Books vs.

Cigarettes; maybe
Orwell was on to something?
February 23, 2012
By EmmaSJacobs GOLD, London, Other
More by this author  Follow EmmaSJacobs 

George Orwell is a very famous author renown for novels ‘Animal Farm’ and ‘1984’ these books
are read both recreationally and in schools worldwide. He is less well known for his essays. One of
them is about the correlation between two of the most common recreational hobbies, reading and
smoking. In the essay he calculates the yearly expenditure that both hobbies require coming to the,
predictable, conclusion that reading is more wallet and brain friendly. 

The government spends a much larger figure in preventing smoking than in advertising reading.
Perhaps we should all take a page from Orwell’s book and invest in an extensive library instead of
two packs a week. A book offers you an insight into a former society; educates you and expands
your imagination. Were as a Cigarette offers you a short time haven, a state of serenity soon to be
interrupted by your craving for your next. Is a short period of guilty pleasure really worth
supplementing the sense of pride you get by reading a book from cover to cover? 

In theory, one can indulge in both hobbies as it is not an either or situation. That is if you have
unlimited monetary funds, which in this current recession the vast majority of us do not. When the
money runs out? You won’t be able to re use your cigarette like you could a book; you won’t get a
feeling that your money was well spent. You will be in both regret and decline. 

What frustrates me is how this scenario is thrust into 21st century. Times are different, rations now
absent but does the smoker vs. intellectual debate still exist? Should we all be updating our social
acceptances? I think when we see a smoker we should compare their more to a genius than a
moron for a hobby does not define the person you are.
 
 'Books v. cigarettes' by George
Orwell
 

 Non-fiction - paperback; Penguin; 144 pages; 2008.

Books v. cigarettes is a small collection of essays by George

Orwell brought together as part of Penguin's Great Ideas Series 3.
The title of the book comes from an essay of the same name in
which Orwell considers how much money he spends on his two
vices, reading and smoking. This particular essay, first published
in the  Tribune on 8 February, 1946, will resonate with book lovers
the world over, because how many of us have foregone some
other pleasure (or necessity) in favour of a good book?
To prove that reading is not an expensive hobby out of the reach
of ordinary citizens, Orwell counts all the books he owns (this
sounds remarkably like what I have done in recent weeks, tackling
my TBR piles) and adds up their total price to work out how much
money he has spent on reading over a 15-year period. He
discovers he has some 900 books and that it has cost him a little
over £11 per year. 
He also includes his newspaper and periodicals intake, which is
quite impressive: £8 per year on "two daily papers, one evening
paper, two Sunday papers, one weekly review and one or two
monthly magazines".  (I suspect if Orwell was around today he'd
be a complete internet junkie, reading all the news sites, book
blogs, Twitter feeds and so on.) He also spends roughly £6 per
year on library subscriptions and cheap paperbacks, chiefly
Penguins, "which one buys and then loses or throws away". 
All up, he estimates reading costs him £25 per year, which,
according to this calculator, is the equivalent of £648 in today's money. By comparison, he spends £20 a year on
cigarettes and beer.
In the grand scheme of things, he thinks this is quite reasonable although he points out that it is difficult to establish
"any relationship between the price of books and the value one gets out of them".
His second essay, Bookshop Memories, recalls his time spent working in a second-hand bookshop. His observations
are both slightly snobby ("I doubt whether 10 per cent of our customers knew a good book from a bad one") and
acutely funny:
Many of the people who came to us were of the kind who would be a nuisance anywhere but
have special opportunities in a bookshop. For example, the dear old lady who 'wants a book
for an invalid' (a very common demand, that), and the other dear old lady who read such a
nice book in 1897 and wonders whether you can find her a copy. Unfortunately she doesn't
remember the title or the author's name or what the book was about, but she does
remember that it had a red cover.

This quote made me laugh out loud, because I spent six years working in bookshops and used to get vague requests
like this all the time!
Books v. cigarettes also includes a wonderful essay about reviewing books and another on the state of literature, which
will appeal to bibliophiles. The rest of this slim volume tackles other non-bookish subjects: patriotism, the relationship
between doctors and patients, and Orwell's childhood memoirs spent at an exclusive boarding school for which he
obtained a scholarship.
All up, this is a perfect, effortless read, highly personable and quite bookish, if you like that sort of thing.