04 March 2005

At Least MacDuff's Friends Won't Drop By

I've obviously taken waaaaaaay too much Flexoril in the last couple of days (which explains, too, why I haven't commented on Roper; my silence on Tenet v. Doe is courtesy of my NDA). I saw a news item in today's Guardian books section and immediately thought of the climax of the Scottish play. It no longer will take place at the "castle" of a certain prominent author who now lives in Scotland.

Neither, unfortunately, will we get to see a parody of those awful-yet-amusing "barbarian invasion" commercials for a certain credit-card leviathan issuer in which the trees are about to mob JKR, but she says that she's got only FSC books in her bookcase… and that image alone should tell you more about muscle relaxants than you really want to know. However, if some clever person out there wants to do one, I won't claim any credit at all. That particular leviathan issuer and I have an… unpleasant, I think&38230; litigation history, as should be indicated by my repeated characterization.

On a slightly more serious note, though, use of sustainable resources for paper pulp is almost certainly a good thing. I think that perhaps vellum made from politician hides might be more sustainable, but it would no doubt be more expensive. In any event, one of the major problems for serious book collectors and for serious libraries continues to be paper that itself doesn't last that long. The irony that paper made from sustainable sources with fewer chemical treatments is actually far more durable than the "traditional" bleached papers, and creates a more-readable (unillustrated, anyway) book to boot, for very little marginal increase in cost of production, seems largely lost. Of course, some of this is simple fear by larger publishers that a sudden rush to the "eco-friendly" product will result in shortages and price spikes.