She would bring them for fun and read them on nights when she wasn't horribly exhausted. She read in her Pacific Crest Trail guidebook that people were tearing up the book so they only had to carry the parts they needed while they were on the trail. After having this revelation, she began doing this with every book she had with her. She literally burned eleven pounds during her three months of hiking. Only two of her books survived the trip, The Dream of Common Language by Adrienne Rich and The Complete Stories by Flannery O'Connor, because she couldn't bear to part with the first and swapped the second for another novel , coincidentally titled The Roman. These books were her connections to her normal life, and she burned every page she read as she progressed through the story. It’s symbolic that she’s only moving forward. Once she burned the pages, she couldn't go back and read them, just like after completing the journey, she couldn't go back to her old life. At the end of the novel, she doesn't even return to her old apartment, but moves to Oregon, the state in which she completed the course.