But not books!

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), in defending the Senate tax reform bill’s doubling the threshold of the estate tax from $5.5 million to $11 million, told the Des Moines Register, “I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.”

Your instinct may be to rage: against legislators who’ve become emboldened enough to be explicit in their contempt for working people; against your parents for squandering your inheritance at the Redbox. But fear not, because books, unlike women, are not among the commodities that lead mothers and fathers to blow through the $11 million rightfully earmarked to you. In the name of all that is virtuous, I implore you to cancel your Netflix account, Wine.com subscriptions, and Craigslist hookers and support your local business community by buying one of the books spotlighted in Bookish’s Winter 2018 Fiction Preview. It doesn’t have to be Brass… but remember who it was that shepherded you poor (financially and/or spiritually, really it’s all the same) misguided sheep back to pasture.