Waste: Object Lessons
Brian Thill
Sep 2026 · Bloomsbury US Audio · Narrated by Kevin Shen
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2 hr 31 min
Unabridged
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About this audiobook
Bloomsbury presents Waste by Brian Thill, read by Kevin Shen.
Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.
Though we try to imagine otherwise, waste is every object, plus time. Whatever else an object is, it’s also waste—or was, or will be. All that is needed is time or a change of sentiment or circumstance. Waste is not merely the field of discarded objects, but the name we give to our troubled relationship with the decaying world outside ourselves. Waste focuses on those waste objects that most fundamentally shape our lives and also attempts to understand our complicated emotional and intellectual relationships to our own refuse: nuclear waste, climate debris, pop-culture rubbish, digital detritus, and more.
Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.
Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.
Though we try to imagine otherwise, waste is every object, plus time. Whatever else an object is, it’s also waste—or was, or will be. All that is needed is time or a change of sentiment or circumstance. Waste is not merely the field of discarded objects, but the name we give to our troubled relationship with the decaying world outside ourselves. Waste focuses on those waste objects that most fundamentally shape our lives and also attempts to understand our complicated emotional and intellectual relationships to our own refuse: nuclear waste, climate debris, pop-culture rubbish, digital detritus, and more.
Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.
Bloomsbury presents Waste by Brian Thill, read by Kevin Shen.
Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things.
Though we try to imagine otherwise, waste is every object, plus time. Whatever else an object is, it’s also waste—or was, or w...
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About the author
Brian Thill is Professor of English at Golden West College, USA. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Jacobin, Mediations, 3:AM Magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere.
Brian Thill is Professor of English at Golden West College, USA. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Jacobin, Mediations, 3:AM Magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere.
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