I am reading Farnham’s Freehold, a somewhat dated Robert A. Heinlein novel about a family thrown 1,000 years into the future by a thermonuclear bomb. I was attracted to the book by this quote a friend posted on Facebook:
“The last books in the world, so it seemed. He felt sudden grief that the abstract knowledge of the deaths of millions had not given him. Somehow the burning of millions of books felt more brutally obscene than the killing of people. All men must die, it was their single common heritage. But a book need never die and should not be killed; books were the immortal part of man. Book burners — to rape a defenseless, friendly book. Books had always been his best friends. In a hundred public libraries, they had taught him. From a thousand news stands they had warmed his loneliness. He suddenly felt that if he had not been able to save some books, it would hardly be worthwhile to live.”