Books, even without association with anyone known, have an almost sacred quality in any case: it is necessary only to imagine someone ripping the pages out of a cheap and trashy airport novel one by one to prove to oneself that this is so. If we saw someone doing it, we should be shudder, and think him a barbarian, no matter the nature of the book. The horror aroused by book burnings is independent of the quality of the books actually burnt.
Used book shops may be disappearing, but I suspect the used book business is booming. More than a decade ago I wrote a piece about how the internet was in fact revolutionizing it. Now, booksellers don't need the store fronts and their marketplace is global.I just ordered a copy of the Alexandria Quartet from somewhere in England. Regarding inscriptions, my copy of John Cowper Powys's Autobiography is inscribed by him, and I have a copy of George Barker's collected poems with a letter from Barker to Canadian poet Robin Skelton.
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