The Best Textbooks on Every Subject - LessWrong [x-post]
For years, my self-education was stupid and wasteful. I learned by consuming blog posts, Wikipedia articles, classic texts, podcast episodes, popular books, video lectures, peer-reviewed papers, Teaching Company courses, and Cliff's Notes. How inefficient!
I've since discovered that textbooks are usually the quickest and best way to learn new material. That's what they are designed to be, after all. Less Wrong has often recommended the "read textbooks!" method. Make progress by accumulation, not random walks.
But textbooks vary widely in quality. I was forced to read some awful textbooks in college. The ones on American history and sociology were memorably bad, in my case. Other textbooks are exciting, accurate, fair, well-paced, and immediately useful.
What if we could compile a list of the best textbooks on every subject? That would be extremely useful.
Let's do it.
-- Continue reading at LessWrong
Yes, this is a good option for many. In fact, I was recently researching why they are so expensive and found an article https://www.theexperiencedgraduate.com/blog/why-are-college-textbooks-so-expensive that has a lot of ideas on this. It seems you just need to look for an opportunity to buy them cheaper