Thursday, April 06, 2006
Not Buying Not Buying It
This evening in the bookstore I dithered for a while over Judith Levine’s Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping. I really want to read it, but in the end I couldn’t bring myself to shell out $35 for a book about eschewing consumerism. Eventually I made my way to the library and put my name on the list for it there instead. I had a similar response a few months back to Liz Perle’s Money, a Memoir: Women, Emotions, and Cash. I eyed it up covetously several times in the bookstore, but didn’t buy it. Is it just me, or do the sales of such books suffer more broadly on account of the financial anxiety that they provoke in potential buyers? The fact that I’m 178th in the library hold queue for Levine’s book makes me think that the latter might be true.
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4 comments:
I do that...
A year without shopping? I don't think I could read a book with that depressing of a concept. I thought White Oleander and Bastard Out of Carolina were depressing, they'd be comedies in comparison to this. Or, it could just be that I don't want to have to be left without my well adapted ability to rationalize my shopping habit.
"I really want to read it, but in the end I couldn’t bring myself to shell out $35 for a book about eschewing consumerism."
EXACTLY!
A few years ago I made the mistake of triumphantly announcing to my writing professor that I had found his first book at a used bookstore. He kind of sighed and was like, "Great, I hope you got it for really cheap." I guess I hadn't thought about how lame that must be as an author, to have your babies going for $1 at Half-Price Books. Now that I have a real job I try to think of it as my responsibility to buy books new -- actually support the author in some small way. But yeah, I don't know, a book about not shopping seems to be kind of asking for it...
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