I used to bring in a whole mini-library of computer books to work but I stopped doing it for a couple of reasons. One, I’d find that about 3 out of 4 people who borrowed them (sometimes without asking me) would return them in a cruddy, messed up state. Dirty, stained, pages folded, dog-eared. It was shocking. And it was hard to tell ahead of time whether they would do that or not. Plus, I got sick of lugging those heavy things around, especially with an increasing amount of good documentation on the web or in e-book/PDF format.

I’ve went through about 7 copies of Java in a Nutshell, some were due to new Java major releases coming out but some because they got so cruddy I couldn’t stand them.

Amazon has always sent me books in good condition, however.