, he has scored with Andie
McDowell, Julianne Moore and Julia Roberts.
Not to mention his real-life scores with
Elizabeth Hurley and the ever-so-ravishing
Divine Brown.
In what Matrix-induced version of reality
do bookstore owners look this good?
When was the last time anybody walked
into Barnes and Noble and dropped their
Rhumba Frappacino as the manager walked
up and her nametag read, “Hi! My name is
Cathy Z. Jones.”
However, maybe Hollywood is finally onto
something with this trend.
Maybe they have been able to see litera
ture for the ultimate aphrodisiac it actually
is. The trouble is no one really sees literature
as being sexy. If the libraries across America
had Meg Ryan doing a story hour once a
week, it is easy to bet that single dad’s would
be dragging their kids to hear Amelia Bedilia
stories week after week.
If Ricky Martin ditched his singing career
to write an academic study of post-modern
literature, every woman in the country, and a
few men too, would enroll in English classes
by the thousands.
But the truth is it never will happen. Soci
ety fears its own intellect. From the moment
the smart kid in class got a 100 on his math
test, he instantly became the class whipping
boy. But when the first girl developed
breasts, she became the girl everyone
wanted to sit next to in lunch.
The prom king was never the kid
who scored a 1600 on his SATs or won
the gold medal for his essay.
He was the quarterback of the foot
ball team, or the guy who scored the
clutch freethrow in the regional champi
onship.
A powerful mind is more intimidat
ing than a powerful physique. Has a
woman ever dumped a guy for being
too good looking? Doubtful, but it is
easy to see how the same woman
would dump a guy for being too smart.
While it may seem unlikely that Kate
Capshaw is hawking the latest Leonard
Elmore novel, or that Hugh Grant is rec
ommending books about the Far East,
this new infusion of external beauty to
the industries of the mind shows Holly
wood is trying to send the notion that
the mind is the most important sexual
organ of the human body.
Two cable television movies have
been released in the past four months
documenting the utter sensuality and
passion of the great minds of the 20th
century.
Showtime’s The Passion of Ayn Rand
shows the author as a somewhat kinky
woman sleeping with a married man.
Not really an image that can be evoked
in a high school literature class. The
A&E movie Dash and Lilly tells the story
of the passionate relationship of author
Dashiel Hammett and playwright Lillian
Heilman. These movies along with films
like Dorothy Parker and the Vicious Cir
cle, Shakespeare in Love and Henry and
June finally show the sensuality that is
tied up in some of the greatest works of liter
ature. For too long, literature has been dis
sected in the sterile fields of classrooms.
Maybe its time Cindy Crawford came out
of the closet and admitted she was the vale
dictorian of her high school.
Maybe if she ditched the cover of Vogue
and became the covergirl for Scientific Amer
ican or Popular Mechanics, things in this
world might be a little different.
Aaron Meier is a senior
political science major.
College bookstores can frequently behave
like SWINDLERS . Buying books
online can save an arm and a leg.
TOM
OWENS
S ome of the most
annoying aspects
of college life are
those persons, busi
nesses and entities that
leech out their exis
tence on the backs of
poor students. From
PTTS, to overpriced
restaurants, to obnox
ious vendors hawking
Houston Chronicle subscriptions, the par
asites are on campus in force, draining
wallets slowly but surely.
One of the most taxing of these blood
suckers is your friendly campus book
store. As the last holdouts of the Sherman
Anti-Trust Act, their anti-competitive,
price-fixing ways have always meant un
pleasant and inevitable academic expens
es. But all of this changed since sales effi
ciencies of the Internet came online
against the textbook market late last year,
largely eliminating the middle man.
Though a number of
websites, many exten
sively advertised on cam
pus early in the spring se
mester, claim to have the
lowest book prices, they
all offer considerable sav
ings on some selections,
while charging near retail
on others.
The best bet to find
the lowest prices on any
textbook is to visit the
unbiased PriceScan ser
vice on the Internet.
This website offers a
comprehensive pricing
search of all the major
book dealers on the web,
and sorts them according
to total cost, including
shipping expenses.
The most important
information to have
when searching for a par
ticular book is the ISBN
number, which is a ten-
character alphanumeric
code that exactly identi
fies any book published in recent history.
One can easily find the ISBN numbers
for a particular book by visiting the MSC
Bookstore with a pad and pencil.
Find the books for a course and sec
tion, and write down the ISBN number.
It can usually be found on the back cover
of the book.
Though it takes some effort, 30 min
utes of labor can easily save a student
about $100 to $150 each semester on
books, thanks to PriceScan’s website.
For example, consider an average fall
semester freshman schedule. The course-
work would typically include courses like
PHYS 201, MATH 102, CHEM 101, BIOL
113 and POLS 206. A quick reference to
online syllabi and a visit to PriceScan
yielded an online total, including ship
ping, of $362.75. The same books would
cost nearly $500 retail after paying sales
tax. No sales tax is charged on the Inter
net as long as the order is shipped from
out of state.
The price differences alone are consid
erable, but the perks keep coming. Online
retailers give their customers a full 30
days for a refund, while local bookstores
typically give only 14 days at the begin
ning of the semester. The locals also often
have a “no refund” policy during finals,
most likely to prevent students from buy
ing books, studying with them and re
turning them.
However, online booksellers give you
30 days for refunds regardless of the time
of the order, and their sales volume is
such that they do not really care why or
when books are returned. A really evil
person could even order books shortly
into a 5-week summer semester and re
turn them right before finals for a free
book rental, minus shipping costs.
Another benefit of buying books at dis-
Books
count prices is the ability to sell them
back to local bookstores at the end of the
semester, often at near the same price
paid for them. For example, a Physical
Chemistry book sold by the MSC for
$101.50 could be purchased online for
$60.00, and sold back to Rother’s for
$48.00. Renting one’s books for $12 a se
mester is quite a deal.
If enough students buy their books
elsewhere, then perhaps local bookstores
will be forced to lower prices. In the
meantime, students should take advan
tage of the broadened competition facili
tated by the Internet.
Tom Owens is a senior
chemical engineering major.
Summer students should read books for fun, not just for classes
W
CALEB
arren Chappell must
have been thinking of
_ _ summer school students
ifhen he once said, “The flood of
'tint has turned reading into a
i .Tocess of gulping rather than sa-
111 oring.”
nli . College is a flood of print, and
,e ^ 'ever more so than in a five-week
va ' ummer session. There are virtu-' MCDANIEL
mountains of books to be read
it Cl or classes, and they must be read quickly, understood
ven more quickly and then quickly regurgitated on
littjests. A student is lucky to have only three chapters
s? 'f a book to read each night, and the summer weeks
sit-'ass in a blur of reading, eating, sleeping and read-
UStlg.
s S® Supposedly, college students are used to this sort
to 'f reading schedule, or at least as used to it as they
tie an be. The books we read have been picked for most
ly "if us since the first year of high school. Summer read-
ps. ng has become a part of life, to be accepted like oth-
jjpf certainties such as taxes and death. There are some
s bdudents who probably cannot remember the last time
haifBy read a book for pleasure. For many of them, this
ed 3 only because they cannot remember a time when
^d fading was a pleasure.
: e( The souring of many students to reading is an un
TPrt unate side effect of higher education. Swallowing
ill ;0 many books whole often produces a nasty indi-
0 pestion towards the very idea of reading.
)a d(. And by the time leisure hours finally arrive, the last
thing most students want to do is plop down with an
other book, a word some of them utter as if it were a
terrible profanity.
Even worse, too many students carry this distaste
for reading with them throughout their lives.
Reading is work, not play, to the average Ameri
can, and Herbert True could not have been far from
his last name when he once speculated, “One half
who graduate from college never read an
other book.”
Fortunately, higher edu
cation does not have to
for reruns of “Seinfeld” and “Friends,” time can be
made for reading.
Besides, watching television — especially late-
night programming — is the best thing for zapping
the very brain cells recently devoted to studying.
Picking up a good book, on the other hand, can
provide a needed study break while continuing to ed
ucate. Reading non-assigned books, even mediocre
ones, is guaranteed to improve academic suc
cess. First and foremost, reading is the
Gustave Flaubert _ _ only way to improve writing.
And if a student can restore
READ 99
££ m orae-r to
•• live
make reading the
equivalent of water
torture for its stu
dents. But the only
way to restore any
inkling of joy to picking
up a book is to work hard
at it. If students find them
selves loathing literature, they must
train themselves to like it.
They must purposely create opportunities this
summer to read for fun. Students will likely object to
this program.
After all, the typical summer school schedule has
already been described as stringent. Tests loom in the
immediate future. There is studying to be done, and
studying must necessarily take priority over good pa
perbacks. Time is short. The list of things to do is not.
These protests sound impressive but will usually
crumble under closer inspection. If time can be made
the lost art of leisurely read
ing, that mountain of class
books will look less nau
seating. Learn to read for
kicks, and you will start
reading to learn for class.
It is time for students to re
claim reading for themselves. For
a few more fleeting years, summer is
still a vacation. If it must be a vacation with some
classes, it should also be a vacation with some plea
surable reading.
For those who are not sure where to start in their
revival of unforced reading, here are a few personal
summer favorites that promise to entertain and edu
cate at the same time.
For mystery lovers who like a thrill, try Michael
Dibdin’s The Last Sherlock Holmes Story. Do not be
deceived by the title; this is not a dry, ordinary
Holmes adventure. In a wonderful blend of fact and
fiction, Dibdin portrays Holmes and Watson tracking
down the notorious Jack the Ripper. The book is short
and fast-paced, and it ends with a deliciously sur
prising finish, courtesy of Dibdin’s creative, if some
what twisted, imagination.
For those who live for the legal thriller, forget John
Grisham, who has gone from writing good books
turned into bad movies to books written expressly for
movie-making. Read Jonathan Harr’s A Civil Action
instead. Yes, the movie was disappointing. But if it is
true books should not be judged by their covers, they
definitely should not be judged by their movies.
Harr’s book is the best of its kind, and it is now avail
able in paperback, well within a student’s budget.
Everyone should read the Pulitzer-prize winning
Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt. The autobio
graphical account of the author’s childhood amidst
squalid conditions in Ireland is funny and sobering at
the same time. The book just arrived in bookstores in
a paperback edition, making it the perfect pick for an
enlightening summer read.
Masochists interested in reading can look up any
thing by Melville and self-inflict to their hearts’ con
tent. Everyone else should steer clear.
These recommendations are far from exhaustive,
of course. The main thing is to read and read. Do not
let textbooks suck the excitement out of summer. Tty
reading something not found on a syllabus for a
change. Students will be glad they did.
Caleb McDaniel is a junior
history major.