About book Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping (2007)
okay, i know i am giving this book four stars, but go read some of the reviews that give the book only one star. they make excellent points & critiques that are 100% valid & certainly occurred to me while i was reading the book. i'm doling out four stars not so much because the concept behind the book blew my mind somehow, but because i think the process of thinking about the critiques i was making (the same critiques as a lot of one-star reviewers made) was really illuminating for me. like a lot of the negative reviews, the author annoyed me. i was extremely thankful to not be her friend & not have to deal with her freeloading woe-is-me ways. but i like that the book made me stop & think about WHY i was glad i wasn't her friend.okay, backtrack. the idea behind the book is that the author, judith, & her partner, paul, decided to have a buy nothing year. they would commit to buying nothing except necessities for an entire year & they would see what happened, i guess. it's a little unclear what, if anything, that expected. that they'd save tons of money? that they'd go "back to the land" somehow? that they'd lose their minds one day & spend their entire life savings on potato chips? i mean, the author kind of earned my smug skepticism early on by talking about buy nothing day like it was this really insightful, amazing idea. i am pretty over buy nothing day. i mean, i wasn't even that impressed when i first heard of it, which had to have been sometime in the late 90s. anyway. the author further lost credibility with me by such things as: not only attending a bread & puppets event (sorry, sorry, i know people love bread & puppet--i even have a good friend who is IN bread & puppet, but i have this reptilian brain-level hatred of puppets) but actually having a favorite sketch, owning a fourth-floor brooklyn walk-up valued at three times what she bought it for but still having the gall to decry the gentrification that she helped kickstart, almost bragging about only ever paying a quarter to go to the museum of modern art...a lot of things. basically, judith is your typical fifty-something NPR-listening crunchy lefty do-gooder artsy liberal type who is probably a little less hip than she would like to believe. a barbara ehrenreich type, you know, who goes out & exposes the seedy underbelly of the manner in which the overwhelming majority of americans live their lives & then reports on it to hand-wringing well-to-do liberals & makes a whole career of it like she did something really novel & interesting.despite all of these problems, the book made me think a lot. she & paul never really do settle on what exactly their "necessities" are. they decide food is a necessity, & that they can only make food--not go out to eat. & no packaged foods either. no frozen pizzas, i guess. fair enough. but judith is pretty adamant that professional haircuts are also a necessity--to the point that when she joins a "voluntary simplicity" group, she is very concerned before her first meeting that all the other meeting-goers will be sporting awful home haircuts. hey! i haven't been to a professional hair cutter in YEARS & my hair is gorgeous. & she drops a lot of brands, talking about her funky eyeglass frames & winter coat & such forth--i speak from experience when i say that these brands are the kind of thing you will pick up on if you live on the lefty consumer/status-obsessed east coast for long enough. i never thought i would sport $500 swedish designer eyeglass frames, but here i sit. knowing that, i kind of had to withhold judgment when she talked about her glasses. other people might say, "go to lenscrafters. thirty bucks," & yeah, that's what i used to do...but i got sucked into the east coast eyeglasses status culture without even being conscious of it, & totally considered my crazy eyeglasses a necessity. after all, i need to see don't i? i didn't even stop to consider that i could see just as well for a lot less if i didn't mind having ugly (or just boring) glasses.this is what i mean when i say the book made me think. i could look down my nose at judith for spending $55 on a haircut, but what do i spend money on that other people probably could consider indulgent? what do i spend money on that i myself would have considered indulgent ten years ago? ten years ago, i owned one pair of pants that wasn't part of my issued work uniform. now i own three pairs of jeans that i have bought in the last six months. indulgent? depends who you ask.& i think maybe that was the point of the book: making you stop to think twice before you start casting stones. an interesting statistic judith offered stated that 78% of americans feel that americans in general are "very materialistic & spend money recklessly". but only 7% of americans feel that they themselves are "very materliastic & spend money recklessly". i certainly don't think i am materlaistic, & i don't think i spend money recklessly. i live on about $17,000 a year, of which i save approximately 15%. another 35% goes to rent, & 15% to bills. another 15% goes to groceries. that leaves 20%--about $4000 a year, or about $350 a month. where does it go? clothes, books, eyeglasses, emergency medical stuff that my medicare doesn't pay...i'd consider most of it a "necessity". but before my divorce was finalized, i lived on $500 a month plus $200 in food stamps. 80% of my income went to rent, leaving just $100 a month for bills & those "necessities" i now spend $350 a month on. obviously my idea of a necessity was much more specific then. & it would have to get specific again if my income changed suddenly. it's very interesting to consider all of this when you stop & realize how much energy people put into defending their consumer habits. we could all probably stand to judge each other a little less, & hence act defensive a little less, & hence, probably feel emotionally better about the ourchases we make, & in turn, probably make fewer gilt-inspiring purchases. i have to say, living with my partner, who does not look askance at the way i spend my money, has done wonders for my consumer habits. i'm actually less likely to spend too much money on new jeans or books i could find at the library since i know i won't have to defend myself to him either way. i'm not saying this is a good book, but i'd be into my friends reading it just so we can talk. it brings up a lot of food for thought, even if it does so in a somewhat unsatisfying manner. & i am always up for critiques of voluntary pverty (gah).
I didn't buy this (I got it from the library). I was amazed, first of all, at how awkwardly-written it is considering the author is a professional editor. It's repetitive, and there is actually very little focused attention paid to any guidelines she has for what is "necessary". She has minimal insight and seems to have missed the point of her own book. I mean, this review is not well-written, either, but I'm not a writer or an editor. I'm just a disgruntled reader.While the author does raise some good points, she doesn't do it very effectively. This was one of the most incredibly self-centered, shallow, books I have ever read. I was amazed that the author would describe herself as "a woman of bird-like consumer appetites" since she is far more brand-conscious than I am, and I would not apply the same label to myself. I don't believe for a moment that her Alain Mikli glasses or Ibex jacket (neither of which brands I have ever heard of before) are not status symbols.Ms. Levine has a whopping sense of entitlement and a very poor grasp of cost vs. value. She admits that she had no plans to pay back her government student loans until the credit companies caught up with her. She laments the lack of state funding for the arts but has never paid more than 25 cents' voluntary donation to the MoMA ($12 suggested). She constantly mocks free, non-professional entertainment and harps on the lack of "culture" in Vermont and Bozeman, Montana, and how she lives in New York to be near art movies and high culture. She wants hand-outs. "I'm too good for your open mic night, but I want everyone else to subsidize my top-flight tastes."Oh, yeah? Well, mock my open-mic night, but at least I'm out there contributing. I play four instruments and arrange music for them, I paint, I sew, and I fork over at the museum because I'm darned glad the museum is even there for me to look at. What do you do with your spare time? Oh, yeah--you shop. Unless I totally missed something, nowhere in the book does Ms. Levine mention a past-time or hobby that involves her actually creating something original to share.She is spoiled and unable to entertain herself if shopping is not involved. Hand-making a Valentine is a major production and she writes about it as if she expects a medal. She is apparently addicted, also, to external stimuli--without a credit card, art movies, or theater tickets, she has no idea what to do with herself. Get a hobby, woman!Her ravings about Bush were not as bad as I had expected, but they were out of place in the book and she has a much too simplistic a view of the economy, technological progress, etc. She should have left the politics out if she has so poor an understanding of it, or is so unwilling to consider multifaceted viewpoints. (I even, technically, agree with her on many points, but they were very poorly presented here. The book was an ill-focused rant.)Why would an environmentalist who wants to cut costs have a New York Times subscription when she could have read most of it online or at the library, anyway, saving both money and paper?Overall, my impression was that of a very limited, self-absorbed, immature woman whose identity seems to have been almost completely purchased--the "right" glasses, the "right" jacket, the "right" entertainment, the "right" politics, the "right" organic food--but who, left to her own devices, has never developed a sense of who she is under the trappings. One has to suspect that her non-consumption is as much an identity ploy as was her over-consumption, and won't last a minute past New Year's Eve.
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This book was more wide-ranging than I expected: I thought it would be a personal journey, but it looks at issues of world economics, environmental concerns and social responsibility and in this sense is enlightening, if a bit depressing at times! It's a very thought-provoking read, and I can't imagine that anyone who reads it will ever forget some of the lessons of the book. There really is something for every consumer here...To read the rest of this review (and more!), please visit Trashionista
—Keris
A very interesting book with a decidedly leftist bent. It's kind of written in a diary format. The author talks about simplicity movements, people who are off the grid and of course the psychology of shopping. There are other discussions of various movements and schools of thought. But what it comes down to is personal choice. Whether you consider that choice to be moral (not supporting sweat shops, definitely the author's choice) or just to save money it's kind of mind boggling how much time is spent around shopping. I will give two quotes from the book which I think hit home for me. The first one deals with "wants vs needs". "....an inconvenience into a dissatisfaction, a dissatisfaction into a desire, a desire into a need, and a need into a matter of life and death". (Pg 183). I think cell phones fall into this category. The second quote deals with the effects of not shopping choice. "Not shoppong may dump you into the happy stream of human intercourse or leave you lonely; deepen your education or make you stupid; deliver you to enlightened bliss or depress you so much you are compelled to start consuming.....Zoloft" (pg 255). So where will you fall? I think I fall somewhere in between as I contemplate a Kindle.
—Rebecca
Three years after reading this, I'm still pissed off about it. It was educational, but not about not shopping or our consumer culture; rather, it perfectly encapsulates a specific overprivileged mindset. The idea is fascinating. The book is also fascinating, but only in the way a trainwreck is; the author announces she's only buying necessities, then decrees that everything is a necessity - the New York Times! Expensive haircuts! Basically, she spends the year not buying new clothes or dinners out. (And she manages to save $8000, which - wow, I do not spend 8k a year on new clothes and dinners out.)That's problematic enough - seriously, I know people who never in their lives have bought even half the things she declared as essential; I know people who live on what she spends on dinners out and clothing in a year - but then there's the whining. Levine considers herself wildly underprivileged despite her two homes and three cars and new wardrobe every year, and she dedicates a lot of this book to explaining a) how she might look privileged, but she's not, because - she has to live in New York City (part of the time)! She'll die without real culture! (Which she refuses to pay for, and whines that the government should pay for, demonstrating a fascinating failure to understand where the government gets its money.) She has to have expensive clothes and glasses! They're part of her style and identity! I just - especially now, thinking about how many of my friends have lost their jobs, and how they're really not buying it this year - I am so frustrated by this book that I could spit. I would like to see a person like Levine genuinely deconstruct her spending habits - force herself to stick to a tight budget, force herself to evaluate each item she spends. But she didn't have the guts to do it, and I'm only glad I didn't buy her book.
—thefourthvine
