When my mother died, she left behind tons of books - mostly hard covers. I took what I wanted, my brother did too and most of them went to her local library for their summer sale. It was a lot of work packing up all of those boxes and believe me, those boxes could get heavy but all I could think of was the pleasure she got from them. (Most of them, she bought used throughout her life). She passed on her love of books to me.
The love of fabric, well, I'm not sure where that came from!