Books so expensive!

[Midge]

Just been browsing Amazon, eBay etc. looking for some arb related books to help me learn more about trees/arboriculture and I can't believe how expensive all the books are! Usually you can get stuff pretty cheap on Amazon but the cheapest one I found was £30, going all the way up to £100 plus.

 

Any advice on where to find some good but reasonably priced books from please?

 

I already have Urban Trees: A practical management guide and The Tree Climbers Companion books.

 

Cheers.

[se7enthdevil]

you're not kidding mate, i look for books related to timber species and the like as i'm a timber nut looking to become an expert on the use of and identification of species but i could easily spend a couple of thousand if i were to buy all the books new or old for their asking price.

 

i keep trying to look at book websites or ebay for cheaper offers but sometimes you need to just get lucky

[tree-fancier123]

£20 one pretty good https://www.amazon.co.uk/Trees-Management-Cultivation-Biology-Comprehensive/dp/1861268858

 

for more expensive books you could ask your local library to get them on inter library loan - I've not done this for a while, but it used to be that local libraries could obtain a copy of any book in print via the British Library. You could then scan a few paragraphs here and there, or even the whole book, but you may end up in prison for copyright offenses

[Danny Boy]

Try a search for pdf versions as well. You may get lucky.

[Midge]

These are the 3 cheapest books I can find, any reviews of them?

 

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.co.uk%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F372032682973

 

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.co.uk%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F332399313566

 

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.co.uk%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F172940976199

[Gary Prentice]

Not read any, but the second on the list was written in 1923, so things may have come on a bit since then.

 

Probably the best solution is to break down into the entire subject into smaller sections; botany - how trees grow, mycology - the relationships between trees and fungi, tree identification, tree diseases, tree structure and hazards, soil sciences, woodland conservation/management etc and then ask what's the best available book to have and save up for that. 

 

The research for amenity trees series are pretty good, but pricey - but I still look to them years and years after I bought them. Matthecks Encyclopedia - '£70 covers pretty much all of his other books, Alex Shigo's books are good but are starting to be superseded by new research (I bought mine new from the US) - the list goes on, and on.

 

I've 300-400 'tree books' on the shelf and not a single one provides a solution to every question I have, nor do the 1000's of downloaded articles, journals or papers on the hard drive. It's such a huge subject, with so many inter-related other subjects, that one book can't start to cover the lot.