For those interested, the new Harry Potter book will be 784 pages. The first print run is set at a mind-boggling 12 million. The paper used will contain “a minimum of 30 percent post-consumer waste fiber.” While this eco-friendly output is good, as Chelsea Green’s Margo Baldwin observed last year, many small publishers have been putting out books with a higher PCW fiber count. And I can’t help but wonder whether any of these 12 million copies will be remaindered. And if they do not sell, will they be pulped? And is this mass pulping really beneficial for the environment?
Harry Potter 7: It’s Not Easy Being Green
– March 22, 2007Posted in: Environment, Harry Potter
The Call by Yannick Murphy: The always interesting author of Here They Come and Signed, Mata Hari returns with a novel that whips up a worldview from a rather quirky set of limitations: namely, the call logs that a veterinarian maintains as his son is unexpectedly put into a coma and an unforgiving economy denies him work. What emerges is a surprisingly optimistic, often funny, and very moving account on how one family uses acceptance and forgiveness as a way to atone for hard knocks. (
Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber: Forget Franzen and Eugenides. If you're looking for a social novel that counts, Diana Abu-Jaber is the author you're looking for. Building from the free-form exploration of consciousness and identity in Crescent and the gripping procedural structure of Origin, Abu-Jaber's latest novel is her finest, equally fluent with gutterpunk culture and smarmy real estate men. It has been suggested by The Washington Post's Ron Charles that you will likely gain some pounds while reading this novel. This is certainly true. Abu-Jaber's description of food is so precise that it often made me want to do more cooking. But I very much admired the way in which Abu-Jaber presents all her characters as unwitting victims of rough capitalism, which permits them some dignity even as they perform terrible acts.
The Last of the Live Nude Girls by Sheila McClear: This memoir isn't so much about the decline of the Times Square peepshow, as it is about one young woman's efforts to pull herself up by by her bootstraps when presented with few economic options. Filled with self-introspective candor and a quiet dignity, McClear's story is one that might befall any of us in these volatile times. While McClear does get back on her feet, her book leads one contemplating the terrible fates of other young women now moving to New York and falling into deadlier vocations. (
Well, I personally think there’s a great chance that ALL the copies will be sold, seeing as how it’s an AMAZING book…There won’t be thousands of them sitting around, so the fact that the paper isn’t the single most environmentally friendly paper out there doesn’t bother me… at all.