Literacy-conomics

I've been wanting to do some reading lately since I have all this time on my hands. I started last week by re-reading a book I have already read. But since I read it so long ago I didn't remember very much about it (besides the basic plot) and really enjoyed it the second time around. In case you are curious, I re-read Villa Incognito by Tom Robbins. Tom Robbins is quite possibly my favorite author. I have read all of his novels (he has a collection of short stories I have not read, but plan to, but I'll get to that later in Literacy-conomics). And enjoyed all of them immensely. Jitterbug Perfume is my fave if you are looking for a recommendation. In fact, I would like to re-read all of his stuff. Some of you nay-sayers might accuse me of not branching out, and I would have to agree, to a point. Is there anything wrong with re-watching a movie you've seen before? What about watching a rerun of your favorite show? Yeah? How about listening to the same songs over and over again. I'm not talking about putting a song on repeat, but you know just as well as I do that there have been times you've left the same CD in the CD player only to listen to it so many times that you can't hear one song without your brain immediately wanting to hear the next song on the album. When was the last time you updated your iPod playlist? I use my iPod everyday in the gym and haven't updated the songs on it in a month. I did a really good job of creating the ultimate cardio mix (you probably wouldn't like it because I do think that Billy Joel makes excellent treadmill tunes, so does his long lost brother Elton John) so I see no reason to change it in the near future. It's sort of like that. Plus we as humans are creatures of habit.

So anyway, my point in this post is something I just made up called Literacy-conomics. Instead of buying a new book, re-read the ones you already paid for. Or, better yet, find some equally literate friends and have a book trading party (hence me borrowing Tom Robbins short stories collection from my Mom because she already paid for it). Yeah, I know, you could just go to the library and do the same thing, but you (or someone you know) already paid for the books on your shelves, why not get the biggest bang for your buck. I read The Great Gatsby in high school. I don't remember it but I do remember enjoying it. So I'm going to re-read it because in high school they force you to buy the books so you can highlight stuff and annotate them and read more into passages than the author could've ever contemplated. But that's besides the point. The point is I have a perfectly good copy of The Great Gatsby sitting at home and instead of going to the book store and browsing the shelves (yeah, again, I know, I could totally go to the library) I'm going to browse my own shelves and save some money (Ha! You can't save money at the library when you can incur late fees). If I enjoyed the stories the first time around I'll probably enjoy them again, and if not, then I'll have a better perspective on how through the years my tastes and viewpoints have changed.

And that is what I call Literacy-conomics. Because it's literate to read and it's economical to not spend money when you don't really have any money to spend.

One last thought (plug)... When Jen Lancaster's (please read http://www.jennsylvania.com/) new book, Pretty in Plaid comes out I will be going to the bookstore to buy it because I like Jen (I don't know her, personally) and I want to support her. So that is economical in the sense that if I buy her book then she makes money and she can continue her career as a writer and write more books thus giving me plenty of fun AND NEW things to read.