How green is your e-book?  How much do you care about the environmental impact of the words you read… or about the sweatshop workers who assembled your shiny new iPad?  Tonight’s special guest is Raz Godelnik from Eco-Libris - the organization that encourages readers to do something to make the world greener – and he’s got some surprising facts about the relative impact of e-readers compared to paper books.

Still on an iTheme, Dave Bartram proposes the notion that technology is changing the way we think and making it harder for us to concentrate on one thing at a time… such as reading.  “Reading on my iPhone sucks”, says Dave. “It’s not immersive enough… and it’s far too easy to be distracted.”  If this is true, the publishing industry hasn’t even begun to consider what impact this may have on our reading, and writing, habits.

It’s Donna Ballman‘s last appearance for a few weeks – she’s off for a highly-merited vacation, and we’ll miss her while she’s gone.  She’s leaving us with five habitual lies that authors tell themselves!

And Eve Harvey has picked up on one of Litopia’s own tweets – what makes writers particularly susceptible to the demon drink?  Is it cause – or effect?  Do some people actually write better while inebriated?  If he had not become such a drunk, would Truman Capote have finished Answered Prayers? And if he did – would it have been any good?

Join us in the chatroom next week – we kick off at 8pm UK / 3pm EST every Friday here.

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Other topics on tonight’s show include:

• Republic of Litopia to issue its own currency – here are the denominations
• People’s Liberation Army starts dating service for 2.3 million lovelorn Chinese soldiers
• Prince Charles buys castle in Transylvania to exsanguinate England’s football squad
• Spies masquerade as normal Americans – define normal

This week’s titles for the Commissioning Meeting are:

DONNA
“The Uncle Of An Angel”
Thomas Allibone Janvier, 1849-1913

RAZ
“Eating in Two or Three Languages”
Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb, 1876-1944

EVE
“The Jupiter Weapon”
Charles Louis Fontenay, 1917-2007

DAVE
“The Ear in the Wall”
Arthur Benjamin Reeve, 1880-1936

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Photo by Robbert van der Steeg

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