There’s plenty that I enjoyed about the book. It just doesn’t fit the bill as a novel for me–at least, not with the title it was given.

Please pipe in at will!

And thanks for the recommendation for The Help. You just named our March book!

About the book deserving to be called a novel…I think it does deserve that. While some of it may seem a bit disjointed, I think that’s true of our lives, as well. I like the way the book is shown from the points of view of so many different people. I think it’s those various points of view that illuminate how very different our shared experiences are, and also subtle personality traits that are so key to my personal enjoyment of a book.

I can’t recall the details of the book, but I do remember that I enjoyed it and liked the writing. I wouldn’t call it one of my top reads in the last decade (The Help definitely earns that title)…but I found it a worthwhile read.

Then again, I enjoy the genre of short stories. That’s a basic difference between the two of us, and that may explain why I liked the book (novel!) and you did not.

I had economics in college and don’t feel I learned a thing. I’ve just started an economics book that I’m really enjoying. More on that in the next post.

I’m so excited you’re reading Olive! For your sake, I wish I had picked one that I could personally recommend. I knew very little about this one when I chose it for our February book.

Just started Olive Kitteridge today!

The Book Bus arrives tomorrow and I will not be greedy in my book selections, so I have more time and place in my head for the S4L Book Club and writings of comments. It is New Years Resolutions, so I work on doing it in real life: write and read and doing healthy exhercises. Like lifting books in and out of shelfs, that will count as muscle building, right? just kidding…

I may be able to lead the group in April? So Lady March is free… Best regards

Yes, the practice of calling a not-discounted price a “sale” bothers me, too. There was a section in the book that talked about mattresses being marked up so that the regular price of one brand appeared to be a sale price. The higher prices are presumed to be reference points that make the regular price look good.

I hate pricing games like this. It makes me suspicious of all prices, and I don’t like that feeling. My response, really, is simply to do without. I don’t like playing that game, so I don’t like shopping, so I simply don’t do it.

I doubt it will change my behavior, though. While I’m all for keeping Americans employed (this leads to another question which I’ll post another time), I admit I don’t value very highly my interactions with cashiers I don’t know. I am not a very social person, and while I value deeper relationships with people, I prefer to do without incidental, one-time-only interactions. I’d go so far as to say I don’t like them, and thus I seek to avoid them. That makes me sound awful, I know.

But here’s a contradictory tidbit: There’s a guy at Costco whose job it is to look over your receipt and make sure it matches the contents of your cart before you exit the store. I don’t personally know him, but I’ve grown to enjoy my brief interactions with him because he’s a friendly, funny oddball.

Of course, if I hadn’t been forced to interact with him, I would never have come to enjoy the experience. Even so, this bonus does not motivate me to interact with unknown cashiers just because I might come to appreciate another such interaction. Did that make sense?

Ha! I wondered if you would bust me on the “cheap” comment.

I really don’t consider myself cheap in the more-precise sense of the word, but I am frugal, thrifty, and deliberate in how I choose to spend my money.

The issue about self-checkout for me is twofold: 1. I feel as a society that we are moving too much in the direction of people not interacting with people so I want to engage sales clerks in knowing that I am grateful that they are there working and that their work benefits me and perhaps by doing that I can bring a feeling of their being appreciated into their life. 2. I want to help keep Americans employed.

Jen you say that you are a “make-do person and made a mantra of “If we don’t have it, we don’t need it.”. That makes you a survivor much like the early pioneers in our country. I am a goner for sure if I have to grow my own food or make a fire without a match or build a shelter to stay out of the elements. You and others like you are people I would want to have around in the event of a catastrophe that changes our way of life. Of course, I would need you to move south because I would have a hard time deciding between death or the Alaskan winters.

One other comment you made that I want to address and I quote, “but guess what: I’m too cheap!”

Don’t think of using the word “cheap” in regard to yourself. When you use those terms to describe yourself you are putting yourself down. Say instead, “I’m not willing to spend my monies on that” Now you have described yourself as being aware of what you value and what you’re willing to pay for that value. If you aren’t willing to pay money for something, it simply means that you value something else more than what the money will purchase – and values are always worth more than money – in my most humble opinion.