Here’s something for the avid readers and technical people who self-study. You all should be avid readers anyway, so be sure and bookmark this post.
Last weekend I purchased about $140.00 worth of programming books like SQL Unleashed
You are probably wondering if they were used, stolen, or in a dumpster somewhere. Nope, these were brand new books. Yet they were found someplace not known for selling books. So, where did I get them? Drum roll please!. At a library book sale. Now the trick in my case was to go to the library sale in a small mountain community as we attended a Pumpkin festival. They told me that many of the books were purchased or donated via unsold stock and book fairs. Perhaps there aren’t a lot of programmers up in the mountains, but they still need to have them on hand anyway. So give your friendly librarians a ring and see when the next book sale will be held.
I’m sure a lot of you who read this blog have other good information about how to save money on your self education, so feel free to share in the comments. 
Technorati Tags: books, saving money, learning, self
{ 3 comments }
I live in the Netherlands, we don’t have any mountains.
Seriously though, I often go to cheap bookstores or library booksales, however, the books they sell there are mostly outdated. Books that are for sale mostly have titles like ‘php 3′, ‘asp in 24 hours’ (not dot.net mind you), flash 5.
The only gem I found was ‘Thinking in Java’, which, in my opinion, is still a good book for anyone who wants to get into OO programming.
Hi Eric thanks for stopping by and taking time to post. I took for granted people would know what I meant by the “mountains” statement. The community I was visiting is a small farming community – not many developers out there. I’d keep this tip in mind for when you are traveling, vacationing and you see one of these library book sales. This wasn’t the first time I made out like a bandit at one.
Yeah, that’s the problem with not being a native English speaker. I’ll have to find a book on that, too.