A few days ago I was talking to a neighbour who stated that he had inherited some property, an old farmhouse and surroundings. He told me that he had spent some time going through the house and sheds and thrown out all the rubbish. On further questioning it turned out that this included two skip-fulls of books, some of which dated back to the mid-1800’s… :eek:
Unfortunately I was unable to rescue them or even look through them because they had been sitting outside in the heavy rain for some time before being dumped.
OK, so he may not be a book-lover, fair enough, but he could have made some money by selling them…
It’s unlikely. I go through the older books people denote to see if any of them are worth money. Aside from early editions of stuff that’s still famous today, nothing brings in any more than $2 or $3.
This is the kind of thing my grandpa would do. He would bury books in his yard so they’d decompose because “who wants a bunch of dumb books?”
I’m starting to shake just thinking about it. I remember telling him “why not burn them like the Nazis? Wouldn’t that be faster? Why do you get to decide who gets to read what books?” He would lift up the grass with a pitchfork to show me the books underneath. Oh my god!
Y’know, I actually designed a new circle of Hell for censors, awhile back—it involved hobbled and blinded/aphasic souls building monuments out of millipede infested dung, IIRC—I’m sure it could have a transitional layer along the borders for sins described in the OP; much like Dante’s burning sand plains.
