Lateralist Book-Buying

Book sales could be revolutionised by the introduction of selling books by the metre. Take the classic novel, Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley. It retails for around $11.95. As it happens the edition I have in front of me is 15mm thick, which is 0.015 metres. Therefore, its price could also be accurately stated as $796.67 a metre. I think this more accurately conveys the value of this text. It also explains just how foolish it is to spend $477.35 a metre on anything written by Dan Brown.

I am fairly certain that this makes the novella, Reflections in a Golden Eye by Carson McCullers the most expensive book I own. It's 7mm thick, and I paid $18.95 for it, which works out to a whopping $2707.14 per metre. As good as it is, I'm not sure it's quite that good.

Books by the metre. Shopping for something to read would either require some deft mental arithmetic, or better yet, people will start taking their abaci to their local book store once more. I'm sure that the boffins at Apple will expeditiously introduce some dodgy parchment/yardage application, but I will boycott it. I won't tell you how much an iPhone costs by the metre, because if I did, and you owned one, you'd be aghast. Take heed, and buy a bargain copy of Proust. It'll save you a fortune.