Magazines A-Plenty, Books Galore

by Kerry Blair

As a young Relief Society president I was sent to rescue an elderly woman from what the bishop called “deplorable living conditions.” There was a single over-stuffed chair in the living room, a tidy table and folding chair in the kitchen, a neatly-made twin bed in one of the two rooms off the hall, and a mostly-accessible toilet in the bathroom. The problem? These bits of random furnishings—and a major appliance or two—could be accessed only by passing down narrow passageways carved through towering cliffs of newspaper, magazines, and books. It was the most awe-inspiring thing I had seen in my life. (Clearly, the bishop had sent the wrong person.) I wept with joy and embraced the sister as a kindred spirit.

Left to my own inclinations, I would be that woman. Every day I tear articles from the newspaper and print stories and pictures from the Internet that might possibly have something to do with a book, story, article, or blog I may write someday. (Perchance.) Until I find time to categorize and file these invaluable sources of minutiae, I drop them in a basket or tuck them into a crevice of a bookshelf. Time passes. The newsprint yellows. The computer paper crumples. What were once invaluable treatises come to look very much like trash, so I take a deep breath, gather them all up, and haul my stash out to a waiting bin. Then I start the process over.

I am trying to determine if I need professional help. Do any of you gather words like a crazed chipmunk going after the last kernels of nourishment on earth? Do you or anybody you know agonize over pitching a perfectly good magazine after reading it cover-to-cover? I have periodicals from 1901 through yesterday; hundreds of them—mostly in the garage, hidden under camping supplies and secreted behind food storage containers so nobody can mistake them for garbage. Many have been soiled and/or consumed by mice but, hey, parts are still readable. I fear this rationale is not rational.

And that brings us to my books. I have collected (read: hoarded) books since I was old enough to look at pictures and sound out SP-O-T. Besides most of my preschool favorites, I have complete sets of The Bobbsey Twins through Nancy Drew and on into Text Books of the American Lyceum Circle, The World’s Best Orations (1-3350) From the Earliest Period to Present Time—with “present time” being 1899. (Still, that has to be the best-titled book series ever. How could I ever part with it?) Cicero supposedly said that a room without a book is like a body without a soul. If that is true, we are undoubtedly the most soulful house on the block. (Possibly the planet.) There is not a room, porch, cupboard, garage, shed, or cranny on this property that doesn’t have books in it.

Recently, before the cliff walls grew high enough to attract the attention of the bishop (or fire marshall), I decided to cull a few tomes of my own free will and choice. Thus far I have sent a truckload of books back out to enrich the rest of the reading world. I did this mostly because I had been assured by authors of books on clutter and feng shui that restoring order and spaciousness to my home would be a cathartic and freeing experience. It wasn’t. It was painful in the extreme. I’d read every single book I gave away—some more than once—and formed a meaningful relationship with each. While I tend to call my youngest son by the wrong name some days, I can remember most books I’ve read, when I read them, and how I felt at the time. While I was too embarrassed to comment on the book lists Rob posted last week, I’ll come clean now: I’ve not only read 70 to 80 books on each list, I’ve owned most of them at one time or another. (Also, Dickens and Steinbeck are among my closest personal friends. So there.)

Since I still have a ways to go before I can convince the men in white coats carrying straightjackets that I don’t have a book fetish, I need help paring down even wore. When it comes to your best-loved books, how do you decide who goes and who remains? (And don’t tell me books are “whichs” not “whos.” They are “whos” to me.) If it’s highly unlikely that you will ever again want to sojourn in the country or frolic on the seashore with the Bobbsey Twins, do pass them on? (Even if you’ve had them your whole life and distinctly remember how they got you through measles, mumps, and chicken pox?) Or say one reading of J. Proctor Knott’s “The Glories of Duluth,” delivered 27 Jan 1871 as the House of Representatives debated the St. Croix and Bayfield Railroad Bill, is probably enough. Do you let all ten volumes go? (Even if they are hand-sewn, kid-bound, and contain some of the most remarkable thoughts and photogravure of the centuries?) Do you keep your personal favorites regardless of genre, or settle on preserving just the classics of literature, even though they can be read—and cross-referenced—on the Guggenheim site? (And if you don’t save the classics, what do you do if or when you meet Charles Dickens or John Steinbeck in the after-here? How will you possibly justify tossing Great Expectations or The Pearl after they changed your life?)

This is too hard for me. I desperately need advice—if not a hand in carting away a tome or twenty. If you don’t come through, I fear I’ll resort to perusing the vast cyber-shelves at Amazon for a 12-step book on overcoming book addiction. And you know what will happen then . . .

Or maybe I am over-reacting. My family can still make their way to the sink, fridge, and toilets. Besides books, what more does anybody need?