Ditto. I remember as a little boy sitting in the hallway outside my bedroom and reading the encyclopedia. My parents bought Colliers and we'd get an annual update. I have no idea what happened to that set. My dad told me that they bought it from a door-to-door salesman. Some had Brittanica and some had World Book in our town.
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Any time you give a man something he doesn't earn, you cheapen him. Our kids earn what they get, and that includes respect. -- Woody Hayes
We had Brittanica - from a door to door salesman. The set is still at my Louisiana house. With the Internet I can't believe it is worth anything.
ΜOΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ
Any time you give a man something he doesn't earn, you cheapen him. Our kids earn what they get, and that includes respect. -- Woody Hayes
As a young father, in the '70s, I bought a set of Collier's Encyclopedias that we could ill afford because I thought it would be educational for the children. And then you could buy the Yearbook every year to "update" the set. I was probably the only one in the family who ever used them.
“Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.” - Robert E. Howard
"Only a rank degenerate would drive 1,500 miles across Texas and not eat a chicken fried steak." - Larry McMurtry
This discussion reminded me that my father used to buy the new 'World Almanac' every year, without fail, starting in the late '50s, and never tossed them; they sat on a shelf in his den, and were still there when I cleaned out my folks' house many years later. I did likewise when I first had a family in the early '70s. Annual reference books like that just don't have the same appeal as they did pre-Internet. I began buying a little digest called 'Who's Who in Baseball' when the Diamondbacks began playing in '98.
That publication was a Baseball tradition for more than a century, but the Internet recently did it in, too.
“Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.” - Robert E. Howard
"Only a rank degenerate would drive 1,500 miles across Texas and not eat a chicken fried steak." - Larry McMurtry
My parents had a mostly complete encyclopedia set that was circa 1914, I used to use them for reports on various subjects, and use a modern encyclopedia to throw in the "how times have changed" factor. Actually, I'm sure I was using this method to "pad" reports that had word minimums
I have to wonder how many bar fights over disputed trivia questions and answers the Internet and smart phones have prevented.
When I had a flip phone with no Internet access, I always said that I had no need for something like that - that I was on or near my computer at home or work most of the time, and if I was somewhere else I could do just fine without having to look anything up.
Now I find myself reaching for my phone at least a dozen times a day - in my car, to find an address of someplace I'm trying to find, or just sitting in my living room watching a movie, checking on IMDB to see who played so-and-so in the film and what else I've seen them in.
“Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.” - Robert E. Howard
"Only a rank degenerate would drive 1,500 miles across Texas and not eat a chicken fried steak." - Larry McMurtry