Comments on: Printer’s Row

By: Donna Seaman

Donna Seaman — Sat, 12 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Hi Keir,

Thanks for your report on the Printers Row Book Fair. I was indeed on a panel titled The Art of the Review, although the discussion centered more on how the heck can we keep up with all the books that arrive at our offices than with aesthetic and critical concerns. My other gig was a conversation with Giles Slade, author of Made to Break: Technology and Obsolescence in America, reviewed in Booklist, of course. The program had a typo, the term is e-waste (not e-wastes), which refers to all the electronic gadgets we throw out-computers, TVs, cell phones, CD players, iPods-toxic trash given all the heavy metals they contain. Yet another unintended consequence of our love for machines.

Donna

By: Keir

Keir — Sat, 12 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Thanks, Donna! BOL subscribers can read your review of Made to Break by clicking here.

By the way, how should I dispose of my broken DVD player?

By: Donna Seaman

Donna Seaman — Sat, 12 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000

That's the zillion-dollar question. Heaps and heaps of discarded electronics are piling up out of sight and, until recently, out of mind, and just wait until HDTV hits. All those analog TVs busted up in landfills, all that lead leeching into groundwater. Isn't this a cheery vision? The only optimistic viewpoint I can muster up is along the lines of, "Well, our ingenuity got us into this mess, so it will have to get us out of it."

Donna