> I’m an external examiner > sometimes I need to read some of these god awful books to see what students are expected to know.

LoL

Here in India every kid de-facto refers to few content farm websites and while they are not outright wrong, there will always be subtle errors, as the content is contributed by other students only. And books - the textbooks are so unpopular and not even available on libgen.

Day by day, academia seems more like a drug cartel.