2-22-10 Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping by Judith Levine - Non-Fiction

3 - Overall, an interesting look at how bad our consumer culture has gotten. But I can't say I empathize with Levine or feel sorry for the difficulties she faced early on having to give up buying everything but necessities. A year without movies but keeping cable? Big F'n Deal. We haven;t watched or paid for cable, even basic, for over a year and we're richer for it even if people think we're pixilated. We use Netflix and the library and get to see almost everything we want. we get our news from the internet so we can see all sides of a story. Plus we throw some NPR in there for good measure. Clothes shopping? Yeah, when what we already have has too many holes to make it decent or functional. Where does our money go? To the things we deem important: Music (he has his vinyl almost all used, not new, and I have my violin), books (OK, that one is mostly me but I rarely purchase new anymore if I don't have a gift card and even then only select authors. Support your local library!), and food (he's studying at Le Cordon Bleu). So we don't deprive ourselves but we don't shop to excess either. I do applaud her for the project but feel she made it more difficult for herself and her boyfriend by not cutting off so many of the "free" things that urge the public to randomly spend.