Entertainment Spending 2011 versus 2002

I was thinking I don't go to as many concerts as I used to and that I more often am prone to just have a drink than to pursue any other form of entertainment, and the following graph of my entertainment spending this year from January to June confirms it. In fact, I haven't spent money on a single concert (though I can think of at least two free ones I've been to).

Movies appear on here quite a bit, but that's all from January and February, during which the French film series was occurring here in Athens, which skews the numbers upward accordingly. Last year, sans the series, I watched fewer than one film a month.

Dancing is here because there were some cheap lessons available that I was taking, but alas that's moved across town, and I'm not motivated enough to drive to them, so those numbers will likely drop off in the second half of this year.

Also not on here--coffee, or rather tea (since I hate coffee). It's a rarity, but still, I usually indulge in a trip to the coffee shop at least a few times in the winter.

Games includes things like bowling, pool, foozball, and so on.

This is all different from shortly after I moved here, or so I think. Let's see. Here's how the dynamics play out in 2002 from January to June.

Surprisingly I did spend less at bars in 2002, but only slightly (around 10 percent). Overall entertainment spending has decreased by 28 percent when comparing the first six months of 2002 and 2011.

Book Purchases by Store

So come September, Borders is no longer. It's the victim of changes to the book-buying industry, which has gone progressively digital (as well as the victim, apparently, of too aggressive of an expansion earlier in the 2000s). It's one of the two brick-and-mortar new bookstores where I live; soon, only Barnes & Noble will be left, unless one counts the college bookstore. (This just in, however: a new indie is due to open soon.)

This got me to thinking regarding my own collection of books and where I've done my purchasing. I was going to guess that most of my books came from used bookstore outlets (the result, in part, of a four-year stint without access to a library), with Amazon another large contender. The statistics, however, surprised me.

I didn't survey my whole collection, as it would have taken too much time. But I selected two shelves of general nonfiction and two shelves of fiction and wrote out where each book came from. Here are the results:

Nonfiction B-G

Nonfiction H-W

Fiction D-G

Fiction G-K

So what did I learn? That most of my books I actually purchased new--they weren't remainders, weren't used, weren't freebies from work, and weren't gifts. I also learned that most of the new books I own came from bookstores, not from Amazon.

But then I began to suspect that the statistics might be somewhat skewed. After all, Amazon has only been a real viable entity for a decade. Maybe most of my books predate Amazon. And maybe, I thought, most of my new books, were purchased during the five-plus years I worked for an independent bookstore. So I decided to break the new books down by place of purchase to see, and here are the results for nonfiction and fiction:

NonfictionFiction

Indeed, after reviewing the list of stores I purchased books at, I have confirmed that most of the fiction was picked up while I was an employee at Hunter's books, which also coincided with my days in college. The college bookstore served as the source for most nonfiction, Hunter's as the source for most fiction. Other stores, including Borders, make up only a small slice of my purchasing. As we go forward, Amazon will likely pick up more of my personal library's share.

But that also caused me to reflect on the nature of bookstores themselves and what I like. I used to prefer the superstores, or a large indie. This was because they had the largest selection, and twenty years ago, that is what a good bookstore in my view could do--give me any Kerouac, Nabokov, Scott Bradfield, etc., book I wanted. But I worked in a bookstore, and I wanted to be able to purchase these things.

Now, with Amazon, a large selection no longer seems so important. I go in stores now and feel lost if they're really large. First, despite their size, they rarely stock the (full) work of some of the authors I care for. Second, as someone who no longer knows the week's best-sellers and the books that got the best reviews in the New York Times, I'm lost because there are just so many new books to choose from, and a lot of them things I'd care not one whit about. But with regard to the first, I can always order the book from Amazon if I want it that badly. And with regard to the second, I don't need a large bookstore anymore in which to browse. I find, rather, that I prefer a smaller store with a limited selection that matches my own taste. If I go in, and the store stocks mostly John Grisham novels and the like, I know it's not my sort of place; however, if I go in, and there are a couple of really good books I've heard about in recent years prominently displayed, I have a feeling I can trust the book buyer's taste, and suddenly, I'm back to the old days where bookstores excited, because I know that each book in there is a possible great discovery.

Pool Time

It's the middle of summer and the days are hot. In fact, summer seemed to have come this year, early in May, a month early (early, early, early). At one time, my apartment complex had a pool, but no longer. About seven years ago or so, it was filled in, apparently "unable to be updated to meet state regulations." I rarely used it anyway. I don't particularly find sitting in a pool fun. I wonder what to do, and I am self-conscious about the lack of dress. Still, in the middle of summer days like these, I find myself wishing I had access to the pool again. So I decided to take a survey of pools within close walking distance of me. There are only two that I know of, in hotels. Those two pools are outside and can be seen from the Google maps satellite image. But there are also a number of other hotels in the near distance and one time share, all of which I suspect have pools, even if those are indoors. So here it, the pools I know are there in blue, the pools I suspect are there in light with questions marks. Unless I want to rent a room, however, I'm out of luck about usage.

Google Search Finds

Around June 21, I did a search for my writing name in quote marks to see what would show up and how often. (A search for my everyday name without quotes would be interesting to chart as well, though I'd have to limit the data to the first ten pages or so, since the names are so common as to give an huge number of returns. Something tells me the first folks on there would be Jon Davies the weatherman and Jon Davies the anthropologist. I think I show up somewhere down between number 10 and 30 on some social network, which rather surprises me, since there's not much reason to include me there.)

Anyway, here's how the breakdown appears:
Or to put it in another way (as a percentage):
My name is most connected to a story that appeared in Stymie magazine. I find that interesting because it's not an easy story to get to, but Stymie, a literary magazine on sports, apparently is well connected to various sporting sites, and so my name is now connected to sites wherein you can buy basketballs and jock straps, which is certainly what I think of when I think of me.

What I find most interesting is how some journals really do a great job of getting their name out in search results. Bull, for instance, which published "The Heart Is a Strong Instrument," tweets new stories, blogs about them, Facebooks them, and so on, so that the story isn't just being hit up at its site but at all these companion sites. "The Next Superstar," which appeared in Battered Suitcase, is also listed a lot because the folks at the Suitcase cross-publish the magazine not just in html on their site but in various e-book platforms like Smashwords and as a print-on-demand journal.

I don't tweet, and I don't really use Facebook effectively, so my own site lingers somewhat down in the pile comparatively (though it comes up on the first page, probably because so many of my author bios point to my main site). My reading blog, Short Story Reader, however, has gotten attention in numerous places and so shows up pretty high up on the number of links Google finds. There again, it's more the work of others drawing attention to it than my own work of tweeting or Facebooking about it.

Anyway, if I were to ever start an online literary journal, I think the charts above might be a useful tool with regard to how to publicize the material in the journal--namely, make it available in lots of platforms.