George Orwell calculates the cost of a reading habit in the 1946 essay "Books v. Cigarettes":
[R]eading is one of the cheaper recreations: after listening to the radio probably the cheapest.After reading this essay, I did some rough arithmetic and found that the cost of my Proust habit has been about 25¢ per reading hour. Cheap!
comments: 3
don't forget to add in the cost of bookcases and shelves. I'm careful about which books I buy. still, there are stacks (and I wish there were more). I'm an unrepentant stacker
Incidentally, "Books v. Cigarettes" is getting re-released -- with a snazzy new cover no less -- as part of the third installment of Penguin's Great Ideas series of books.
The shelves are long amortized, J. : )
Thanks for the link, Matt. The book is listed at Amazon UK with an August 7 publication date. I hope these Penguins show up in the States.
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