Whenever I see "Click here to get a free copy of this book", it's a real struggle not to click. And this is why I have piles of advanced readers' copies all over my house.

And it's also why I started reading Retail Anarchy : a radical shopper's adventure in consumption by Sam Pocker (Running Press, April 2009).

Pocker calls himself a "stand-up economist". This book is basically a rant about retail turned rancid. Pocker tells story after story of how he finds ways to get stores and manufacturers to "pay" him for using or, as the opening story shows, throwing away their products.

There are some interesting stories about couponing on steroids in this book. Two-thirds through the book, I lost interest. Pocker announces in the intro that the book has no plot. It doesn't. And it doesn't seem to have much purpose either.

So, I picked up my latest acquisition, When Skateboards Will Be Free : a memoir of a political life by Said Sayrafiezadeh, (Random House, due out March 24, 2009). Sayrafiezadeh's parents were loyal members of the Socialist Party. His father relished the thought of the violent overthrow of capitalism. His mother sacrificed everything, her career, her talent, even her needs for material things to work for the party. Said was their youngest child and spent most of his childhood with a "single" mother. Still married to her absent Iranian-born immigrant husband, his mother lived a lonely and destitute life with Said.

The book is written in shades of gray. There are some happy times in Said's childhood but he glosses over them. Happy stories are all alike but miserable tales are each miserable in their own peculiar ways - to paraphrase a classic quote. Growing up as a "young revolutionary" doesn't sound like a picnic. Said's story about going for months without grapes during the grape boycott made me wince. I didn't buy many grapes back then, either. I didn't allow my son to steal grapes as Said's mother did. Said justified these thefts as blows against capitalism while still in elementary school.

I am halfway through When Skateboards Will Be Free. I might put it down and read beach novels for a few days before I continue.

I hope Said ends up happy but his childhood experiences are keeping me awake.

Good night. Or good morning.