This might be a little bit of a cheat, because I don’t actually want to be “Crazy Rich.” But bog-standard garden variety rich? That I could do. My 2007 Toyota Yaris just broke in a way that will cost half the blue book value to fix, and I’m lucky enough that I have a 401K to take a loan against for the replacement car’s down payment. But man, would it be nice to have a “just for the hell of it” trip to Paris to go shopping for dresses that cost more than my house and regular garden parties the size of my wedding.
Obviously, the whole point of the book is that money and power the likes of the Young family is its own burden, and not just in a “more money, more problems, let’s cry into our hundred dollar bills” way, but the idea of that kind of burden is appealing when the best car you’ve ever owned just MAY have been the last vehicle manufactured with manual locks and windows.
The actual book itself was okay, it took me a while to warm up to it, but the passages from Astrid’s perspective (the queen bee of the mega-rich’s social circle, so unaffected by her wealth as to neither embrace nor reject it) stuck out to me as particularly good, even if I’m buying goodwill duds rather than Parisian couture, in part because her chapters all felt real (even if the twist to her tale was a bit less than true to life), whereas some of the moments played for comedy (the social climbing Kitty finding a new beau springs to mind) were a bit too over the top.
Perhaps that excess is why I’d never be a great rich person. My imagination is too small – I’d want to travel or open restaurants that didn’t need to turn a profit but catered to my specific tastes. I could be rich. I am DEFINITELY crazy. But I don’t think I could hack being crazy rich.
