In the game, you collect pages of an instruction booklet for the game tunic. And it they are necessary because much of the game a all important details and some like the signs that you find. Any time you pick up an item, it is a fictional language that that item or detail or, you know, dialogue or whatever is presented. You can't read that, and you rely on finding these instruction booklet pages to learn. Like, oh, actually, these items are what you used to level up your stats. I went a a humiliatingly long time without realizing that that was something that i could even do.