How to save $99

A smarter you is only 15 minutes away!

Aha!  I have been wondering where she’d got to, my smarter self.  She slipped away back in ’92, round about the time Apple stock was selling at $6.00 a share and Nike at 52 cents. 

Of course Blinkist doesn’t really mean it that way.  Smart Carolyn isn’t across the bridge and down I-80 in Berkeley.  The teaser in their online ad implies if I give them $99, and read the non-fiction book summaries they send me, my noodle power will expand in 15 minute increments.  Wouldn’t that be nice? 

It’s a clever new service that reads non-fiction books so you don’t have to.  They’re like Cliff’s Notes for the 21^st Century person who is too preoccupied Tweeting about Instagram to pursue learning on her own. 

Yes, it’s just like back in high school, except now, instead of escaping a death march through The Scarlett Letter, you can become superficially familiar with the cutting edge concepts in science, business and technology others have devoted their lives to exploring.  You’ll know just enough to bluff your way through a casual conversation over latte and a scone.

It’s perfect for busy know-it-alls.

As a dummy and someone drawn to the quick fix like a teenage bride to Hamburger Helper, I’m tempted.  But $99!?  Maybe it’s smarter to hold onto my C-note.

Here’s why:  Blinkist says they read more than 1000 of the best in nonfiction and business books each year, then reduce them into “powerful, memorable distillations” for schmucks like me, so we can Evelyn Woods our way through them and claim we know stuff.

But let’s be real.  With 50 new titles and 40 new audio versions – their “fresh weekly releases added for you each month” – I’m pretty sure I don’t have time for this shortcut.  Just scanning the lists would constitute a detour off my highway of retired bliss into a quagmire of book selection.  It’s hard enough picking which T-shirt to wear each day!  And really, don’t you have to read the rundown to choose the book?  Rather defeats the purpose.

And honestly, if past behavior predicts future success, I concede.  There will come a reason I do not read the abstracts of the books I wish I’d read but really don’t wanna.  Case in point:  My Netflix queue is backed up with a cache of erudite yet unwatched documentaries downloaded from 1998 to present, that I cannot bring myself to delete. 

If only good intentions could boost your IQ! 

And here’s a red flag:  Blinkist doesn’t say how much smarter I’ll be.  That’s an important detail.  Is the formula $99 a year x 15 minutes/number of synopses of arid material deemed too desiccated to digest the old fashioned way = 25 points of intellect?  Or what?

My cost-benefit analysis leaves me dubious.  See, I’ve been through this before.  Just the other day I was promised that I could “get these abs in two weeks!”  The headline on the magazine cover was accompanied by an arrow pointing at the bony midsection of Gwyneth Paltrow. 

BTW – She has one of those non-committal belly buttons – is it an innie or an outie?  I don’t like the looks of it.  She is distressingly long-waisted.  Maybe it’s because her bikini bottoms are drifting lazily south, below the skeletal remains of her baby bump. 

And how does she get those abs?  “Having sex and laughing,” according to a completely out of context quote from her interview in Women’sHealth magazine. 

Well, let me just tell you that Mr. Plath – who is retired now as you may recall, and home all the time with not quite enough to occupy himself – and I are laughing and laughing and…well, here we are, 10 days later, and I don’t think I’m getting those abs. 

Just sayin’.  You can’t believe everything you read.

So when Blinkist promises I can “Learn more, do more, be more—and still spend less time reading;”  I say, I’m doing that already.  Except maybe for the “being more” part.  I mean really.  How can you be more? 

I say you can’t.  You can only be what you can be.  In the philosophical sense of course.  So.  There’s my smarter self. 


And I still have my $99!

Something for which to strive

I could be a cliché.

I mean if I really worked at it.  I could.

But I don’t want to be just any cliché.  For example, I don’t want to be an “aging hippy.”  You don’t have to work for that.  All you have to do is stand still and chant, “Throwback!  Throwback!”

No, I’m thinking of a hard-earned meritorious sort of bona fide cliché – like “trophy wife.” 

Hey!  Don’t roll your eyes!  I could be a trophy wife!  Although I would probably have to get rid of my current loving husband and find one much older, less competent, more grasping and desperate.  A billionaire who doesn’t see very well and is impulsively clinging to anything not yet pruned up. 

So.  There’s that.

“Overnight success” would be nice.  Maybe I’ll just shoot into the stratosphere!  Out of nowhere as they say.  Clear blue.  Syndicated in 900 newspapers!  Everyone’s darling.  I’ll be the golden one sitting next to JimmyFallon sharing my dry and pithy wit with the cool late night crowd. 

Or “breath of fresh air.”  I would love being a breath of fresh air! 

Aaahhh!  Yes.  A cool breeze!  Gently on the face.  So, so, so very pleasant.  Everyone loves a cool breeze!

I confess, clichés have been on my mind because of Justin Bieber’s recent escapades.  Darn it.  I had hopes for that kid.  What a talented little sweet face. 

But alas.  He may just devolve into a sad cliché.  A cautionary tale.  A Lindsay Lohan.  Too, too bad.  That’s what a bazillion bucks’ll do for ya.

But we shan’t let that get us down!

No!  And you know why?  Because WE can handle it.  Our skills for coping with a lot o’ dough are fully developed.  All that fortune would not cause us to digress from our intended trajectory:  An overnight sort of shooting breath of fresh air!

Honestly though, I’m not sure I could do any better with fame than the Biebs.  Everyone looking all the time? I’m already prone to the faux pas.  I’m a blurter under the calmest of conditions.  Just the other day I mistook a young man for his mother…out loud.  I don’t see how a spotlight would improve that propensity.  

If I were famous – if everyone were watching me all the time?  Anticipating?  Eagerly enquiring, “What’s she going to do next?”  The pressure!  OMG.  I just could not guarantee a happy outcome. 

I’d probably crater just like Lindsay and Justin.  I’d buy too many villas and marry Kanye West.  I’d egg my neighbors’ mansion (or at least their barking dog) and drag race down the alley in my yellow Lamborghini.

Who knows?  I might even act belligerent with the authorities and resist containment.  Because somewhere in the latent depths of my clichéd self, I’ve always wanted to do those things anyway.  And everyone keeps looking!  What am I gonna do?  Behave myself now?  Surrender?  Go calmly?!!  I don’t think so.  Pretty sure I’d be thrashing around and shoutin’ “Yo mama!” or some such thing.

But my evil alter ego would not surface because of my nouveau riches, you understand.  No.  It’s not the money; it’s the magnifying glass. 

That’s it!  I could be that other caricature – the wealthy well-bred classy sort of predictably shy and demure kind of cliché.  I could be Kate Middleton, say.  Or Gwyneth Paltrow.

I have good cheekbones…

Oh well.  Let’s face it; I could do it until I blew it.  We already know the ending:  I’d drop an earring into the Queen’s consommé.  Or take the mike on karaoke night and embarrass Coldplay with my channeling of Heartbreak Hotel.

That’s the beauty of being a writer.  Wherever I go, people look me blankly in the face and figure I’m just another boomer on the downhill side of the crest.  “Can I interest you in a Pier 1 charge account, ma’am?  Thank you and have a nice day.”

Ah.  Anonymity!  No fame…No bazillions either.  Sigh.

So I may have to settle for the reclusive writer cliché.  You know, the writer whose depth and versatility are only recognized 50 years after her death when her unpublished volumes come to light and dazzle the literary world. 


Yeah.  That’s it.  They’ll be calling J. D. Salinger a “Carolyn Plath.”