I always thought that to decide which books to burn, you put a book on one side of a scale and a duck on the other side. If the book weighs as much as the duck, that means it floats, which means it is made of wood, which means you should burn it.
-----Original Message-----
From: Elisabeth McKechnie [mailto:emckechnie@ucdavis.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, June 02, 2004 5:13 PM
To: law-lib@ucdavis.edu
Subject: Library and librarians in movie
Another insight on burning books for heat:
Over coffee one afternoon in the summer of 2001, András reminded me of another way to burn books, explained to him by a colleague who survived the siege of Sarajevo. In the winter, the scholar and his wife ran out of firewood, and so began to burn their books for heat and cooking. "This forces one to think critically," András remembered his friend saying. "One must prioritize. First, you burn old college textbooks, which you haven't read in thirty years. Then there are the duplicates. But eventually, you're forced to make tougher choices. Who burns today: Dostoevsky or Proust?" I asked András if his friend had any books left when the war was over. "Oh yes," he replied, his face lit by a flickering smile. "He still had many books. Sometimes, he told me, you look at the books and just choose to go hungry."
Excerpt from Library by Matthew Battles:
http://www.wwnorton.com/catalog/spring04/032564excerpt.htm
Elisabeth M. McKechnie, J.D., M.L.I.S.
Associate Librarian
UC Davis Law Library
(530) 752-3327
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