"What a mess," she said, sweeping her arms around the room.  "Why do you save these things?  What do you need them for after you've read them?  We're moving, for God's sake, and we pay by the pound."

       I stopped packing and looked at her.  I had never thought about it before. Throwing away a book had always seemed to me to be some kind of intellectual blasphemy.  I had always saved books for the same reason people save vacation pictures - because the presence of a book I've read, like an old snapshot from a family vacation, evokes the forgotten memory of its pages which may otherwise be lost forever.

       "I just like them around." I responded.

       She looked at me, abruptly turned on her heel and left the room.