Only if you know how to pirate the book, have internet and are willing to do the pirating. Now I afford to buy ebooks or audio books but as a student I could not buy the c++ gaming programming book, the Linux books were not in libraries and I did not had internet. Even if you afford to buy a book or tow a month, if you have more free time you can get more books from the library, start reading them, see if you like them or not, return them and get other ones.