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great books
Aug. 11th, 2026 03:57 pmI'm reading Mike O'Connor's memoir Crisis, Pursued by Disaster, Followed Closely by Catastrophe, and it's killing me -- his itinerant, brilliant, con-man father buys the family a set of the Great Books of the Western World, hanging on to them long after everything else the family has is lost. My god. The lump rises to my throat. Should I laugh or cry?
"Almost everything was gone except that fifty-four volume Great Books of Western Civilization, with the genuine veneer bookcase and the unique guide."
Well do I know that set! We all received one for Christmas, one year in the late 90s -- my family and each of the cousins' families. Great-Uncle Jerome had sold them, and had overstock to gift. My dad was so chuffed. They took up a whole bookcase in the living room.
Dad read several volumes over the next years, while I was in high school. Thucydides. Herodotus. I read the Donne volume, and the Shakespeare, the print tiny, the paper onion-thin.
( Read more... )
"Almost everything was gone except that fifty-four volume Great Books of Western Civilization, with the genuine veneer bookcase and the unique guide."
Well do I know that set! We all received one for Christmas, one year in the late 90s -- my family and each of the cousins' families. Great-Uncle Jerome had sold them, and had overstock to gift. My dad was so chuffed. They took up a whole bookcase in the living room.
Dad read several volumes over the next years, while I was in high school. Thucydides. Herodotus. I read the Donne volume, and the Shakespeare, the print tiny, the paper onion-thin.
( Read more... )