Literacy Environment

Buying books has never been an issue for me. I grew up surrounded by books, and I still love being in a room filled with books. One of my best childhood memories is climing my father's tall bookcase and grabbing books from the top shelf. (Note: Don't try this at home.)

My parents were not particularly wealthy, but they always made sure that I lived a life rich with literacy.

As a child, I would receive extra allowances each month to buy books--in the form of gift certificates for bookstores. Much of the last two years of my high school days were spent in bookstores, where I bought all the books I could find that had anything to do with the English language, language learning, or cross-cultural communication.

When I was in college, my father even encouraged me to go meet some of the authors who were researchers in English studies. I never took his advice while I was in college, but look what happened--it's now part of my job. (I recently had the pleasure of being introduced by one of the authors of the books I had read as a high school student.)

Even as a gradaute student, I spent a large portion of what I had earned--through my stipends and summer teaching jobs--to build my professional library. I was delighted when Janice Lauer told us new Ph.D. students that we should start building our professional libraries. I was lucky to be married to a fellow graduate student who had a very similar literacy background. (Her parents used to give me book cards for my birthdays.)

I also encourage my graduate students to build a good professional library--especially in preparation for exams and dissertation projects. ;-)

But when I say "read everything," I sometimes cringe--especially when I'm talking to people from less well-to-do countries. In those contexts, books are ridiculously expensive--especially those written in English. Even in Japan, some of the professional books cost nearly twice as much as they do in the States.

If it's an article, authors often can send reprints of specific articles to those who ask. When I receive requests for my own articles, I try to honor them as much as possible. But it's not as easy when it comes to books because I receive so many requests from various parts of the world.

So, here are some suggestions for finding discount books:

1. To those who are planning to attend professional conferences, the best course of action would be to take advantage of conference discounts--they usually offer up to 20% off (if not more). If you are willing to carry the books with you, you can also save on postage.

2. Check publishers' web sites--many publishers offer discounts for online purchases.

3. Some publishers also offer free exam copies of professional books for instructors of graduate courses. Others have 60-day restrictions, but some of them offer a special discount (up to 50%) to purchase the exam copy after 60 days.

4. Check different online vendors. Some online vendors (e.g., amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com) offer special discounts for different books as well as free shipping, membership prices and other deals.

Migrating

I've migrated to a new Blogger site so I can take advantage of the new features. Hope this won't create any major problems.

I will keep the original blog site available for a while. I may decide to archive the postings elsewhere, but I'll try to make them accessible from this site. Stay tuned.

In any case, please use this URL to access this web site--in case I decide to migrate to another server again:

http://blog.jslw.org/