I recently started reading ‘The Great Books of the Western Civilization’1 after buying the complete set from someone on Craigslist. The seller was a doctor who had purchased the books from a library sale many years ago and had even read some of the classics in Latin when he was younger. I feel super fortunate to have acquired this amazing collection. It is like things aligned, and some goodness transferred to me.
One of my childhood dreams was to own a set of Encyclopedia Brittanica2 or The World Book3, and this comes pretty close to it. It reminds me of a friend from the past, a kindred spirit, who wanted the same. The past seems like chapters in one of the books I read long ago. Can’t imagine the number of people I lost touch with in the tides of time.
Rather than my usual practice of summarizing books on this blog, I wanted to try something new this time. As I read chapters from the books, I’ll take a passage and ask ChatGPT or Bard a question to reflect on the text, to explore the text’s relevance to contemporary issues. This approach allows me to engage with a chatbot like ChatGPT on a daily basis. It also gives me a feeling of being able to discuss the book with someone.
If you’re interested in following along, I’ll be publishing these reflections on Substack https://robinsonraju.substack.com, and you can sign up for the newsletter to receive updates.
Here is a Youtube video by Benjamin McEvoy. Loved to see his excitement about owning the set.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Books_of_the_Western_World
Great Books of the Western World is a series of books originally published in the United States in 1952, by Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., to present the great books in a 54-volume set. ↩︎ -
Encyclopedia Britannica: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica ↩︎
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The World Book Encyclopedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Book_Encyclopedia ↩︎
