One Man's Trash...

Here's another one of those stories that will make book lovers around the world sick to their stomachs. It seems that a used book store owner couldn't (or wouldn't) pay his rent. As a result, his stock of 500,000 used books was locked up by the owner of the building. And, yes, you guessed it. All 500,000 were eventually just thrown into the dump.

The books belonged to used bookseller Paul Saindon, who was evicted from his store in the Vieux Longueuil district three months ago for not paying rent. After the building's owner threatened to throw the books into the garbage, the city decided to put the books into storage temporarily at its own cost, La Presse reported.

The city tried to find someone to take the books before dumping them, but no one wanted them, a spokesperson said.

I suppose that I should try to be more understanding when I read this kind of news. After all, the city in question should not have had to foot the storage costs or the cost of shipping these books to other countries or even trucking them to VA hospitals and the like. But I cringe every time I see books being treated like garbage.