An interesting concept. Easy to read and I appreciated Levin's wit and conversational tone. But considering the author even had two homes before embarking on this de-cluttering year, I felt it was probably just a brief departure from her usual life. As a contrived situation serving as fodder for her writing, in the end I didn't like it. ( )

I found this a rather boring read. The author veers from skiing to economics to whether wine is a necessity to insanely boring vitriol against George W Bush. Look, I didn't care for many of his policies either, but there's a large section at the end of the book about campaigning for Kerry that was just too much politics for me. ( )

This is the memoir of Judith Levine and Paul Cillo's year of non-consumerism. Well, a year of only buying the necessities and a few pre-planned purchases designated for a refurbishing project and a graduation trip. This is not a year of "let's not buy Starbucks!" This is actually a year of really questioning whether or not every purchase is, in fact, a necessity. Out go all pay forms of entertainment, dinners out, street foods, processed foods that could be made from scratch, overpriced organic coffee beans, new shoes, new purses (not that they won't be obsessed over) and even wine.

Better yet, this is neither a hidden balance sheet how-to nor an anti-consumerist manifesto. It's simply the impact that a year of living without the distraction and entertainment of consumerism has on the lives of two individuals who choose to disconnect for a year. The year presents moments of weakness and triumph, but the better portions of the book involve a renewed sense of citizenry. In the opening chapters, one might wonder how they're supposed to feel sympathy for feeling bored in a life that involves both an apartment in Brooklyn and a home with ski access in Vermont. But as this year of Not Buying It progresses, this honesty in boredom makes for more insightful and honest discussions about the nature and role of shopping. ( )

This book was recommended on one of the sites I read – can’t remember which one off the top of my head but I think it may have been Entertainment Weekly – and I thought it had a really interesting premise. Not Buying It is all about purchasing only the essentials for a whole year and how this affected the author and her husband. Most of the focus is on how it changed their outlook and habits, which was really neat. There are also some denser passages that deal with economics and philosophy that I didn’t enjoy as much but, overall, it’s a decent book. I don’t know that I’d recommend this to just anyone, though. I picked it up thinking it was going to be an autobiography and it ended up coming off as more of a treatise on how to live your life, which was interesting but I wasn’t as engaged by the material as I thought I would be. The fact that was much more didactic than anticipated really put me off at some points. The parts that are written more conversationally, however, are really entertaining and informative without being too heavy to absorb.

Originally published at http://ireadgood.wordpress.com ( )

An interesting account of one woman's year without buying unnecessary items. She slips up a few times and spends a fair amount of guilt on her reasonings behind all this but overall an interesting look at the reasons people buy so much stuff. It made me think about my unthinking habits of shopping. As it's written as a diary sometimes it comes across as a little un-linear but overall I found it an interesting read. I would agree with some commentators on it that she started from a very strong point and stocked up on some stuff but she whined a bit much about her clothes occasionally. ( )