What I read last week: the reading about money for free edition

So one of the side effects of writing a lot is that it cuts into my reading time, and during sweeps month, I do a lot of writing. Consequently, it wasn't until I had sent in the last Prison Break recap that I was able to give in to the sweet siren song emanating from a stack of library books. Do you know how hard it is to put off reading a book you stalked on the reserve list for six months? The act of cracking open the cover should have been accompanied by a heavenly chorus hitting a high C.

Of course, then the chorus would have had to shut up, as the thrill of delayed gratification was definitely greater than the thrill of actually reading Freakonomics. Oh, I liked the book. I just wasn't wowed by the book. Maybe it's because I still remember the 03 article in the NYT Magazine from whence the book sprang, or maybe it's because I've read enough of the book's material in other venues, or maybe it's because I'm already inclined to do what the book thinks is a radical idea: ask what numbers really mean. I liked Freakonomics because I always enjoy it when someone walks me through the elegant steps they used to uncover a solid answer to a tricky question. But I didn't love the book.

What I did love for its unexpected approach: Paul Lukas's Inconspicuous Consumption. Derived from his Beer Frame writing, this compendium looks at the hidden histories and pleasures of hundreds of oddball consumables. Profiled therein are valiant underdog comestibles like Hydrox and Mister Salty, products you're baffled to find yourself needing like Angostura Aromatic Bitters (pictured above), and the just plain baffling (sauerkraut juice). I was also obscurely gratified to find out that the plastic fetus I had received during my disastrous CCD days was, in fact, a relic of "Project Young One." Insert your own Vyvyan joke here.

(Amusingly, there's a Dec 20, 05 Economist article of the same name that is, like, the exact opposite of this book in spirit and topic.)

Anyway, I was in a "whither the shopper?" frame of mind, which was simply perfect for reading Michael J. Silverstein's Treasure Hunt: Inside the Mind of the New Consumer. (Read an author interview here.) It's an elaboration on his previous work, Trading Up, and explores how consumers prioritize where they'll spend, and what that means for retailers. Long answer short: it means that the middle-class shopping experience is A) not so homogenous as previously assumed, and B) shrinking as people elect to go cheap/discount or splurge on things that matter. Because the book's a trend-forecasting book, I'll be curious to see whether it appears prescient in five years, or merely curious.

Lord knows, Michael Lewis's earlier books about the business world of the 1980s are still very entertaining. I read Liar's Poker and The Money Culture this weekend -- both are the kinds of books you can just rip through, becaus the reporting and story-telling are so absorbing. Reading these was not unlike revisiting Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities, except with the added bonus of knowing that these stories were real, real, real. What makes reading them now a little chilling: as we wait for Enron trial verdicts and read through reports on Fannie Mae's financial misdeeds, it's hard not to wonder whether anything really changes.

(By contrast, reading the New Yorker collection The New Gilded Age: The New Yorker Looks at the Culture of Affluence is like reading about the Summer of Love immediately after Altamont. This volume is part of what I like to think of as my dot-comedy collection, which also includes: Dot.Con: The Greatest Story Ever Sold; American Sucker; No Collar: The Humane Workplace and Its Hidden Costs; Dot.Bomb: My Days and Nights at an Internet Goliath; The New New Thing; Accidental Empires. And if someone were to ever flesh out the New York magazine articles "Silicon Alley 10003" [March 6, 00] and "Unemployment Online" [Jan 1, 01] and do some where-are-they-now reporting in book form, my bookshelf would be the better for it.)

(And no, I didn't read any of those last week. I'm just saying -- anthropological business reporting on the 1990s is a very different beast than anthro-business writing on the 1980s.)

In summary: I've just finished reading a lot of books about human behavior and how it affects, and is affected by, the making and spending of money. That I didn't pay for any of these books is kind a nice little side detail, yes?

Comments

[JF]

You might find Levine's "Not Buying It : My Year Without Shopping" interesting (tho' I confess I bought the book, not borrowed from library -- did re-sell it afterwards!)

[Lisa]

Hee!

Yeah, I had written about that book here. If I can get a copy of the book via my library, I'm all for it ...

[drunken monkey]

I felt the same way about "Freakonomics" -- it was interesting, but I wasn't blown away. I've added "Treasure Hunt" to my Amazon wishlist though.