Coyote Too

Five or six years ago we had a fire. It took out my home office and scorched most of the library. The microwave in the kitchen melted. But all things considered, we were very lucky. We weren't there (a halogen lamp on a timer had apparently had some paper fall on it from a bookcase). We had to gut the inside of the house, but we only lost about a third of the contents. And everything was there to inventory—it took the insurance company four days, but they made a 100 page spreadsheet of everything in the house. While they were doing that, I hired a friend to help me, and we went through the books.

The top bookshelves were massively charred, but we tore off the covers and read the titles from the inside, so for the first time I had a full list of all the books that I (had) owned. The bottom three or four shelves were salvagable, and I saved some books that were burnt anyway, like two complete first American editions of the Lord of the Rings :-(. I haven't had time though, to go through…