Books v. Cigarettes
Reading books is something that I have done forever. Even from an early age, I’ve always had a book in my hand and I’ll always remember spending long Saturday afternoons as a child in the local library trying to take out as many books as the librarian would allow. As time has passed, my interest in reading has grown and the list of books I want to read has skyrocketed. Ever since I started university, I have typically been buying books rather than borrowing them and the cost of that is something I haven’t really considered. In a way, I see reading as a weird sort of unquantifiable investment for the future. Now that I mostly use a Kindle for reading, the process of buying/transporting books has become even simpler which has led me to read more.
What’s the significance of all of this? Well, before I turned to digital ink, I was in a little bookshop in Bath and I remember spotting a book that considered the very topic of the cost of books. The book in question, Books v. Cigarettes, is a short collection of essays written by the great George Orwell, of 1984 and Animal Farm fame. I was initially intrigued by the title and its synopsis but for some reason I didn’t buy it at the time. Now I have (on Kindle) and I’m happy I did.
Books v. Cigarettes starts with Orwell musing about his love for books and how others sometimes cite the cost of buying them as their reason for not reading. The author makes a strong case that reading is a fairly affordable past time when compared to more expensive pursuits like smoking or drinking. This was particularly interesting as I never really considered reading as an expense, although maybe I will now. The book moves on to Orwell’s memory of working in a London bookstore and the type of customers that he encountered daily. Those of you who have worked in retail should enjoy that tale.
It’s abundantly clear that George Orwell lived a truly fascinating life even if it was a short one by most standards, as he died at a mere 46 years of age. Books v. Cigarettes takes you on a journey through Orwell’s memories as a child attending an English preparatory school which his parents could not afford, his experiences fighting in the Spanish Civil War and recovering from pneumonia in a run-down Parisian hospital while he watched those around him die.
The most remarkable thing about Books v. Cigarettes is the fact that it’s so short. Orwell’s ability to take the reader on an odyssey of his life in such few pages while addressing the important issues of totalitarianism, death, war and privilege is something to behold. For a book that you could read in one sitting, which really makes you think, it is definitely worth reading and buying.
You can find a copy of Books v. Cigarettes here.