Posts tagged with money

Jun 12 2023

Edible Economics, by Ha-Joon Chang

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Ha-Joon Chang's Edible Economics: A Hungry Economist Explains the World starts off strong. Chang is a well-regarded economist, his prose is simultaneously engaging and easy to follow, and I like the cover art concept (National flags! But made of food!) Unfortunately, the end result is slightly underwhelming—a tasty but thrown-together snack, rather than a well-balanced meal...

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Jun 12 2023

Weekly Book Giveaway: Edible Economics, by Ha-Joon Chang

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WE LIVE (but the world is a weird place right now, so things will probably continue to be sporadic). Our current Book Giveaway is Ha-Joon Chang's Edible Economics: A Hungry Economist Explains the World, installment #8,943 in our ongoing series, “Nonfiction Books Julia has Picked Up at Random”. A full review will follow shortly...

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Nov 19 2019

Holiday Gift Pick #4

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Gift Idea #4: a used copy of Amy Dacyczyn's The Complete Tightwad Gazette

Well before the internet became a haven of frugality tips, Ms. Dacyczyn produced a newsletter that compiled...

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Aug 7 2019

If it works, it works

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This is probably the most interesting article I've seen about Marie Kondo's work: an essay in Business Insider about using the KonMari method to get rid of credit card debt. The author takes Kondo's tidying-up tips and applies them to her financial life, and the whole thing...

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Oct 18 2018

Of course, they were adaptations to begin with, but still.

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There's a fascinating article at The AV Club about an important fact that may be fueling Disney's current passion for live-action remakes of their classic animated films: Disney owns the scripts for those movies wholesale, so...

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Nov 27 2017

Bubbly on Your Budget, by Marjorie Hillis

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For a book written in 1937, Marjorie Hillis's Bubbly on Your Budget has some surprisingly timely advice. Sure, the details might need to be adjusted for a 21st century lifestyle, but her basic message—that you should spend your money on what you actually value—is just as valid today as it was 80 years ago...

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Nov 27 2017

Weekly Book Giveaway: Bubbly On Your Budget, by Marjorie Hillis

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In honor of this season of furious consumerism, this week's Book Giveaway is Marjorie Hillis's Bubbly on Your Budget, a reprint of a financial advice guide first published in 1937 under the title Orchids On Your Budget. This volume is used (and looks it), but still an unexpectedly modern and entertaining read. A full review will follow shortly...

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Jul 25 2017

Scrambling for cash

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Chawton House Library, the “Great House” once owned by Jane Austen's brother Edward, is seeking to raise around £150,000 over the next 18 months to stay open after a longtime backer withdrew support. (The £150,000 is just to keep the doors open while they apply for millions in capital grants...

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May 15 2017

Weekly Book Giveaway: Grocery: The Buying and Selling of Food in America, by Michael Ruhlman

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It's been a while, so it's time for one of our rare nonfiction reviews: this week's Book Giveaway is Michael Ruhlman's Grocery: The Buying and Selling of Food in America. (That's a biiiig subject for a short book, but whatever.) A full review will follow shortly...

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Jan 10 2017

Financial hijinks

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Well, this is hinky. According to Publishers Weekly, the once-popular online e-book retailer AllRomanceEbooks shut down operations at the end of December. Unfortunately, there's a lot of mystery surrounding the whys and wherefores of this shut down...

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Oct 11 2016

She's already famous

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And speaking of Jane Austen, we're finally getting a good look at the £10 notes featuring her likeness. I'm not sure about that color scheme (why so orange?), but...

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Aug 4 2016

Cleaning up

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According to the BBC, the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child script is the fastest-selling book in the UK this decade. It sold more than 680,000 copies in the first three days after its release, beating the previous record held by IFifty Shades of Grey. (British book snobs can heave a sigh of relief.) At its current rate, the script will be...

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Aug 3 2016

Shocking

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Forbes just posted an interesting article about how scandals affect book sales. (Short answer: negatively.) The article takes specific aim at Gay Talese's new work, The Voyeur’s Motel, which has been...

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Jul 18 2016

Dark Money, by Jane Mayer

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On August 30, 2010, Janet Mayer published an article in the New Yorker called 'Covert Operations', an in-depth look at the political influence of Charles and David Koch, two American billionaire brothers who have devoted over a hundred million dollars to promoting libertarian causes. Over the next few years Mayer deepened and expanded her research on the subject, transforming her article into...

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Jan 26 2016

Scandalous!

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I recently picked up a copy of Jane Mayer's nonfiction book Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right. I love books about financial scandals, and this one is even juicier when you take into account the contents of this New York Times article, which...

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Oct 29 2015

Real-world math

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This is a little booknerd-specific, but there's an interesting article on InsideHigherEd about Alain Bourget, an associate professor of mathematics at California State University at Fullerton. Bourget recently received an official reprimand...

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Sep 10 2015

Sad facts

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SplitSider writer Priyanka Mattoo recently wrote a helpful explanatory article called "How Does a Book Get Optioned and Become a Movie?" If, like me, you don't really care about the how-to stuff for writers looking to sell their book(s) to Hollywood, skip to the paragraph that..

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Oct 9 2014

One last attempt

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According to THR, the US Supreme Court has declined to review a challenge to Warner Bros./DC Comics' claim to the rights to Superman...

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Oct 9 2014

A drop in the college-expenses bucket

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NPR's Planet Money recently posted an article about the win some/lose some economics of college textbook publishing. The whole thing's worth a read (it's short), but in brief: the cost of textbooks has gone waaaaay up, but the number of textbooks people buy, and how much they pay for them, has gone waaaaay down...

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Feb 6 2014

Lifestyles of the rich and pseudonymous

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The Washington Post featured an article on Monday about the financial woes confronting the best-selling erotica author known as "Zane". She apparently owes the IRS almost $541,000, despite being an extremely successful author and publisher, and has been publicly labeled Maryland’s...

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Aug 7 2012

So painful. Seriously.

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Yet another day when I find myself wishing it was actually April 1st: according to The Independent, E. L. James' Fifty Shades of Grey is the best-selling British book of all time, beating out Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows...

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Jul 30 2012

In these troubled economic times, I know I should be grateful.

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Washington State tourism: first boosted by the Twilight books, and now (apparently) by the dread Fifty Shades of Grey. WHY? Why can't people visit us because of their burning desire to trace the scenes in Jim Lynch's The Highest Tide, or Kat Richardson's Greywalker books...

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Jan 17 2012

Maybe a TV show...

According to the website GossipCop, Lionsgate Films would really like to find a way to continue the Twilight movie series after the final* installment is released this fall.*Here's hoping, anyway.

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Jan 11 2011

Price-gouging at Hogwarts

The NY Times recently posted an article about what they describe as the "unexpected, turbocharged success of the $265 million Potter playland" (i.e., Universal's Wizarding World of Harry Potter th...

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Oct 6 2010

Higher and higher

Salon has posted a fascinating (and quite angry) article on the rising price of new e-books. I'm not sure that two e-books costing more than their printed-and-bound equivalents qualifies as a "tr...

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Aug 5 2010

The fall of the book-selling empire?

Further hints of the crumbling world of major chain bookstores: Barnes and Noble is considering putting itself up for sale. (Specifically, they're exploring "strategic alternatives", one of which...

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Jun 16 2010

We approve.

As longtime readers of the site know, I love reading about frugality. Sadly, Wordcandy hardly ever receives books on this subject, which means I have to either wait patiently for library copies o...

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Apr 29 2010

Returned (in part) to the original owner

Newspaper publisher E.W. Scripps Co. is selling the licensing rights for Charles Schulz's 'Peanuts' characters to Iconix Brand Group Inc. (owners of Joe Boxer and London Fog) for a whopping $175 m...

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Apr 15 2010

Fun with taxes...

In honor of Tax Day, allow us to point out that you can find copies of Jean Johnson and Scott Bittle's excellent Where Does the Money Go? for as little as $5.99 online.

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Mar 29 2010

Sorry, Canada!

I ran across an interesting article about the difference between American and Canadian book prices. Canadians pay approximately 30% more per book, despite the fact that the Canadian and American ...

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