I finished it.  It was a struggle, but I finally turned the last page.

Although I found this book informative, I think I held a grudge because I wasn't expecting what I got, based on the library's categorizations. The library categorized this book under "consumer education" and "shopping".  As I mentioned earlier, I was expecting a chronicle of Judith's personal journey through the calendar as a non-shopper.  What I experienced seemed more like a socio-political treatise on consumerism.  It was thought-provoking sure enough, but I don't know that I would have classified it as "consumer education."

Removing my grudge from the equation, Judith makes many fine points about how we buy things in order to make ourselves feel better.  When people buy things to make themselves feel better rather than because they have an actual physical need for the items, it creates a world where we own things for the sheer joy of ownership.  Our desire to possess things is causing us to deplete natural resources that are being destroyed for no other reason than to feel our emotions and egos. 

However, the author also opens doors to issues and doesn't address them.  She describes a friend who runs a shop that sells crafts purchased from co-ops.  The sales of these goods create a flow of money to the crafters, people in impoverished areas.  This is seen as a fine and noble thing (which I agree it is,) but does this mean that the "socially conscious" purchase of unneccesary goods is OK?  What would happen if the demand for the goods of these impoverished crafters became so much in demand that they became wealthy?

I came away from the book with the idea that taming our hunger for more "stuff" is a lot more complicated an issue than just "not buying it." And maybe that is the message the author was trying to convey, in which case she succeeded.