My Very Own Great Books!

Originally posted 11/26/2023

I'm getting a set of the Great Books as a holiday gift!

My parents read my Substacks. When I posted my review yesterday of the Preface to The Syntopicon, my father emailed me to suggest getting a set. I told him I’d love to, but the new sets cost over a thousand bucks. He was undeterred. He found a bunch of people selling used sets on Amazon and sent me a link. I chose one that was ridiculously low (about five bucks per book!) because one volume was missing, but promised that the rest are clean with solid bindings. I found the missing volume on Abe Books, so that's the one we ordered.

I'm pretty excited! My dad says he thinks of this type of thing as a gift that keeps on giving. I agree. Also, it sort of closes a circle. My first exposure to the Great Books was a Junior GB discussion group we had at home when I was a kid. My father was a High School English teacher at the time (the 1970s), and had just become a certified GB discussion leader, I think. We got a set of both the junior readings that he used with me and my sister, and also a paperback set of the entire collection. They came in slip-cases that held six or eight books each. I don't remember exactly how they were organized. I think most of them failed to make the trip to California when my parents moved to UC Davis, but I actually have a few of the paperbacks on my shelves today.

I was planning on reading the Syntopicon and using the Internet Archive version to follow the references. I think this would have worked alright for syntopical reading, but probably less well for reading the Great Books cover to cover. Having a set that will allow me to sit down in the recliner in front of the fire and read, will be a lot of fun. And it will give me no excuse not to read all the Great Books!

As a result of my parents' generosity, you can expect ongoing coverage of not only the reading and note-making techniques associated with the Syntopicon, but of the Great Books themselves. This will probably be a multi-year project. Hutchins and Adler mapped out a ten-year program in The Great Conversation. I don't think it will take me that long, but you never know. I may want to explore some of the tributaries of the big river of ideas (remember there are 2,603 titles in the Bibliography). And I'll certainly want to explore things written after the middle of the twentieth century when this collection was completed. Looks like a cool long-term project!

Thanks, Dad & Mom!!