[whatsreal]

I would venture that the problem with pcgbook.com is not the quality of writing, but the fact that most of the authors are not native english speakers. They seem to be mostly Dutch or at least living in Copenhagen.

[tormeh]

Ahahaha! How many textbooks have you read? How many American ones? The majority of them suck. Wikipedia can usually be counted upon to be clearer. And the more academic the books are, the more they suck. Actually, I would guess that how often the words "I", "you" and other personal pronouns referring to the author and reader appear in a book would be a powerful positive predictor of the book's quality.

Sure, being non-native doesn't help, but the world of academic writing has far, FAR bigger problems than that.

[munificent]

Either way, the problem is the quality of the writing. It just may be that the cause of that is the authors not being native English speakers. :)

(The fact that they're adopting an academic tone doesn't help either, for that matter.)