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Chicago Love

  • "No matter where you stand right now - on a hilltop, in a gutter, at a crossroads, in a rut - you need to give yourself the best you have to offer in this moment." — Oprah
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    Let your game speak.
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    Tell me. — Jordan
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What I'm Reading Now

Michael lives in my neighborhood. I do not know him but I see him around all the time. This book (his first) was named one of the top 10 best books of 2007 by the NY Times Book Review. He also just won the Impac Dublin Literary Award.

What I Just Read

My rating:

(I need to cry for 5 stars.)

Janelle interviewed me eons ago for Salon.com. She's a sassy lady who's super nice. This is her first novel. It received rave reviews and I loved every minute of it.

Blog Archive

Jan 8, 2008

The Virago Book of The Joy of Shopping

Hey Brits... buy this book!

The Virago Book of The Joy of Shopping by Jill Foulston.

I have to say, I LOVE the company I keep in the first paragraph of the description...







Jane Austen found her sister Cassandra a locket. Joan Didion bought nail enamel and a toaster on impulse. Karyn Bosnak charged $20,000 on credit cards, and Elizabeth Wurtzel got caught shoplifting. George Eliot, for some reason, hated shopping.

As people began to shop more, novelists imagined them doing it. Jane Eyre cringes at Mr Rochester's pre-wedding excess, while Undine Spragg's spending drives her husband to despair. The Girl with a Pearl Earring turns up her nose at some stale meat, Tom Ripley lusts after Venetian leather, and Mrs Dalloway chooses flowers on Bond Street.

The darker side of shopping is here in the letters, diaries and memoirs of those who remember blackmarkets and rations. There are even records from the Old Bailey of audacious and desperate five-finger discounts, and a recent account of brawling at IKEA.

The Virago Book of Shopping revels in the lists, the etiquette and the thrills of finding just the right thing.

This is it. Buy it.


The Virago Book of Shopping is now available in the UK. It will be released in the US in April 2008.

PS - I found out that I was in this book by Googling myself. You'd think the author or publicist would've emailed to let me know so I could write about it on my blog and give them a little publicity, but they didn't.

Posted by Karyn at 8:24 PM

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