Book Report

Recently I had a hankering to read Edward Gibbons’ three-volume set, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, no small undertaking considering there are exactly 2,500 pages of text and illustrations in each of three volumes.

Sadly, as I reached for them on the shelf I could see that mold had damaged every page and cover from the front of volume 1, though that cover was undamaged, to the back cover of volume 3, though it too was undamaged.

I called the local book repairer and he said that it would cost a penny a page and fifty cents a cover to repair. He says, “Bring the affected volumes over and come back in a week, I’ll be all done.”

So I show up in a week prepared to pay the bill, and it’s about half of what I expected it to be.

The question is how much was the repair?