Saving your books in a Fire...

I live in Colorado, so Fires are on my mind.

I actually have never thought about what books I would save...

Perhaps The Wyoming Brand Book. It's small and might actually be worth something.

How about you?

Way too many I would love to, and, in case of emergency: little chance. They're all over the place. In practice, save yourself, save your loved ones (including pets) - maybe something really really rare if you can easily grab it. If not : don't bother, you might not have the time to get out alive yourself. It pains me to say this, but books, even rare books, are only possessions.

Be well and take care.

P.s.: But answering your original question: in my case it would be more about saving some collections (Alternative Alice & Temple of Jerusalem *) rather than individual books. It's how these connect which makes them important, much more than the actual individual works.

* I mean each of these collections - as far as I'm aware there's no overlap between them. Finding something that did would really make my day!

Where I live, it's a matter of which books you take with you for a hurricane evacuation. At least we have a bit of warning! I take a book signed by Arthur C. Clakre, another by Asimov, and then some old vintage stuff (non-sci-fi, as it happens) that isn't easily replaceable. But if the worst happened, I would still lose a lot of books that I really treasure. A lot of my vintage girls' career romance novels are the only copy on LibraryThing.

My Bible, and two books my mother gave to me: The Joy of Cooking and A Field Guide to the Birds of Eastern North America. I could replace the actual books, but not the inscription in the front of each!

I too am more worried about hurricanes and flooding (being in Houston), so the plan for my next book rearrangement is to try to put all the more easily replaceable books on the bottom shelves.

I should try and find my signed copy of Ray Bradbury's Illlustrated Man at all. Never mind evacuating it, it would be nice to know where it got to. O_o

Sometimes I hate renovations.

I have one book I treasure and might grab on my way out the door in an emergency. It's a rare astronomy book from 1750. My mother bought it in the 50s when she was a graduate Physics student at University of Chicago - she paid $10. It's one of the very few things I have from her.

We're in an oil refinery / chemical production area. If we ever have an evacuation here, it will probably be a chemical explosion / spill emergency... with toxic smoke and wind-borne gases... hate to imagine. But it's not likely to actually destroy hundreds of acres of land and houses, we worry more about long term health. We do get tornadoes of course, but they're so focused that they cause a lot less widespread devastation than a wildfire or hurricane.

I have thought about this on several occasions. I think my high school yearbook and the three Kelly Freas art books would be the first to go. Then photo albums.

High School Yearbooks...hmm interesting.

Re High School yearbooks... I got an e-mail yesterday from Classmates.com. They have started digitizing them and had one from my high school years. Viewable online or get a reprint for $99. And they can often be found in used bookstores as well. So, if the written sentiments in your yearbooks are important to you, as they likely are, by all means save them first, as those cannot be replaced. As I did not come out of my shell until college, I would grab other books on the way out the door after the wife and dogs and computers were safe. My sets of Wellington's Despatches and First US Army Report of Operations, both previously owned by officers in their respective wars, are close to the back door.