This research is conducted to answer questions surrounding social phenomenon of reading books as a consumptive lifestyle and its relation to political economy studies of the mass media consumption as system of significations. Jean Baudrillard's theory on consumer society and his critic of the political economy of the sign are two important works upon which the theoritical foundation of this research was based. This is a qualitative research rooted in critical tradition with social constructionism as its strategy. Finding in this research is collected through in-dept interview and participatory observation and analyzed through qualitative comparative analysis. The findings reveal that books consumption (especially imported books) have higher degree of prestige than other media as it manifests into consumptive lifestyle of "positional goods" upon which upper class can enjoy only if others from lower class do not; therefore defining their superior social status.