4

Opening the Book

A few years ago, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the final book in that famous series, hit the bookstores. My wife and I faced a dilemma: who would get to read it first? We had each loved the first six books and could not wait for the conclusion. This verged on becoming a serious marital issue before we worked out how to resolve it. We simply imagined what we would have done if we were not married. We bought two copies.

That decision was surprisingly hard to make, even though, on the range of marital difficulties one could face, the solution was rather cheap. [1] In our household, as in many others, books are considered common property. When my wife and I got married, we noted the overlap in our personal libraries ...

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