A New Book nook: Trying to Unravel My Material World

by Kerry Blair

Just in case I needed a little more to feel guilty about to start the New Year, just after Christmas I borrowed a copy of Peter Menzel’s amazing Material World: A Global Family Portrait.

For this book—as well as a companion series on PBS’s Nova—Menzel’s team of photographers spent one week with “statistically average” families in thirty countries around the world. The author’s essays address each family’s work (merest survival in some cases) and their hopes for the future. As fascinating as the text is, what goes right to the heart is what Menzel calls “the big picture shot.” This is a photo of the family, taken outside their home (house, hut, high rise apartment, whatever) surrounded by all their material possessions. One of the first photos features an Ethiopian woman and her five children*, sitting in the dirt, surrounded by enough clothing, cooking utensils, and bedding to fill one tall kitchen garbage bag—with enough room left over for six or eight scrawny chickens she wishes she had. Deeper within the book, an average US family of four is shot with a wide lens, their stuff overflowing into the neighbors’ yards. (In the Nova version, I hear, the Americans’ possessions cover a football field.)

In this, if nothing else, we Blairs are above average. Admittedly, my family of seven encompasses three generations and is spread out over three apartments and a five-bedroom house. But if we pooled our stuff—which we have in the case of all the junk stored in a two-car garage at the back of the property—we’d not only fill that football field, we’d need at least a basketball court besides for all the antiques, china, and electronics I wouldn’t want to have sitting around outside.

I have been obsessing over this “plethora of accumulation” since January. Yesterday afternoon, I stood in the doorway of the aforementioned garage—trying to figure out how to squeeze in the small desk and five boxes my son is bringing down from Utah today—and decided that the time for mere obsession has passed; it is time to take serious action. Toward that end, I dragged out four crates of books and three bags of bedding that moved from Mesa to Salt Lake City to Chino—without ever being opened. On their way to Goodwill right now are more worldly possessions than the Ethiopian woman will see in her entire life. Still, I didn’t make a noticeable dent in my Great Wall of Stuff. But I will, and I’m starting with . . . drumroll, please . . . books.

As those of you who know me can attest, I am incapable of leaving a thrift store or antique shop empty-handed. The things I’m most likely to cart home (besides Blue Willow) are books; and those I’ve collected all my life. I have a caseful of treasured tomes that, carefully stacked, would occupy a negligible portion of a football field. What’s weighing down the many bookcases in my house are hundreds of “mundane” copies of the great works of literature; enough paper and pasteboard that they’d need their own U-Haul to get to the football field.

I truly love books. About the only way I part with even ratty copies of titles I love is if somebody pries it from my hand or sneaks it out under cover of darkness. (My husband does both.) But now I am able to box most of them up to move on to somebody else’s football field. Why? Because I took the good ol’ American way of eliminating clutter—by accumulating yet another material possession! (But this newest one is small. I swear!)

After years of turning up my nose at technology and swearing on Tolstoy’s grave that I would never, ever, ever trade paper-and-print books for a Kindle . . . I bought a nook. (Ha! Didn’t go back on that oath!) I’d been wavering for some time, but the Whitneys nudged me over the edge. nook* allows me to easily transfer any pdf file—making it about a hundred times easier to read the dozen nominees made available electronically this year. (My eyes are too light-sensitive to allow me to read very long on computer, so this was an answer to a prayer.)

But that’s not why I bought it. My primary motivation went back to the desire to unravel that material girl, if only a little. Thus, I’ve downloaded the complete works of Shakespeare, Dickens, Austen, Dickensen, Browning, and many, many more—all for free, and all with the look of cherished originals, thanks to the inspired Google Library Project. Works that once would have covered a baseball diamond (if not an entire football field) can now be held in my hand and referenced almost instantly.

As awesome as my new nook is—and it is awesome—there is part of me that still isn't sold on the idea. What about the magic of holding an old—or a new—book in one’s hands; of being the last in a long line—or the first person ever!—to crack its cover? I wouldn’t be happy with a digital picture of Blue Willow; can I learn to appreciate digital copies of the world’s greatest lit? I may have saved myself from being buried alive in a landslide of books, but at what cost?

What do you think? Have you ever read an e-book? Are electronic readers the answer to prayer, or the spawn of evil? Do you think our LDS market will allow people like me in Nowheresville to buy the latest LDS tiles when they are still new, without paying half again more for shipping? Do you think I’ll ever get the garage cleaned out and my material possessions down to a size that won't make me flinch? (Sorry. I couldn’t resist that last one.)

I really do want to know what you think. And if you happen to have bare spots on your football field of stuff, I would love to help you out! Bring your own U-Haul.


*This book was on loan and I have a terrible memory, so I’m making up the technicalities here. Trust me, though, wherever she lived and however many children, she was destitute.

*My capitalization isn’t that bad. Barnes and Noble went all e.e. cummings over this thing.