Bookbuying made easy

He reads book reviews only long enough to learn whether he should Google the name of the author. Then he checks Google only long enough to learn whether he should go to Amazon and buy the book.

A binary choice, each time: Go/no go.

What a laughably reductive view of the complex pleasure, the immersion that is browsing and choosing and reading, what a narrow notion of criticism as crude consumer aid, as if the entire human, literary process were a money transaction and nothing else, what a --

Oh, wait. Of course. He's an economist.