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Wednesday June 22nd, 2011

What Would You Do With 350,000 Books?

I don’t know how many books I own. Many of them are in storage. Whenever I move apartments, they temporarily feel like a sizable burden. But there can’t be many more than a thousand of them. So I can’t imagine 350,000.

That’s the number a woman in Saskatchewan is dealing with after an unwelcome inheritance. The books belonged to a recently deceased collector whose wife was set to burn them to get rid of them. (”There was a first edition copy of Black Beauty on the top pile and the bottom was all charred off [from being burned] but the top was just immaculate,” the new owner said. But she’s starting to sympathize:

We are kind of at a standstill. I work at two jobs. My husband is a full-time student. We have three kids and no time. And no money. And so we’re at the point now where were looking at having to burn some of the books ourselves.

(Via Bookslut)