So my total reading expenses over the past fifteen years have been in the neighbourhood of £25 a year… Twenty-five pounds a year sounds quite a lot until you begin to measure it against other kinds of expenditure. 143Īs Orwell estimates he has approximately the same volume of books in a second location he then doubles this number before calculating an average cost and adding in his annual expenditure on newspapers, periodicals, and journals: In calculating his expenditure Orwell conducted an inventory of the books in his flat, most of which he had purchased over the preceding 15 years (the fourth component of this list may elicit a knowing smile among librarians): Orwell challenges this general prejudice through an examination of the relative cost of book buying compared to the cost of other items and pursuits. In this brief essay Orwell discusses a reluctance among many people to purchase books because of their perceived expense. Although George Orwell is perhaps better known for his scathing attack on totalitarian Stalinist communism in Animal Farm, and his dystopian futuristic novel 1984, he also wrote an engaging short piece in 1947 called “Books vs.
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