There are books up there I haven't read for many years but I wouldn't put them out. I never know when I might want to read them again.
I only keep books that I like very much. Otherwise I'd throw them out.
But I hang on to books. I love them. I even think they're very nice decor in a room - far better than paintings... That's not quite true!
I don't care whether a book is a first edition or not. I'm not a bibliophile in that word's natural sense.
When I was a teacher, teachers would come into my classroom and admire my desk on which lay nothing whatever, whereas theirs were heaped with papers and books.
All those authors there, most of whom of course I've never met. That's the poetry side, that's the prose side, that's the fishing and miscellaneous behind me. You get an affection for books that you've enjoyed.
There are some friends you don't meet for twenty years and when you meet them again it's as if no twenty years has happened - you're lucky when that happens. I feel the same about books.