
Having and Being Had
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Narrated by:
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Alex McKenna
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By:
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Eula Biss
A New York Times Editors’ Choice
Named a Best Book of The Year by Time, NPR, InStyle, and Good Housekeeping
"A sensational new book [that] tries to figure out whether it’s possible to live an ethical life in a capitalist society.... The results are enthralling." (Associated Press)
"A timely and arresting new look at affluence by the New York Times best-selling author, “one of the leading lights of the modern American essay." (Financial Times)
“My adult life can be divided into two distinct parts”, Eula Biss writes, “the time before I owned a washing machine and the time after.” Having just purchased her first home, the poet and essayist now embarks on a provocative exploration of the value system she has bought into. Through a series of engaging exchanges - in libraries and laundromats, over barstools and backyard fences - she examines our assumptions about class and property and the ways we internalize the demands of capitalism. Described by the New York Times as a writer who “advances from all sides, like a chess player,” Biss offers an uncommonly immersive and deeply revealing new portrait of work and luxury, of accumulation and consumption, of the value of time and how we spend it. Ranging from IKEA to Beyoncé to Pokemon, Biss asks, of both herself and her class, “In what have we invested?”
©2020 Eula Biss (P)2020 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...




















Critic reviews
“Compulsively readable ... blends research, reflection and richly rendered personal experience.... This is a book that asks to be read, absorbed and read again.” (BookPage)
“[A] strong new meditation on buying and owning in a society as a white woman where some people descend from Americans once considered property themselves.... This is an essential book for our out-of-control times.” (Lit Hub)
“A stylish, meditative inquiry into the function and meaning of twenty-first-century capitalism.... Biss doesn’t shy away from acknowledging her own privilege, and laces her reflections with unexpected insights and a sharp yet ingratiating sense of humor. . . . this eloquent, well-informed account recasts the everyday world in a sharp new light.” (Publishers Weekly)
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Thought provoking content, poor microphone
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Sometimes Interesting
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musings on inequality and capitalism
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Okay
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Not Very Deep
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A beautifully written and read meditation on capitalism
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This book is a string of typically no more than five-minute think pieces/diary entries. Common themes include the author’s wealth, family events, feminism, vacations, love of art, and various expressions of discomfort about said wealth and privilege. The narration seemed appropriate to what I envision the author sounding like when reading the pieces aloud, though that’s not necessarily a positive.
It’s basically a rich white lady writing about how she’s indifferent to her supposedly newfound wealth, obtusely claiming artistic purity in her outlook on life and attempting to depict her circumstances in a somewhat ironic light. She occasionally weaves a novel thought into the stories, but usually they come across as overdrawn attempts at profundity, and in my view are cheapened as a result. She even claims near the end that she wrote the book to “reclaim my time” by making enough from it to not have to work as much at her job as a university assistant professor.
I assume people who enjoy this book might also enjoy shows like Emily in Paris and other content centered around female wealth, whiteness, independence, and some level of cognitive dissonance between perception and reality. I tried this book to experience something different, and am now motivated to go back to reports, exposés, and other works I see as less pretentious.
Rich white lady stories
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self-indulgent, snarky, entitled rant
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Blather
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a book contract book for money
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