I understand exactly where you're coming from.

It's irrational, I know, but with the several moves my family made when I was a child, we'd always "lose" books along the way, many of them written in a foreign language (probably mostly German and Czech), with leather bindings and gold trim. I feel that with their disappearance I lost a connection to European and Eastern European family I'll never know, as there were letters and notes tucked inside them.

To this day, I can't throw out a book or a magazine. If it's something I don't want any more, or despised on first read, I'll donate it to church rummage sales or thrift shops. While they may certainly toss them, at least I've done my best to salvage the written word for someone else.