Transplanting a Seattleite

There was the citation thing, but mostly he's against anything that enables students to skim and cherry-pick even more than they already do (he gave the example of a student who said "I do not think I have enough time to read ____ completely"). Now, granted, you're not supposed to take your assigned basic texts and just read teeny bits of them, obviously. But students who avoid all reading (a) will do such things anyway, and (b) are easy to spot. If they can't fool you anyway, flunk 'em, I say, and if they can fool you, you're not reading THEIR stuff attentively enough.

I do remember some of my high school teachers being unhappy when people had different editions of books and they couldn't say, "All right, on page 35 -- everyone on page 35?" I suppose there's a bit of that. But this is college: let the students handle it if their edition is different (possibly by sneaking a peek at their neighbor's book and doing a keyword search ...).

Oh, and I think to people who have never used one (which he doesn't seem to have), ebook readers just feel skim-y, as if it wouldn't be possible to really settle into reading a book all the way through. I certainly feel that way, even though I know intellectually that it probably wouldn't be true once I got used to using one. Maybe he has some unexamined feelings of that kind.