Book Burning and In-law Bonding

So, I attended a book burning. In my defense, most (though, not all) of the books were advance reader copies, which cannot be sold. They were sent to my sister-in-law, who owns a bookstore, and in her defense, she'd given ample opportunity to her customers to go through them and take what they wanted. But there were still boxes and boxes...

My father-in-law was delegated to do the dirty work, but since I had the time and inclination, I volunteered to "help" or, really, selfishly salvage whatever I might have missed the first time around. Good father-in-law/daughter-in-law bonding time, right?

So, a few books made it into the fire. My father-in-law cringed every time he threw one in, and I warmed myself by their heat as I sifted through the rest. Soon, we were both reading back covers. The "trash" my sister-in-law had thrown out was easier to go through. Yes, we delayed the inevitable by scavenging. (Hey, I found some craft supplies for my three-year-old.) Finally, all that was left was books. We watched several volumes of old ACT workbooks burn (the boring texts weren't hard to get rid of), and suddenly, burning pages lifted into the twilight, drawing out a lone bat who thought he had company. The sky was full of black spots, and my father-in-law and I looked at each other sheepishly and agreed that burning more books would be too dangerous; surely someone would take free books, and then they wouldn't be our problem.

There's nothing like aborting a book burning with your father-in-law. (Did I just say that? On a book blog, no less?) Real life is sometimes stranger than the young adult fiction I read, and that's saying a lot.