Trivets

"I went though hundreds of books, thousands of them, they were all over the apartment, I used them as doorstops and paper-weights, I stacked them if I needed to reach something, I slid them under the legs of wobbly tables, I used them as trivets an coasters" (28).

The woman didn't want to ruin her nice granite so she put her hot soup on a trivet to protect the counter.